The path taken by Catherine Belton’s “Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and then Took on the West” is a well-trodden one. For those who have read Masha Gessen’s “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin,” Ben Judah’s “Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin,” and – most recently – Mikhail Zygar’s “All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin,” the contours of Belton’s tale will be familiar. The unassuming KGB operative in Dresden, “the Family’s” mistaken belief that this former-operative could be controlled, the theories about the horrific 1999 apartment bombing, the Yukos Affair – the well-known vignettes of Putin’s ascent and consolidation of power are all here.
The Moscow Times: Catherine Belton’s ‘Putin’s People’ is essential reading
A general view of the headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia's main security agency, in Moscow on March 23, 2021.
