As Vladimir Putin’s political star rose, journalist Anatoly Levin-Utkin was a key researcher behind one of the Russian media’s first articles digging into the former KGB officer’s past. Then he was beaten to death.
Records detailing Vladimir Putin’s time as a controversial St. Petersburg committee head in the 1990s are sparse. RFE/RL digs into a handful that reporters were able to obtain and reveals the stories behind their scant contents.