In early 2018, the French ambassador to Russia, Sylvie Bermann, and members of her team entered the huge modern building that serves as the headquarters of the Investigative Committee, on Tekhnicheskiy Street in eastern Moscow. The French diplomats had come to meet the head of the committee, Alexander Bastrykin, for the first time.
A close associate of Vladimir Putin, whom he met at Saint Petersburg State University (then Leningrad State University) in the 1970s, he has been at the helm of the country's
