The Muckrakers
ON A CHILLY morning in February 2014, a group of journalists stood on a dock inside the abandoned estate of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and saw an astonishing sight. Loose papers and colored file folders were bobbing in the Dnieper River, tossed there by the fleeing president’s minions.
Yanukovych had just decamped for Russia after months of demonstrations in which more than 100 protesters had been killed by government security forces and snipers. Yanukovych left behind a 350-acre, $1 billion compound, which included a zoo, a golf course, a dog breeding center, and a lavishly furnished mansion. But not before attempting to drown the evidence against him.
Anna Babinets, one of the first journalists on the scene, recalls how she and her colleagues found divers who could get there, fast, to fish out the papers sinking into the ice-cold river. Everything happened fast that day, Babinets, editor-in-chief
