Russia had at least two landmark criminal affairs during last year: that of the theater director Kirill Serebrennikov and that of the former minister of economics Alexei Ulyukayev. Both cases fall into a league of stories that make a deep impression on Russia’s elites and inform their strategies.
The defining feature of these highly publicized cases, which also include the Khodorkovsky affair, is that they capture the nation’s attention but also escape clear interpretation.
