All Categories
Product Description A Sunday Times bestseller | A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceNamed a best book of the year by The Economist | Financial Times | New Statesman | The Telegraph"[Putin's People] will surely now become the definitive account of the rise of Putin and Putinism." ―Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic"This riveting, immaculately researched book is arguably the best single volume written about Putin, the people around him and perhaps even about contemporary Russia itself in the past three decades." ―Peter Frankopan, Financial TimesInterference in American elections. The sponsorship of extremist politics in Europe. War in Ukraine. In recent years, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has waged a concerted campaign to expand its influence and undermine Western institutions. But how and why did all this come about, and who has orchestrated it?In Putin’s People, the investigative journalist and former Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and the small group of KGB men surrounding him rose to power and looted their country. Delving deep into the workings of Putin’s Kremlin, Belton accesses key inside players to reveal how Putin replaced the freewheeling tycoons of the Yeltsin era with a new generation of loyal oligarchs, who in turn subverted Russia’s economy and legal system and extended the Kremlin's reach into the United States and Europe. The result is a chilling and revelatory exposé of the KGB’s revanche―a story that begins in the murk of the Soviet collapse, when networks of operatives were able to siphon billions of dollars out of state enterprises and move their spoils into the West. Putin and his allies subsequently completed the agenda, reasserting Russian power while taking control of the economy for themselves, suppressing independent voices, and launching covert influence operations abroad. Ranging from Moscow and London to Switzerland and Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach―and assembling a colorful cast of characters to match―Putin’s People is the definitive account of how hopes for the new Russia went astray, with stark consequences for its inhabitants and, increasingly, the world. Review "[Putin's People] will surely now become the definitive account of the rise of Putin and Putinism . . . [Belton] adds enough new details to establish beyond doubt that the future Russian president was working alongside the people who set up the secret bank accounts and held the meetings with subversives and terrorists. More important, she establishes how, years later, these kinds of projects came to benefit him and shape his worldview.'" ―Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic"The cast of supporting characters in Catherine Belton’s study of the Russia of Vladimir Putin is extraordinary and worthy of a Netflix mini-series . . . This is modern Russia in full, horrifying technicolour. In Putin’s People, Belton, a former FT Moscow correspondent, leaves no stone unturned in her exposition of how the Russian president and his “people” dominate the largest country on Earth and how they have come to do so." ―Peter Frankopan, Financial Times"[An] elegant account of money and power in the Kremlin . . . The dauntless Belton . . . [talked] to figures with disparate interests on all sides, tracking down documents, following the money. The result is a meticulously assembled portrait of Putin’s circle, and of the emergence of what she calls 'K.G.B. capitalism'―a form of ruthless wealth accumulation designed to serve the interests of a Russian state that she calls 'relentless in its reach' . . . Putin's People ends with a chapter on Donald Trump, and what Belton calls the “network of Russian intelligence operatives, tycoons and organized-crime associates” that has encircled him since the early ’90s." ―Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review"In her deeply researched new book, Catherine Belton tells a dark tale of Vladimir Putin’s rise to power and his 20 years as leader of Russia . . . Belton, a former Mo