2. "Putin's People" - by Catherine Belton

Putin's People - How the KGB Took Back Russia and then Took On the West by Catherine Belton (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; June 2020) 640 pages

A 2020 book that looks at the question of how and why exactly it was Vladimir Putin who became the President of Russia. It takes you from his early life in Dresden, to his deputy mayorship in St Petersburg, and then onto his meteoric rise in the Kremlin to eventually replace the ailing Yeltsin. The claim made by Belton is that throughout these years Putin never gave up his participation in KGB/FSB networks, which included not only Russian operatives, but also a wide network of connections in the West. Belton also discusses how a large number of Western firms were complicit in making Putin who he is today.