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Catherine Belton is the author of Putin's People.

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Name: Putin's People
Rating: 4.3 (410 reviews)
Author: Catherine Belton

Catherine Belton

How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West

4.3 (410 ratings)

37 mins

Brief summary

Putin's People by Catherine Belton is an insightful exploration of Putin's rise to power, detailing how the Russian leader and his circle of close allies amassed wealth and consolidated control over the country's economy and political landscape.

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Democracy Political Figures Russia

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Putin's People
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What’s in it for me? An intricate and comprehensive account of Vladimir Putin and the KGB’s role in modern-day Russia.

Vladimir Putin has often been described as Russia’s “accidental president.” On the surface, this seems like an appropriate term. His rise to power did happen extraordinarily quickly. After his appointment as Russia’s prime minister, many were shocked that a gray-suited nobody like Putin had suddenly found himself with so much power.

But it seems that Putin’s ascension wasn’t really a matter of chance at all. In fact, former KGB agents had been closely observing his career ever since he joined the mayoral administration of Leningrad. They had been testing his loyalties and noting the sort of image he projected in public appearances.

Both before and throughout his time in politics, Putin has hobnobbed with KGB agents, and his presidency has ensured that their power is cemented in Russian politics. In these blinks, you’ll find out exactly how that happened – and how it’s affecting both Russians and Westerners today.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

how apartment bombings helped enable Putin’s presidency;
what happened to a businessman who accused Putin of corruption; and
why Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea Football Club.

Before entering politics, Vladimir Putin was a member of the KGB.

From childhood, Vladimir Putin dreamed of joining the KGB, the Soviet Union’s secret police force. He was eager to follow in his father’s footsteps – so eager, in fact, that he called up the local Leningrad KGB office and asked to join before he’d even graduated school.

Throughout his education, Putin was careful to enroll in exactly the programs and classes which the KGB office directed him toward. He followed their orders with the utmost precision. All the while, he vented his aggression by practicing judo.

As a newly minted member of the KGB, Putin arrived in Dresden, East Germany, in 1985. It was there that he first encountered secret missions, smuggling, and assassinations.

The key message here is: Before entering politics, Vladimir Putin was a member of the KGB.

When Vladimir Putin arrived in Dresden, the city was known as little more than an East German backwater. In total, there were just six KGB officers posted there. Meanwhile, East Germany itself was on the verge of bankruptcy, and the ruling Communist Party was in danger of collapse.

Sensing these issues, the KGB launched a secret mission called Operation Luch. Its goal was to build up a network of agents to join political circles. That way, the KGB’s presence in Germany would survive, even if the country was reunified.

Much of Putin’s role in this operation remains a mystery. But what we do know is that Putin eventually became the main KGB liaison officer with the Stasi, the East German secret police. He even had his own Stasi identification card. That gave him access to Stasi buildings and made it easier for him to recruit agents for Operation Luch.

Terrorism was also a major part of the mission. In particular, the secret police were deeply involved with the Red Army Faction, a Marxist group in West Germany that helped to protect KGB interests. On one occasion, the chairman of the major financial institution Deutsche Bank was driving to work when a grenade in his car was detonated, killing him instantly. It’s possible that the blast was triggered by a Red Army Faction member, and we know that this group learned precise military detonation techniques at training camps connected to the Stasi. With the chairman’s death, Deutsche Bank was weakened, and a Stasi-affiliated bank had an opportunity to gain strength.

These secret operations with the KGB and the Stasi were just the start of Putin’s long rise to power.

In the 1990s, a group of young business tycoons began to gain more power than the KGB.

At the time of the Soviet Union, the ruling Communist Party and the KGB were like peas in a pod. The laundry list of financial crimes they committed together is practically endless.

One of their joint schemes involved the KGB physically smuggling millions of dollars to left-leaning groups abroad. Legally, these funds had to be pulled from donations to the Communist Party. So, the government sent its own money to Communist Party members. Then they transferred it abroad via the KGB.

Thanks to Vladimir Putin, the KGB was heavily involved in St. Petersburg’s economy.

Early in 1990, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, Vladimir Putin was ordered to return to Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known. There, he set his sights on Leningrad’s burgeoning pro-democracy movement. The movement seemed dangerously likely to disrupt the Communist Party’s dominance over the city’s politics.

Soon, Putin became the liaison between the KGB and a man named Anatoly Sobchak. Sobchak was a charismatic law professor who frequently spoke in favor of democracy and against the KGB in public. But in private, he may have had unofficial dealings with the organization. By May of that year, Sobchak was appointed the new city council chairman, with Putin as his right-hand man.

Upon his move to Moscow, Putin quickly climbed the political ladder.

St. Petersburg’s mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, lost his campaign for reelection in the summer of 1996. Vladimir Putin, who was loyal to Sobchak, immediately resigned from the city’s administration.

Less than a month after his resignation, Putin was invited to Moscow. He was asked to take the position of deputy head of the Kremlin administration. He was ultimately blocked from that role. But in its place, he became head of the Kremlin’s foreign property department. The position represented the core of Russia’s imperial wealth. This was a major promotion for Putin.

After taking over the media, Putin began a campaign to seize the oil industry.

At the very beginning of Putin’s reign, few people predicted that the country was heading toward authoritarianism and kleptocracy. But a few people did see the writing on the wall.

One of these prescient few was an oligarch named Boris Berezovsky. Among other businesses, he owned a television channel called ORT. The channel devoted much of its airtime to criticizing Putin. On one occasion, it repeatedly played footage of Putin riding on a jet ski in the aftermath of a Russian submarine’s tragic explosion.

Putin’s takeover of Yukos signaled the KGB’s triumph over the oligarchy.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oligarch who was once the chairman and CEO of the oil company Yukos, is a self-described adrenalinschik – an adrenaline junkie. In his youth, he was fond of rock-climbing without any equipment. Later, in prison, he slept soundly even when threatened by knife attacks.

So when Vladimir Putin sought to take control of Yukos, Khodorkovsky refused to bend to the president’s will. He hired Western executives and drilling equipment manufacturers to entrench the company in Western markets. He created Open Russia, a philanthropic organization that taught Russian teenagers the principles of democracy. He even gave a presentation accusing the Russian government of corruption – at a meeting where Vladimir Putin himself was present.

Putin exploited terrorism to bolster his image.

It was Wednesday, October 23, 2003, at Moscow’s Dubrovka musical theater, a few miles south of the Kremlin. Nine hundred audience members packed the seats as tap dancers leaped across the stage.

As the second act of the musical opened, the unthinkable happened: 40 armed Chechen fighters stormed into the theater, firing warning shots from assault rifles into the air. They began to wire the building with explosives and sealed off the auditorium. Women wearing black hijabs and explosive belts positioned themselves amongst the rows.

The Kremlin created a slush fund with which to enrich itself and fund operations abroad.

In 2004, just at the time Yukos was being broken up and its assets vacuumed up by the Kremlin, a few other transactions on Moscow’s stock exchange brought further power to Putin.

Shares in an insurance company called Sogaz – which belonged to the state-controlled Gazprom – were sold at a discounted price to three obscure companies. All three turned out to be connected to Bank Rossiya, a St. Petersburg bank that was the stronghold of Yury Kovalchuk, an old Putin ally.

Russia began to infiltrate London with a series of financial schemes.

Thanks to rising oil prices, Russia’s fortunes were growing throughout the early 2000s. A burgeoning middle class could now shop at Western-style malls cropping up in city centers. Even in remote Siberia, restaurants were serving lamb from New Zealand and wine from France.

These days of plenty also allowed Russian companies to slowly begin listing their shares on Western stock exchanges – especially in London. In 2005 alone, they gained more than $4 billion in share sales in the British capital. Comparatively, in the 13 years after the Soviet collapse, Russian company shares had only netted $1.4 billion in all markets combined.

Russia used Ukraine to wage a proxy war against the West.

After Putin’s second term ended in 2008, Dmitry Medvedev assumed the Russian presidency. Many in the West hoped he would move his country’s economy back to a freer market system. His willingness to cooperate with Western leaders seemed like a sign that liberalism was back on the rise in Russia.

Unfortunately, many of Russia’s actions early in Medvedev’s presidency undermined this hope. In August 2008, Russia escalated military action in the Western-leaning former Soviet republic of Georgia. This ended any hope the country had of joining NATO. And Medvedev extended the term of his successor to six years instead of four. This was a clear signal that Putin was waiting in the wings to return as Russia’s president. And this time, Putin was ready to extend his political reach even further.

After annexing Crimea, Putin continued to funnel cash and culture into the West.

Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, Putin and his men were funneling black cash into the West through a series of complex money-laundering schemes.

Some of these schemes involved offshore companies that received payments funneled in from tycoons close to Putin. Others involved shell companies signing fake loan agreements between themselves – agreements that were then used to siphon money out of Russia. Then there were mirror trades. These allowed investors to buy Russian stocks in Russian rubles while seemingly unconnected companies sold the same amount of stock through Deutsche Bank in London.

Russia found an ally in US President Donald Trump.

Long before Donald Trump ever announced his intentions to run for president, he had dealings with Russians.

It all started with a man named Shalva Tchigirinsky, an antiques smuggler who was rumored to have ties to the infamous Solntsevskaya organized crime group. He first met Trump at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He was impressed by the casino’s glitz and glam.

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What is Putin's People about?

Putin’s People (2020) is a shocking account of the corruption and political schemes that swirl around Russia’s infamous president, Vladimir Putin, and his close inner circle. The KGB is well-known as the former Soviet Union’s secret police force – but that was far from its only role in the Soviet government and economy. This is the story of how the KGB lost its power, gained it back, and has been exploiting it ever since.

Putin's People Review

Putin's People (2020) is an eye-opening account of the rise of Vladimir Putin and his inner circle. Here's why this book is worth reading:

It provides insightful and revealing details about the individuals who wield power in Russia and their influence on global affairs.
The book uncovers hidden connections and corruption, exposing the web of wealth and power that surrounds Putin's regime.
Drawing from extensive research and interviews, it presents a comprehensive and compelling narrative that sheds light on the complex dynamics of the Putin era.

Best quote from Putin's People

[Religion] was conveniently designed to make serfs out of Russians again… so that Putin the tsar could rule with absolute power.

—Catherine Belton

Who should read Putin's People?

Fans of political intrigue and international relations
Students of Russian history and culture
Anyone curious about the inner workings of Vladimir Putin’s regime

About the Author

Catherine Belton is an investigative journalist who currently works as a special correspondent for Reuters. Formerly, she served the Financial Times as its Moscow correspondent and then its legal correspondent. She was shortlisted for Business Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2008.

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