In Russia, the middle and lower classes are supposed to accept endemic corruption with happy self-delusion. Fortunately, a small cadre of journalists and activists don't. The best known example here is Alexei Navalny. Another is Ivan Golunov.

A writer for Meduza, Golunov's investigative journalism focuses on political corruption and industry-specific organized crime in Moscow. But Golunov was detained last Thursday by the Moscow state department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He was charged with drug dealing. A spin-off of the unwieldy MVD, the poor man's FSB, the Moscow department is supposed to uphold federal justice. Instead, it plays for Putin's allies, who pay for its services.

Ivan Golunov, a journalist who worked for the independent website Meduza, sits in a cage in a court room in Moscow, Russia, Saturday, June 8, 2019. (Dmitry Serebryakov/AP)

But the department screwed up with Golunov. Big time.

For a start, the 36 year-old has no record of drug usage and appears to have passed drug contact (urine/hand signatures) test. That immediately raised eyebrows. But then, after beating him in detention, the Moscow department pulled an act of such astounding stupidity it would be beautiful were it not so serious. The MVD at first released photographs that supposedly showed a drug lab in Golunov's apartment. But when his relatives pointed out that only one of the photos had been taken in his apartment and the rest showed drugs at other locations, the MVD suddenly retracted the photos and claimed that an employee had made a "mistake" in posting them.

In busting themselves so flagrantly, the department ensured the ire of even those journalists who might otherwise have closed a blind-eye. On Monday, three major newspapers; Kommersant, Vedomosti and RBK, published a joint editorial titled, "We are Ivan Golunov." They warned that Golunov's case is a problem "for the whole of Russian society." This is now a national story that the powerful cannot easily bury.

So what's really going on here? Well, Transparency International has done some digging and, unsurprisingly, the colonel in charge of the counternarcotics unit which detained Golunov appears to have financial assets that far outmatch his legal salary and family wealth. The nature of those assets suggests he is a good captain for the Moscow chiefs. And in that, he is an emblem for contemporary Russian political corruption.

The man mostly responsible for that corruption is Vladimir Putin. Since taking power in 1999, the former KGB lieutenant colonel has restructured the corruption game. Where 1990s post-Cold War Russian corruption was defined by individual access to particular politicians and competition over illicit enterprises, Russian corruption now starts with Putin and descends downward in an orderly manner. It starts with Putin and his FSB enforcer. But the FSB is just the start. What follows is what we're seeing with Golunov — a system where politicians and industry bosses are the generals, police agencies (like the Moscow department) are the overseeing captains, and criminal bosses are the lieutenants. The politicians are fed at the top, the police agencies skim at the edges and ensure the crime lords remember that the politicians are boss, and the crime lords live comfortably, knowing that unannounced police raids are unlikely.

We'll see what happens with Golunov. His frame-up has been botched so badly that Putin might have to throw the department to the wolves (he hates poor tradecraft) and see Golunov walk. But even if that happens (which is not at all certain), Golunov is actually one of the luckier ones. Others have been gunned down on bridges, flung out of windows, and mysteriously shot in apartment stairwells — the fates of Boris Nemtsov, Maxim Borodin, and Anna Politkovskaya attest to what happens to less fortunate journalists.

It's much safer and more lucrative to be Dmitry Kiselyov. Which is why Golunov matters so much.