Inside Putin's Russia

Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for TIME

Members of the dissident punk collective Pussy Riot plan their next performance at a Moscow hideout. Three members were arrested earlier this year.

The Surveillance device was likely planted on the breakfast table, possibly inside a flower arrangement, at Moscow's Holiday Inn Hotel. It was either small enough or so well hidden that Carl Bildt, Sweden's Minister for Foreign Affairs, did not notice it. He simply assumed, as do many diplomats who pass through Russia, that the government was spying on him.

Bildt had traveled to Moscow in May of last year for a conference on human rights, and during a break in his schedule, he had breakfast with Alexei Navalny, the leader of the Russian...

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