For more, see the Web site of the PBS program Frontline . Just outside the Moscow beltway, hundreds of suburban residents have joined together in a bitter struggle with local authorities. The dispute over a badly managed landfill leaking with industrial and domestic waste is now in court. This is just one way that Russia has changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union nearly a decade ago.
Citizens now claim the right to openly challenge their government officials.
Here NPR's Michele Kelemen report for Morning Edition on how Russian citizens are turning to the courts to settle disputes with the government. Judges who once worked for years in the shadow of the Communist Party are often reluctant to buck authority from above. To listen to other stories in this series, Click Here . A reluctant court system is just one of the challenges Putin must now deal with. The nation if also rife with widespread corruption, crime, poor health services and poverty.