best biography of putin

New Times, New Thinking.

The 14 best books to help you understand Vladimir Putin’s Russia

This list offers the most incisive books on the past and present of Russia and its president.

By New Statesman

Putin’s Russia: The Definitive Account of Putin’s Rise to Power by Anna Politkovskaya

Harvill Press, 320pp, £10.99

The journalist Politkovskya told us exactly who Vladimir Putin was back in 2004, two years before she was assassinated in Moscow. It is both sobering and instructive to read her account of the horrors of the Second Chechen War between 1999 and 2009, carried out on Putin’s orders, given the subsequent invasion of Ukraine. A prophetic account of what was to come.

The Return of the Russian Leviathan by Sergei Medvedev

Polity, 140pp, £17.99

A professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Medvedev produces a brilliant collection of essays on the ideas, politics and history that are shaping contemporary Russian society under Putin, and how the Kremlin appeals to nostalgia and nationalism to stoke regime support.

Putin v. the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia by Samuel A Greene and Graeme B Robertson

Yale, 296pp, £20.00

Drawing on extensive on-the-ground research, including focus groups and opinion surveys, Greene and Robertson examine the roots of Putin’s popularity and his support across different sections of Russian society. The current situation has revealed the importance of understanding who supports Putin and why.

Citizens and the State in Authoritarian Regimes: Comparing China and Russia , edited by Karrie Koesel, Valerie Bunce, Jessica Chen Weiss

Oxford University Press, 344pp, £23.49

Among this collection of articles, Aleksandar Matovski’s chapter on the logic of Putin’s popular appeal and his efforts to position himself as defending Russia against its external enemies and “making Russia great again”, is particularly pertinent. Other scholars examine the role of patriotic education and propaganda in authoritarian systems. This would be a good book to pair with Timur Kuran’s Private Truths, Public Lies (1995) on why and how public opinion still matters under authoritarian rule.

The Invention of Russia: The Journey from Gorbachev’s Freedom to Putin’s War by Arkady Ostrovsky

Atlantic Books, 400pp, £9.99

This terrific, short history relays the experience of economic chaos and humiliating decline that accompanied the Soviet Union’s collapse for its citizens. It also describes how Putin and his inner circle took power and seized control of the media to shape the president’s popular image during his first decade in power.

Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia by Peter Pomerantsev

Faber & Faber, 304pp, £9.99

This remains one of the best (and most beautifully written) books on Putin and modern Russia in recent years. Pomerantsev’s work captures both the dizzying pace of change in Russia during the economic boom of Putin’s first two terms, and the endemic corruption and compromise that came with it. Though only seven years old, Pomerantsev’s Russia of excitement and possibility already feels like a different world from the repression and censorship that has since risen to the fore. It ably gives a sense of what has and is being lost.

Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition and Compromise in Putin’s Russia by Joshua Yaffa

Granta Books, 368pp, £12.99

A fascinating character study of life in contemporary Russia under Putin, this work uncovers the trade-offs and compromises that individuals make under authoritarian rule. It is worth reading alone for the story of the zookeeper from Crimea during Russia’s annexation of the peninsula by Russia in 2014.

Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West by Catherine Belton

William Collins, 640pp, £8.49

An exhaustive account of Putin’s rise, from Dresden in the 1980s to the Kremlin. Belton explores his links with oligarchs, and the way those relationships have evolved over the years – to the point where Putin now uses oligarchs as messengers in return for allowing them to amass huge fortunes. Anyone who steps out of line pays the price. Belton is devastating on the extent of Kremlin-driven corruption and the salting away of illicit wealth overseas.

The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen

Granta Books, 528pp, £10.99

Gessen uses the life stories of four young Russians born in the 1980s to frame how Russia first opened up politically, then closed itself off again, with decreasing space for dissent. A vivid and deeply personal work of analysis.

The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America by Timothy Snyder

Bodley Head, 368pp, £10.99

A historian at Yale, Snyder dissects Putin’s thinking and the philosophers that inspired him. The book is especially good on the first Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and excoriates the West’s complacency and failure to understand the political and geopolitical forces at work.

Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy by Serhii Plokhy

Allen Lane, 432pp, £9.99

Plokhy analyses the ossification of policy and command structures in Soviet Ukraine that allowed the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster to happen. This is a story of how design flaws were compounded by human frailty.

All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin by Mikhail Zygar

PublicAffairs, 400pp, £14.99

Anyone interested in Kremlinology or in separating speculation from reality about the inner workings of the Kremlin and of Putin’s own circle should read this book.

The Long Hangover: Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past by Shaun Walker

Oxford University Press, 288pp, £14.99

Putin’s call for “denazification” and attempted erasure of Ukrainian history makes this an ideal time to revisit Walker’s work on how historical narratives in Russia and Ukraine are used – and abused – in national politics.

Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich

Fitzcarraldo Editions, 704pp, £14.99

Alexievich’s brilliant oral history of the collapse of the Soviet Union reminds us that the best way to understand what is happening to a people is to ask them.

Disclosure: If you buy books linked to our site, we may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops.

[See also: Books of the year 2022 ]

The Saturday Read

Morning call, content from our partners.

Data defines a new era for fundraising

A prescription for success: improving the UK’s access to new medicines

A luxury cruise is an elegant way to make memories that will last a lifetime

Why the Canary Islands revolted against British tourists

My addiction to vertical video

Steven Bartlett’s empire of bluff

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin served as president of Russia from 2000 to 2008 and was re-elected to the presidency in 2012, where he has stayed ever since. He previously served as Russia's prime minister.

1952-present

Latest News: Vladimir Putin Announces 2024 Russian Presidential Run

According to the Associated Press , the 71-year-old Putin, who was first elected president in March 2000, has twice amended the Russian constitution so that he could theoretically remain in power until 2036. He is already the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Joseph Stalin .

Quick Facts

Early life and political career, president of russia: first and second terms, third term as president, chemical weapons in syria, 2014 winter olympics, invasion into crimea, syrian airstrikes, u.s. election hacks, fourth presidential term, invasion of ukraine, seeking fifth presidential term, personal life, who is vladimir putin.

In 1999, Russian president Boris Yeltsin dismissed his prime minister and promoted former KGB officer Vladimir Putin in his place. In December 1999, Yeltsin resigned, appointing Putin president, and he was re-elected in 2004. In April 2005, he made a historic visit to Israel—the first visit there by any Kremlin leader. Putin could not run for the presidency again in 2008, but was appointed prime minister by his successor, Dmitry Medvedev. Putin was re-elected to the presidency in March 2012 and later won a fourth term. In 2014, he was reportedly nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

FULL NAME: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin BORN: October 7, 1952 BIRTHPLACE: Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Russia SPOUSE: Lyudmila Shkrebneva (1983-2014) CHILDREN: Maria, Yekaterina ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Libra

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia, on October 7, 1952. He grew up with his family in a communal apartment, attending the local grammar and high schools, where he developed an interest in sports. After graduating from Leningrad State University with a law degree in 1975, Putin began his career in the KGB as an intelligence officer. Stationed mainly in East Germany, he held that position until 1990, retiring with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Upon returning to Russia, Putin held an administrative position at the University of Leningrad, and after the fall of communism in 1991, he became an adviser to liberal politician Anatoly Sobchak. When Sobchak was elected mayor of Leningrad later that year, Putin became his head of external relations, and by 1994, Putin had become Sobchak’s first deputy mayor.

After Sobchak’s defeat in 1996, Putin resigned his post and moved to Moscow. There, in 1998, Putin was appointed deputy head of management under Boris Yeltsin’s presidential administration. In that position, he was in charge of the Kremlin's relations with the regional governments.

Shortly afterward, Putin was appointed head of the Federal Security Service, an arm of the former KGB, as well as head of Yeltsin’s Security Council. In August 1999, Yeltsin dismissed his prime minister, Sergey Stapashin, along with his cabinet, and promoted Putin in his place.

In December 1999, Boris Yeltsin resigned as president of Russia and appointed Putin acting president until official elections were held, and in March 2000, Putin was elected to his first term with 53 percent of the vote. Promising both political and economic reforms, Putin set about restructuring the government and launching criminal investigations into the business dealings of high-profile Russian citizens. He also continued Russia's military campaign in Chechnya.

In September 2001, in response to the terrorist attacks on the United States, Putin announced Russia’s support for the U.S. in its anti-terror campaign. However, when the U.S.’s “war on terror” shifted focus to the ousting of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein , Putin joined German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French President Jacques Chirac in opposition of the plan.

In 2004, Putin was re-elected to the presidency, and in April of the following year made a historic visit to Israel for talks with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon—marking the first visit to Israel by any Kremlin leader.

Due to constitutional term limits, Putin was prevented from running for the presidency in 2008. (That same year, presidential terms in Russia were extended from four to six years.) However, when his protégé Dmitry Medvedev succeeded him as president in March 2008, he immediately appointed Putin as Russia’s prime minister, allowing Putin to maintain a primary position of influence for the next four years.

On March 4, 2012, Vladimir Putin was re-elected to his third term as president. After widespread protests and allegations of electoral fraud, he was inaugurated on May 7, 2012, and shortly after taking office appointed Medvedev as prime minister. Once more at the helm, Putin has continued to make controversial changes to Russia’s domestic affairs and foreign policy.

In December 2012, Putin signed into a law a ban on the U.S. adoption of Russian children. According to Putin, the legislation—which took effect on January 1, 2013—aimed to make it easier for Russians to adopt native orphans. However, the adoption ban spurred international controversy, reportedly leaving nearly 50 Russian children—who were in the final phases of adoption with U.S. citizens at the time that Putin signed the law—in legal limbo.

Putin further strained relations with the United States the following year when he granted asylum to Edward Snowden , who is wanted by the United States for leaking classified information from the National Security Agency. In response to Putin's actions, U.S. President Barack Obama canceled a planned meeting with Putin that August.

Around this time, Putin also upset many people with his new anti-gay laws. He made it illegal for gay couples to adopt in Russia and placed a ban on propagandizing “nontraditional” sexual relationships to minors. The legislation led to widespread international protest.

In September 2013, tensions rose between the United States and Syria over Syria’s possession of chemical weapons, with the U.S. threatening military action if the weapons were not relinquished. The immediate crisis was averted, however, when the Russian and U.S. governments brokered a deal whereby those weapons would be destroyed.

On September 11, 2013, The New York Times published an op-ed piece by Putin titled “A Plea for Caution From Russia.” In the article, Putin spoke directly to the U.S.’s position in taking action against Syria, stating that such a unilateral move could result in the escalation of violence and unrest in the Middle East.

Putin further asserted that the U.S. claim that Bashar al-Assad used the chemical weapons on civilians might be misplaced, with the more likely explanation being the unauthorized use of the weapons by Syrian rebels. He closed the piece by welcoming the continuation of an open dialogue between the involved nations to avoid further conflict in the region.

In 2014, Russia hosted the Winter Olympics, which were held in Sochi beginning on February 6. According to NBS Sports, Russia spent roughly $50 billion in preparation for the international event.

However, in response to what many perceived as Russia’s recently passed anti-gay legislation, the threat of international boycotts arose. In October 2013, Putin tried to allay some of these concerns, saying in an interview broadcast on Russian television that, “We will do everything to make sure that athletes, fans and guests feel comfortable at the Olympic Games regardless of their ethnicity, race or sexual orientation.”

In terms of security for the event, Putin implemented new measures aimed at cracking down on Muslim extremists, and in November 2013 reports surfaced that saliva samples had been collected from some Muslim women in the North Caucasus region. The samples were ostensibly to be used to gather DNA profiles, in an effort to combat female suicide bombers known as “black widows.”

Shortly after the conclusion of the 2014 Winter Olympics, amidst widespread political unrest in Ukraine, which resulted in the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych, Putin sent Russian troops into Crimea, a peninsula in the country’s northeast coast of the Black Sea. The peninsula had been part of Russia until Nikita Khrushchev, former Premier of the Soviet Union, gave it to Ukraine in 1954.

Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, Yuriy Sergeyev, claimed that approximately 16,000 troops invaded the territory, and Russia’s actions caught the attention of several European countries and the United States, who refused to accept the legitimacy of a referendum in which the majority of the Crimean population voted to secede from Ukraine and reunite with Russia.

Putin defended his actions, insisting that the troops sent into Ukraine were only meant to enhance Russia’s military defenses within the country—referring to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which has its headquarters in Crimea. He also vehemently denied accusations by other nations, particularly the United States, that Russia intended to engage Ukraine in war.

He went on to claim that although he was granted permission from Russia's upper house of Parliament to use force in Ukraine, he found it unnecessary. Putin also wrote off any speculation that there would be a further incursion into Ukrainian territory, saying, “Such a measure would certainly be the very last resort.”

The following day, it was announced that Putin had been nominated for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize.

In September 2015, Russia surprised the world by announcing it would begin strategic airstrikes in Syria. Despite government officials’ assertions that the military actions were intended to target the extremist Islamic State, which made significant advances in the region due to the power vacuum created by Syria's ongoing civil war, Russia's true motives were called into question, with many international analysts and government officials claiming that the airstrikes were in fact aimed at the rebel forces attempting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad's historically repressive regime.

In late October 2017, Putin was personally involved in another alarming form of aerial warfare when he oversaw a late-night military drill that resulted in the launch of four ballistic missiles across the country. The drill came during a period of escalating tensions in the region, with Russian neighbor North Korea also drawing attention for its missile tests and threats to engage the U.S. in destructive conflict.

In December 2017, Putin announced he was ordering Russian forces to begin withdrawing from Syria, saying the country’s two-year campaign to destroy ISIS was complete, though he left open the possibility of returning if terrorist violence resumed in the area. Despite the declaration, Pentagon spokesman Robert Manning was hesitant to endorse that view of events, saying, “Russian comments about removal of their forces do not often correspond with actual troop reductions.”

Months prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, multiple U.S. intelligence agencies unilaterally agreed that Russian intelligence was behind the email hacks of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and John Podesta, who had, at the time, been chairman of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

In December 2016 unnamed senior CIA officials further concluded “with a high level of confidence” that Putin was personally involved in intervening in the U.S. presidential election, according to a report by USA Today . The officials further went on to assert that the hacked DNC and Podesta emails that were given to WikiLeaks just before U.S. Election Day were designed to undermine Clinton’s campaign in favor of her Republican opponent, Donald Trump . Soon after, the FBI and National Intelligence Agency publicly supported the CIA’s assessments.

Putin denied any such attempts to disrupt the U.S. election, and despite the assessments of his intelligence agencies, President Trump generally seemed to favor the word of his Russian counterpart. Underscoring their attempts to thaw public relations, the Kremlin in late 2017 revealed that a terror attack had been thwarted in St. Petersburg, thanks to intelligence provided by the CIA.

Around that time, Putin reported at his annual end-of-year press conference that he would seek a new six-year term as president in early 2018 as an independent candidate, signaling he was ending his longtime association with the United Russia party.

Shortly before the first formal summit between Presidents Putin and Trump in July 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the indictments of 12 Russian operatives on charges relating to interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Regardless, Trump suggested he was satisfied with his counterpart’s “strong and powerful" denial in a joint news conference and praised Putin’s offer to submit the 12 indicted agents to questioning with American witnesses present.

In a subsequent interview with Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, Putin seemingly defended the hacking of the DNC server by suggesting that no false information was planted in the process. He also rejected the idea that he had compromising information about Trump, saying that the businessman “was of no interest for us” before announcing his presidential campaign, and notably refused to touch a copy of the indictments offered to him by Wallace.

In March 2018, toward the end of his third term, Putin boasted of new weaponry that would render NATO defenses “completely worthless,” including a low-flying nuclear-capable cruise missile with “unlimited” range and another one capable of traveling at hypersonic speed. His demonstration included video animation of attacks on the United States.

Not long afterward, a two-hour documentary, titled Putin , was posted to several social media pages and a pro-Kremlin YouTube account. Designed to showcase the president in a strong yet humane light, the doc featured Putin sharing the story of how he ordered a hijacked plane shot down to head off a bomb scare at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, as well as recollections of his grandfather's days as a cook for Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin .

On March 18, 2018, the fourth anniversary of the country’s seizure of Crimea, Russian citizens overwhelmingly elected Putin to a fourth presidential term, with 67 percent of the electorate turning out to award him more than 76 percent of the vote. The divided opposition stood little chance against the popular leader, his closest competitor notching around 13 percent of the vote.

Little was expected to change regarding Putin’s strategies for rebuilding the country as a global power, though the start of his final term set off questions about his successor, and whether he would affect constitutional change in an attempt to remain in office indefinitely.

On July 16, 2018, Putin met with President Trump in Helsinki, Finland, for the first formal talks between the two leaders. According to Russia, topics of the meeting included the ongoing war in Syria and “the removal of the concerns” about accusations of Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The following April, Putin met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un for the first time. The two leaders discussed the issue of the North Korean laborers in Russia, while Putin also offered support of his counterpart’s denuclearization negotiations with the U.S., saying Kim would need “security guarantees” in exchange for abandoning his nuclear program.

The topic of whether Putin aimed to extend his hold on power resurfaced following his state-of-the-nation speech in January 2020, which included proposals for constitutional amendments that included transferring the power to select the prime minister and cabinet from the president to the Parliament. The entire cabinet, including Medvedev, promptly resigned, leading to the selection of Mikhail V. Mishustin as the new prime minister.

Despite Putin’s earlier remarks of further incursion into Ukraine being a last resort, in the spring of 2021, Russian military forces began forming near the borders of the neighboring country for what the Kremlin claimed were training exercises. According to Reuters , more than 100,000 troops had deployed by November.

On December 17, Russia released a list of security demands that included NATO pulling back forces and weaponry from its eastern flank and ceasing further expansion, including the possible addition of Ukraine into the alliance. If the demands were not met, a “military response” was promised.

Then on February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine with missile and rocket strikes on Ukrainian cities and military installations. In a televised address, Putin—claiming that Russian speakers in Ukraine faced genocide—referred to the invasion as a “special military operation,” designed to “achieve the demilitarization and denazification" of the country. In the early hours, Russian forces took Chernobyl, site of the infamous 1986 nuclear disaster, but were held back from the capital city of Kyiv.

As the conflict dragged on with Western allies supporting Ukraine, Putin announced the “special mobilization” of more than 100,000 reserve troops in September 2022.

Ukrainian troops launched a counteroffensive in June 2023 and, as of December, the conflict is still ongoing. The U.S. estimated that August that around 500,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers had been wounded or killed.

In December 2023, Putin announced that he would seek a fifth term as president of Russia in the country's upcoming elections in March 2024. With a victory, he would be able to remain in power until at least 2030 and potentially run for another subsequent six-year term.

Putin is not expected to face any serious challengers and remains popular domestically. According to CNBC , a survey by Russian news agency Tass found that more than 78 percent of Russians trust Putin, and more than 75 percent approve of his activities.

In 1980, Putin met his future wife, Lyudmila, who was working as a flight attendant at the time. The couple married in 1983 and had two daughters: Maria, born in 1985, and Yekaterina, born in 1986. In early June 2013, after nearly 30 years of marriage, Russia’s first couple announced that they were getting a divorce, providing little explanation for the decision, but assuring that they came to it mutually and amicably.

“There are people who just cannot put up with it,” Putin stated. “Lyudmila Alexandrovna has stood watch for eight, almost nine years.” Providing more context to the decision, Lyudmila added, “Our marriage is over because we hardly ever see each other. Vladimir Vladimirovich is immersed in his work, our children have grown and are living their own lives.”

An Orthodox Christian, Putin is said to attend church services on important dates and holidays on a regular basis and has had a long history of encouraging the construction and restoration of thousands of churches in the region. He generally aims to unify all faiths under the government’s authority and legally requires religious organizations to register with local officials for approval.

• The path towards a free society has not been simple. There are tragic and glorious pages in our history.

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us

Tyler Piccotti first joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor in February 2023, and before that worked almost eight years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor. He is a graduate of Syracuse University. When he's not writing and researching his next story, you can find him at the nearest amusement park, catching the latest movie, or cheering on his favorite sports teams.

Watch Next .css-16toot1:after{background-color:#262626;color:#fff;margin-left:1.8rem;margin-top:1.25rem;width:1.5rem;height:0.063rem;content:'';display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;}

Famous Political Figures

Julius Caesar

Kamala Harris

Get to Know Kamala Harris' 2 Stepchildren

What Is Vice President Kamala Harris’ Religion?

Teddy Roosevelt’s Stolen Watch Recovered by FBI

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The Founding Fathers: What Were They Really Like?

Thomas Jefferson

Barney Frank

Harvey Milk

Select your cookie preferences

We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie notice . We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements.

If you agree, we'll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie notice . Your choice applies to using first-party and third-party advertising cookies on this service. Cookies store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. The 96 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Click "Decline" to reject, or "Customise" to make more detailed advertising choices, or learn more. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences , as described in the Cookie notice. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy notice .

• Countries & Regions

Sorry, there was a problem.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer – no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Putin: The explosive and extraordinary new biography of Russia’s leader Hardcover – 30 Jun. 2022

**A DAILY TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022** 'Anyone wanting to learn more about Putin's personality, ideas, power...should read this outstanding biography' Ian Kershaw, author of Personality and Power This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what is happening in Ukraine today. Vladimir Putin has the power to reduce the United States and Europe to ashes in a nuclear firestorm. He invades his neighbours, most recently Ukraine, meddles in western elections and orders assassinations inside and outside Russia. Yet many Russians continue to support him. Despite western sanctions, the majority have been living better than at any time in the past. By fair means or foul, under Putin's leadership, Russia has once again become a force to be reckoned with. Philip Short's magisterial biography demolishes many of our preconceptions about Putin's Russia and explores in unprecedented depth the personality of its enigmatic and ruthless leader. What forces and experiences shaped him? What led him to challenge the American-led world order that has kept the peace since the end of the Cold War? To explain is not to justify. Putin pursues his goals relentlessly by whatever means he thinks fit. But on closer examination, much of what we think we know about him turns out to rest on half-truths.

• Print length 864 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Bodley Head
• Publication date 30 Jun. 2022
• Dimensions 16.4 x 5.8 x 23.6 cm
• ISBN-10 1847923372
• ISBN-13 978-1847923370
• See all details

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

PRODUCT CERTIFICATION (1)

Reducing CO2 products reduce their carbon footprint year after year. Certified by the Carbon Trust.

From the brand

Vintage Red Spines

Visit the store

Quarterbound Classics

Murakami Hardbacks

Vintage Minis

Vintage TikTok

Product description, about the author.

Philip Short has written authoritative biographies including Mao: A Life and Pol Pot: History of a Nightmare, following a long career as a foreign correspondent for the BBC in Moscow, Washington and other world capitals. He spent eight years researching and writing this book, working mainly from sources within Russia, but also in Britain, France, the United States and a dozen other countries.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bodley Head (30 Jun. 2022)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 864 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1847923372
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1847923370
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.4 x 5.8 x 23.6 cm
• 151 in Cold War History
• 300 in Russian Historical Biographies

About the author

Philip short.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 62% 25% 8% 1% 3% 62%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 62% 25% 8% 1% 3% 25%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 62% 25% 8% 1% 3% 8%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 62% 25% 8% 1% 3% 1%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 62% 25% 8% 1% 3% 3%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings, help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyses reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Customers say

Customers find the book well researched and highly readable. They also say it's very much worth a read as a corrective to some of the other books on the subject.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book's content deeply researched, highly readable, and extensive. They also say it's a real eye opener.

"...reservations notwithstanding, this is a very good book that presents a deeply researched and highly readable account of the life of one of the..." Read more

" Good account of Putin as he grew up and climbed the slippery pole of Post Soviet political life...." Read more

"Ok this book is a real eye opener . We all have opinions on Putin and i have been saying for a long time NOT to keep poking the bear...." Read more

"...Generally, it is quite balanced with meticulous research and extensive notes however, it sometimes strays into unsubstantiated opinion, but not that..." Read more

Customers find the book very much worth a read and highly readable account of the life of one of the pivotal figures.

"...These reservations notwithstanding, this is a very good book that presents a deeply researched and highly readable account of the life of one of the..." Read more

"...It is definitely worth a read if only to get some understanding of the reasons for Putin's behaviour..." Read more

"...That said, until then the book was very enjoyable ." Read more

"I’ve read the book and it’s really good but the book itself has started to lose leaf’s out of in in just one read, pages coming away from the spine..." Read more

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from United Kingdom

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• UK Modern Slavery Statement
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell on Amazon Business
• Sell on Amazon Handmade
• Associates Programme
• Fulfilment by Amazon
• Seller Fulfilled Prime
• Advertise Your Products
• Independently Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Make Money with Us
• The Amazon Barclaycard
• Credit Card
• Amazon Money Store
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Payment Methods Help
• Shop with Points
• Top Up Your Account
• Top Up Your Account in Store
• COVID-19 and Amazon
• Track Packages or View Orders
• Delivery Rates & Policies
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Amazon Mobile App
• Customer Service
• Accessibility

• Conditions of Use & Sale
• Privacy Notice
• Cookies Notice
• Interest-Based Ads Notice

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center
• Introduction & Top Questions

Early career

First and second terms as president of russia, putin as prime minister.

• The Ukraine conflict and Syrian intervention
• Silencing critics and actions in the West
• Salisbury Novichok attack and relationship with Trump
• Constitutional change and the poisoning of Navalny
• The Russian invasion of Ukraine and Prigozhin’s mutiny

Why is Vladimir Putin still in power?

How has vladimir putin changed russia, what’s the background to vladimir putin’s attack on ukraine in 2022.

• How did the Syrian Civil War begin?
• What is the Syrian Civil War?

Vladimir Putin

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• The Brookings Institution - Who Is Mr. Putin?
• Official Site of Vladimir Putin
• NPR News - A Special Report - Vladimir Putin: A Biographical Timeline
• Vladimir Putin - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• Vladimir Putin - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

Who is Vladimir Putin?

Vladimir Putin is a former Russian intelligence officer and a politician who has served as president of Russia from 1999 to 2008 and from 2012 to the present. He was also the country’s prime minister in 1999 and from 2008 to 2012.

Was Vladimir Putin in the KGB?

Vladimir Putin served for 15 years as a foreign intelligence officer in the KGB , the foreign intelligence and domestic security agency of the Soviet Union. In 1990 he retired from active KGB service with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

When Vladimir Putin was named president in 1999, Russia ’s constitution limited the president to two consecutive terms. That’s why, after his second term ended in 2008, he served as prime minister before becoming president again in 2012. However, in January 2020 Putin drafted a constitutional amendment that would allow him to remain president for two more terms. It was included in a package of amendments that was approved by the Russian legislature and, in July 2020, by Russian voters in a national referendum.

In the two decades of Vladimir Putin’s reign, he has consolidated his rule and projected to the Russian people an image of Russia as a global power. He turned Russia from a nascent democratic state into an autocratic one, expanded Russia’s influence in the Middle East , strengthened Russian relations with China , and displayed a willingness to use force to achieve his goals, as in his annexation of Crimea in 2014 and his large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

In the decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine moved toward closer integration with Europe. When pro-Russian Ukrainian Pres. Viktor Yanukovych tried to reverse that trend in 2014, protests swept him from power . Having lost an ally, Vladimir Putin invaded and annexed the Ukrainian autonomous republic of Crimea . He also provoked separatist uprisings in Donetsk and Luhansk, two regions in eastern Ukraine; fighting between pro-Russian militias and the Ukrainian government continued there for years. Running on a populist reform platform, Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine in 2019 with more than 70 percent of the vote. In 2021 Putin ordered a buildup of troops along Russia’s border with Ukraine, and in February 2022, after he announced the beginning of a “special military operation,” Russian forces invaded Ukraine .

Recent News

Vladimir Putin (born October 7, 1952, Leningrad , Russia, U.S.S.R. [now St. Petersburg, Russia]) is a Russian intelligence officer and politician who has served as president (1999–2008 and 2012– ) of Russia and as the country’s prime minister (1999 and 2008–12). One of the 21st century’s most influential leaders, Putin has shaped his country’s political landscape for decades with a mix of strategic maneuvers, military aggression against Russia’s neighbors, and controversial policies.

Putin reintroduced highly centralized, top-down control within Russia. He tightened the Kremlin ’s grip on mass media and the Internet, and he renationalized key industries; by some estimates, the state came to control as much as 70 percent of the Russian economy. He made it clear to Russia’s oligarchs that their positions were conditional on their personal loyalty to him and their abstention from politics. Putin also tried to assert dominance in the “near abroad”—a Russian term for the former Soviet states on Russia’s borders. Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and launched a proxy war in Ukraine in 2014, prior to a full-scale invasion in 2022.

Putin studied law at Leningrad State University , where his tutor was Anatoly Sobchak, later one of the leading reform politicians of the perestroika period. Putin served 15 years as a foreign intelligence officer for the KGB (Committee for State Security), including six years in Dresden , East Germany . In 1990 he retired from active KGB service with the rank of lieutenant colonel and returned to Russia to become prorector of Leningrad State University with responsibility for the institution’s external relations. Soon afterward Putin became an adviser to Sobchak, the first democratically elected mayor of St. Petersburg . He quickly won Sobchak’s confidence and became known for his ability to get things done; by 1994 he had risen to the post of first deputy mayor.

In 1996 Putin moved to Moscow , where he joined the presidential staff as deputy to Pavel Borodin, the Kremlin’s chief administrator. Putin grew close to fellow Leningrader Anatoly Chubais and moved up in administrative positions. In July 1998 Pres. Boris Yeltsin made Putin director of the Federal Security Service (FSB; the KGB’s domestic successor), and shortly thereafter Putin became secretary of the influential Security Council. Yeltsin, who was searching for an heir to assume his mantle, appointed Putin prime minister in 1999.

Although he was virtually unknown, Putin’s public-approval ratings soared when he launched a well-organized military operation against secessionist rebels in Chechnya . Wearied by years of Yeltsin’s erratic behavior, the Russian public appreciated Putin’s coolness and decisiveness under pressure. Putin’s support for a new electoral bloc, Unity, ensured its success in the December parliamentary elections.

On December 31, 1999, Yeltsin unexpectedly announced his resignation and named Putin acting president. Promising to rebuild a weakened Russia , the austere and reserved Putin easily won the March 2000 elections with about 53 percent of the vote. As president, he sought to end corruption and create a strongly regulated market economy.

Putin quickly reasserted control over Russia’s 89 regions and republics , dividing them into seven new federal districts, each headed by a representative appointed by the president. He also removed the right of regional governors to sit in the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament. Putin moved to reduce the power of Russia’s unpopular financiers and media tycoons—the so-called “ oligarchs ”—by closing several media outlets and launching criminal proceedings against numerous leading figures. He faced a difficult situation in Chechnya , particularly from rebels who staged terrorist attacks in Moscow and guerrilla attacks on Russian troops from the region’s mountains; in 2002 Putin declared the military campaign over, but casualties remained high.

Putin strongly objected to U.S. Pres. George W. Bush ’s decision in 2001 to abandon the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty . In response to the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, he pledged Russia’s assistance and cooperation in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorists and their allies, offering the use of Russia’s airspace for humanitarian deliveries and help in search-and-rescue operations. Nevertheless, Putin joined German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French Pres. Jacques Chirac in 2002–03 to oppose U.S. and British plans to use force to oust Saddam Hussein ’s government in Iraq .

Overseeing an economy that enjoyed growth after a prolonged recession in the 1990s, Putin was easily reelected in March 2004. In parliamentary elections in December 2007, Putin’s party, United Russia , won an overwhelming majority of seats. Though the fairness of the elections was questioned by international observers and by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation , the results nonetheless affirmed Putin’s power. With a constitutional provision forcing Putin to step down in 2008, he chose Dmitry Medvedev as his successor.

Soon after Medvedev won the March 2008 presidential election by a landslide, Putin announced that he had accepted the position of chairman of the United Russia party. Confirming widespread expectations, Medvedev nominated Putin as the country’s prime minister within hours of taking office on May 7, 2008. Russia’s parliament confirmed the appointment the following day. Although Medvedev grew more assertive as his term progressed, Putin was still regarded as the main power within the Kremlin .

While some speculated that Medvedev might run for a second term, he announced in September 2011 that he and Putin would—pending a United Russia victory at the polls—trade positions. Widespread irregularities in parliamentary elections in December 2011 triggered a wave of popular protest, and Putin faced a surprisingly strong opposition movement in the presidential race. On March 4, 2012, however, Putin was elected to a third term as Russia’s president . In advance of his inauguration, Putin resigned as United Russia chairman, handing control of the party to Medvedev. He was inaugurated as president on May 7, 2012, and one of his first acts upon assuming office was to nominate Medvedev to serve as prime minister .

• NONFICTION BOOKS
• BEST NONFICTION 2023
• BEST NONFICTION 2024
• Historical Biographies
• The Best Memoirs and Autobiographies
• Philosophical Biographies
• World War 2
• World History
• American History
• British History
• Chinese History
• Russian History
• Ancient History (up to 500)
• Medieval History (500-1400)
• Military History
• Art History
• Travel Books
• Ancient Philosophy
• Contemporary Philosophy
• Ethics & Moral Philosophy
• Great Philosophers
• Social & Political Philosophy
• Classical Studies
• New Science Books
• Maths & Statistics
• Popular Science
• Physics Books
• Climate Change Books
• How to Write
• English Grammar & Usage
• Books for Learning Languages
• Linguistics
• Political Ideologies
• Foreign Policy & International Relations
• American Politics
• British Politics
• Religious History Books
• Mental Health
• Neuroscience
• Child Psychology
• Film & Cinema
• Opera & Classical Music
• Behavioural Economics
• Development Economics
• Economic History
• Financial Crisis
• World Economies
• Investing Books
• Artificial Intelligence/AI Books
• Data Science Books
• Sex & Sexuality
• Death & Dying
• Food & Cooking
• Sports, Games & Hobbies
• FICTION BOOKS
• BEST NOVELS 2024
• BEST FICTION 2023
• New Literary Fiction
• World Literature
• Literary Criticism
• Literary Figures
• Classic English Literature
• American Literature
• Comics & Graphic Novels
• Fairy Tales & Mythology
• Historical Fiction
• Crime Novels
• Science Fiction
• Short Stories
• South Africa
• United States
• Arctic & Antarctica
• Afghanistan
• Myanmar (Formerly Burma)
• Netherlands
• Kids Recommend Books for Kids
• High School Teachers Recommendations
• Prizewinning Kids' Books
• Popular Series Books for Kids
• BEST BOOKS FOR KIDS (ALL AGES)
• Ages Baby-2
• Books for Teens and Young Adults
• THE BEST SCIENCE BOOKS FOR KIDS
• BEST KIDS' BOOKS OF 2023
• BEST BOOKS FOR TEENS OF 2023
• Best Audiobooks for Kids
• Environment
• Best Books for Teens of 2023
• Best Kids' Books of 2023
• Political Novels
• New History Books
• New Historical Fiction
• New Biography
• New Memoirs
• New World Literature
• New Economics Books
• New Climate Books
• New Math Books
• New Philosophy Books
• New Psychology Books
• New Physics Books
• THE BEST AUDIOBOOKS
• Actors Read Great Books
• Books Narrated by Their Authors
• Best Audiobook Thrillers
• Best History Audiobooks
• Nobel Literature Prize
• Booker Prize (fiction)
• Baillie Gifford Prize (nonfiction)
• Financial Times (nonfiction)
• Wolfson Prize (history)
• Royal Society (science)
• Pushkin House Prize (Russia)
• Walter Scott Prize (historical fiction)
• Arthur C Clarke Prize (sci fi)
• The Hugos (sci fi & fantasy)
• Audie Awards (audiobooks)

Make Your Own List

World » Asia » Russia

The best books on putin’s russia, recommended by simon pirani.

Change in Putin’s Russia by Simon Pirani

Vladimir Putin has crafted a careful narrative about his rise to power and rescuing of Russia. The trouble, says author and academic Simon Pirani , is it isn’t true. He recommends the best books on Putin's Russia.

Godfather of the Kremlin by Paul Klebnikov

Russia’s Oil and Natural Gas by Michael Ellman

Labour After Communism by David Mandel

Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer in the Caucasus by Georgi M Derluguian

One Soldier’s War in Chechnya by Arkady Babchenko

1 Godfather of the Kremlin by Paul Klebnikov

2 russia’s oil and natural gas by michael ellman, 3 labour after communism by david mandel, 4 bourdieu’s secret admirer in the caucasus by georgi m derluguian, 5 one soldier’s war in chechnya by arkady babchenko.

B efore we get to the books you’re recommending, we’re talking about Putin’s Russia – a subject on which you’ve also written your own book.

The first of the books you’ve chosen on Putin and Russia is Godfather of the Kremlin .

Yes, I chose it because it takes on a fiendishly difficult subject – the businessman and oligarch Boris Berezovsky and his role in creating Putin. I think anybody who has come to be interested in Russia during the Putin period thinks of Berezovsky as someone who has fallen out with Putin, is in exile in London, showing his skill at manipulating the media. He does that very well. This book is a marvellous reminder of the fact that Berezovsky was an extremely powerful man, perhaps the most powerful man in Russia towards the end of Yeltsin’s term, and actually helped to create Putin the president and to put Putin where he is. That’s a story that Putin doesn’t want to remind the world of, because of course he did not – as his telling would have it – come from a security services background to centralise and rescue the nation, and deal with the oligarchs who had been running riot since the 1990s. He came out of the family circle that surrounded Yeltsin. Those people and the security services camp worked together to find a suitable candidate, a successor. This is an antidote to the popular image promoted by Putin, and shows the connection between the regimes. It’s also by a journalist who took his job very seriously and was killed for doing his job – he was stabbed on the street in Moscow. As usual in these cases, the instigators have never been found. Anna Politkovskaya’s name is internationally known, but Klebnikov’s should be too.

Berezovsky was screwed over quite badly by Putin, though. And I suppose Putin can claim that he did deal with the oligarchs to get back on track, once he’d done what he had to in order to gain power.

It’s true that once Putin decided to change his way of doing things – once he decided to centralise and to curtail the power of the oligarchs – the second oligarch he dealt with was Berezovsky, after [Vladimir] Gusinsky. Yes, he dealt with him very firmly.

Do you personally see Berezovsky and the oligarchs as robber barons or as capitalist martyrs?

Michael Ellman’s book on oil and gas might explain how. 

Partly, yes. People might want to look at it even if they’re not studying economics. It’s the best book dealing with the problem of oil and natural gas. If you think – and I do – that there has been a re-balancing of the state and private capital in Russia, what the re-balancing has been about is oil and gas resources. The biggest fight between Putin and the oligarchs was that between Putin and Khodorkovsky, which Putin won very clearly. Khodorkovsky has now received a second jail sentence, which is clearly punitive and retributive and nothing to do with justice. It’s the oil and gas resources that the fight was over – state ownership of those resources and the tax revenues received. What this book talks about is whether those resources have made Russia better, not only for its ruling elite but for the people as a whole. It’s written in economic language, but it’s such an important question if people are going to understand what’s going on in Russia today. I think the fact that it is a debate incorporating different points of view makes it the best thing to read on that aspect of Russia.

Is an oil economy a curse or a blessing in the end?

There are three short answers. For the elite – both money people and power people (the private capitalists have by no means gone away) – the rising price of oil which continued right up to 2008 has been an enormous asset, and provided resources that could have been used to modernise the economy and take the next economic step. There were a lot of conversations about that but not a lot of progress. Then there was the economic crisis of 2008, which was not of Russia’s making, but the opportunity was lost.

Your next choice in your list of books about Putin and his rule in Russia is about the auto industry.

Yes. It’s too little known and is by far the best book on the subject. It’s really about the labour movement, the workers’ movement – specifically the autoworkers in Russia – though it includes some research from Ukraine and Belarus. It answers what, for me, is one of the biggest enigmas about Russia in the 90s and the Putin years. Namely, that this country – which has such a big history of revolt and a workers’ movement going back even long before the revolution to peasant revolts and rebellions – has been extremely quiet both during the 90s, when it suffered an enormous slump, a catastrophe in terms of their living standards, and also in the 2000s when living standards have been improving but not equally. Some of these inequalities that emerged so starkly in the 90s have widened in Putin’s Russia.

This book is, first of all, a great account of trade unionism in the car industry, but it goes much deeper into why the labour movement has suffered under the dead weight of communism, and the inertia and fear it produced in a whole generation of Russian workers, even though it was supposed to be a workers’ paradise. The author was deported from the Soviet Union for trying to interview workers who participated in the workers’ uprising in Novocherkassk in 1963. He is the foremost expert on the Russian workers’ movement.

What conclusions does he draw?

Your fourth book is Bourdieu’s Secret Admirer in the Caucasus . A few people have chosen this one.

I mentioned before that central to the Putin project was this savage military expedition into Chechnya in 2000 – a war Putin essentially won where Yeltsin had lost. What’s wonderful about this book is that it’s by an academic, a sociologist who comes from southern Russia but who now works in the United States. It takes an unusual look at social relationships in that part of the world, but it does not start with the war in Chechnya or nationalism. He comes from a sociologist’s point of view.

We’re staying with the Caucasus for your last choice – One Soldier’s War in Chechnya .

This is a war memoir which has come out of Chechnya. I think in future we’ll look back at it with All Quiet on the Western Front and all the other books that have managed to convey, to those of us lucky enough not to have lived through wars, something of what war is like. It is a universal book about a young guy, conscripted to the Russian army at 18, who went through what many conscripts go through – beatings, bullying by older conscripts and officers, and the shock of being thrown into this most horrible of wars in the 90s. I had the opportunity to see the author speaking a couple of years ago, and it was incredibly moving. He was still young, but had lived and suffered through the unspeakable craziness that war is and, without any formal training as a writer, was able to bring that out in writing. It rivals The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh about the Vietnam war . It has that same very shocking emotional effect on me as a reader.

Can you sum up the effect that Putin has had on Russia?

There are so many stereotypes about Putin, and too many books that show him in dark glasses on the cover with the Kremlin in shadows. It’s presented as an awful, scary place run by the secret police. There is an element of truth in that, but it’s a one-sided story. Putin’s Russia follows on from Yeltsin. The country is being run by a kind of alliance between the secret services and economic reformers. The private capitalists work within it. I think a more balanced view is needed and that’s what I tried to do in my book.

Get the weekly Five Books newsletter

My own view is that people should have more say in their own destinies than they typically do. I’m a believer in social movements and all the rest of it. Those movements have been relatively quiescent in Russia, but I see many signs of hope that communities are throwing up social movements of all kinds. I would like to see the people of Russia playing more part than they do in shaping its future. Of course, there are dictatorial things about the political set-up that get in the way of that, but people like me commenting from the outside won’t have any say in that. The people of Russia will surely sort all that out in their own good time. People working together from their communities is a force that changes the world for the better, as we are seeing in the Middle East.

September 1, 2011

Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]

Support Five Books

Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you've enjoyed this interview, please support us by donating a small amount .

Simon Pirani

Simon Pirani is senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. He is the author of Change in Putin’s Russia: Power, Money and People

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases.

© Five Books 2024

A life on the world stage, but scant biographical details: What we know of the life of Vladimir Putin

• He was born 1952 in what used to be Leningrad, USSR and is now St. Petersburg,, Russia.
• Over the last 20 years, Putin has consolidated his grip on power by transforming many Russian institutions.
• Because of his political longevity, Putin has seen five U.S. presidents come and four go.

MOSCOW – For as long as he's been in the public eye, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been a closed book, with relatively few confirmed facts about his real thinking on foreign affairs and what motivates his policy actions. His personal life, too, has been shrouded in mystery and controversy.

And now the Putin enigma is testing the world again because of fears he may launch an invasion of Ukraine, Russia's western neighbor, and what this could mean for Ukraine's fragile democracy and the broader U.S. and European security order in place on the continent for decades.

With the crisis deepening, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken are expected to meet for talks in Europe next week. But President Joe Biden, while leaving the door to diplomacy open, left no doubt Friday that he's "convinced" Putin has already made up his mind  to invade.  

Here are some basics of what is known about Putin. Subscribers can read a more in-depth story about Russia's longest-serving leader here .

Putin's early days

Putin was born 1952 in what used to be called Leningrad, USSR, and is now known as St. Petersburg, Russia. He served for 15 years in the KGB, the Soviet-era agency that was the counterpart to the CIA. The spy agency was a notorious symbol of the Cold War and became the focus of a slew of U.S. spy novels and movies.

During that time, in 1983, he married a flight attendant named Lyudmila. They had two daughters, Mariya and Katerina. Putin and Lyudmila divorced in 2013. He may have another child, possibly with former Russian gymnastics champion Alina Kabaeva. 

By 1994, Putin had become deputy mayor in the city of his birth, and by 1998, the director of the FSB, the KBG's domestic successor. A year later, Putin was prime minister, then president – one of two positions he's held ever since. 

Trouble at home

Over the last two decades, Putin has consolidated his grip on power by transforming Russia's courts, media and other governance institutions to serve the whims of one person: himself. He has spent lavishly on the the military, banned or jailed opposition politicians and journalists and cultivated support from right-wing, nationalist groups. He changed Russia's constitution so he can stay in power until 2036, perhaps even longer. 

Putin has also presided over a growing Russian middle class, modernized some areas of Russia's economy such as in banking and technology and weathered successive financial crises because of Russia's enormous strategic oil and gas reserves. He has sought to crack down on dissent by banning restricting free speech on the Internet. 

On the world stage

Because of his political longevity, Putin has seen five U.S. presidents come and four go. During this time there has been cooperation on trade, nuclear and ballistic missile treaties, fighting terrorism and more.

There has also been sharp divergence – on human rights, on the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, on the rule of law, on Moscow's apparent or at least tacit support for cyber-hackers, and on what countries such as Ukraine and Georgia, formed in the wake of the Soviet Union's break-up in 1991 , should be allowed to do in terms of carving out their own cultural and ideological destinies.

What is NATO?: Military alliance in spotlight as Russia tries to forbid Ukraine membership

Ukraine has aspirations to join the 30-nation NATO military alliance that was formed in the wake of World War II to help keep the peace in Europe. It seeks to lean west toward democracies in the European Union.

The NATO bloc's gradual encroachment east toward countries that border Russia is seen by Putin as a threat to Moscow's security and sphere of influence. It is this, partly, analysts believe, that underpinned Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and Moscow's support for separatist rebels in Ukraine's Donbass region, where fighting has raged for eights years and is now the subject of an intense international spotlight because of what it could say about Putin's invasion plans. 

What the people want

Ordinary Russians, meanwhile, are more afraid today than they have been for 30 years that Putin could drag their country into a full-scale war with Ukraine, according to Lev Gudkov, the director of the Levada Center, an independent research organization.

Some 62% of Russians surveyed by the Levada Center said they were worried Russia could be facing "World War III," Gudkov told USA TODAY.  

In Ukraine, a survey released Friday by research firm Rating Sociological Group found that 25% of respondents saw little-to-no threat of a Russian invasion; 19% of those surveyed said there was a "high" chance Moscow could invade. 

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

Vladimir Putin

By: History.com Editors

Published: September 25, 2023

Vladimir Putin (1952-) is a former KGB agent who has ruled Russia for more than two decades. Intent on restoring Russian might following the collapse of the Soviet Union , he has launched several military campaigns, including an invasion of Ukraine, and helped usher in what’s often described as a new Cold War . Meanwhile, he has steadily tightened his grip on power, persecuting political opponents, shuttering independent media outlets, and otherwise dismantling the country’s nascent democracy.

Putin's Early Years and Personal Life

Much about Vladimir Putin’s personal life remains murky. Born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1952, he has recalled growing up modestly in a rat-infested communal apartment building. His parents, who lost two children prior to his birth—one of whom died during the prolonged Nazi siege of Leningrad in World War II —apparently doted on him despite working long hours. As a youth, he practiced martial arts and is reputed to have gotten into many fist fights.

In 1983, Putin married a flight attendant, Lyudmila Shkrebneva, with whom he has two daughters. (The couple divorced around 2013.) He is rumored to have fathered other children as well. Throughout his time in office, Putin has kept his family out of the public eye.

Putin as a KGB Agent

After studying law at Leningrad State University, Putin joined the KGB , the Soviet counterpart of the CIA. In the mid-1980s, he was sent to the city of Dresden in East Germany, where, in his words, he gathered “political intelligence,” in part by recruiting sources. Putin remained in Dresden during the fall of the Berlin Wall , and, with a risky bluff , purportedly prevented a crowd of protestors from storming the local KGB headquarters.

Putin's Political Rise

Putin returned to Leningrad in 1990 and claimed to have resigned from the KGB the following year. The subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union affected him deeply; he later called it the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. Around that time, he got his political start as an aide to Anatoly Sobchak , his former teacher who became his mentor and St. Petersburg’s mayor.

In 1996, Sobchak lost his bid for re-election and later fled abroad amid corruption allegations. Yet Putin continued his meteoric rise, moving to Moscow, Russia’s capital, and securing one Kremlin post after another (while also defending an economics dissertation he allegedly plagiarized ). By 1998, Putin led the KGB’s main successor organization, and the following year President Boris Yeltsin named him prime minister, the country’s second-highest office, thereby elevating him from obscurity to heir apparent.

When an ailing and increasingly unpopular Yeltsin resigned on December 31, 1999, Putin took over as acting president. (Months later, he would win election to a full term.) Helped by rising oil and gas prices, the economy improved in the early 2000s and living standards rose. Many Russians saw him as bringing order and stability after the hyperinflation, tumultuousness, and perceived lawlessness of the Yeltsin years.

Putin's Consolidation of Power

In his first address as Russia’s president, Putin promised to protect freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and property rights, and he likewise announced his commitment to democracy. Yet democratic backsliding began almost immediately under his leadership. The Kremlin brought independent television networks under state control and shut down other news outlets; abolished gubernatorial and senatorial elections; curtailed the judiciary; and restricted opposition political parties. When elections took place, outside observers noted widespread voter irregularities. Putin’s system was sometimes referred to as a “managed democracy.”

Because Russia’s constitution barred a third consecutive term, Putin stepped down in 2008, with his longtime confidante Dmitry Medvedev taking over as president. But Putin retained the role of prime minister and left little doubt about who was really in charge. When Medvedev’s term ended in 2012, the two swapped positions, and Putin once again became president. He has occupied the top job ever since, at one point signing a law that allows him to stay in power until 2036.

Putin has habitually placed his friends and old intelligence colleagues in key posts, several of whom became extravagantly wealthy, and he’s propagated a cult of personality. Perceived opponents have been called “scum” and “traitors” and dealt with harshly. Some, like oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, have been jailed, whereas others have wound up dead. In 2006, for example, investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down on Putin’s birthday, and that same year Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated in England with radioactive polonium.

More recently, opposition leader Aleksei Navalny was banned from running for president, survived an assassination attempt , and was then imprisoned on what’s widely considered to be politically motivated charges. Yet another high-profile death occurred in 2023, when Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash after launching a short-lived mutiny against Russia’s military leadership.

Putin's Relationship with the West

Many Western leaders originally approved of Putin, with U.S. President George W. Bush saying he had “looked the man in the eye,” found him “very straightforward and trustworthy,” and gotten a “sense of his soul.” Putin was the first foreign leader to call Bush following the terrorist attacks of September 11 , 2001. And though he opposed the Iraq War , Putin assisted in aspects of the so-called War on Terror . He moreover described Russia as a “friendly European nation” that desired “stable peace on the continent.”

Putin’s relationship with the West deteriorated, however, in part over NATO ’s 2004 expansion into seven Eastern European countries and over pro-Western revolutions that broke out in Georgia and Ukraine. Putin was furthermore irked by U.S. lobbying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO and by its support for an independent Kosovo. In 2007, he accused the United States of overstepping “its national borders in every way.” Over time, Putin came to think of himself as a protector of traditional Russian values, standing up to a hypocritical and morally decadent West.

In 2014, as tensions escalated over Ukraine, Russia was expelled from the Group of Eight industrialized nations. Around that time, he granted asylum to U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden . And, according to U.S. intelligence agencies , he interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election , greenlighting a computer hacking operation that infiltrated the campaign of Hillary Clinton .   

Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump maintained generally friendly ties. But the U.S.-Russian relationship reached arguably its lowest point in decades following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Since then, Russia has been hit with a slew of economic sanctions, Ukraine has received much Western military assistance, and U.S. President Joe Biden has called Putin a “thug,” a “murderous dictator,” and a “war criminal.”

Putin's Wars

During his more than two decades in office, Putin has used the military in increasingly aggressive ways.  Early in his tenure, he violently suppressed a separatist movement in the Russian republic of Chechnya. In 2008, he orchestrated a brief but large-scale invasion of Georgia , thus cementing Russian control of the breakaway regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Starting in 2015, he intervened in the Syrian civil war , among other things authorizing a prolonged bombardment of the city of Aleppo. Additionally, he has deployed Russian mercenaries in various African countries .

Putin’s most prolonged conflict has taken place in Ukraine . In 2014, when Ukrainian protestors ousted their Russian-backed president, Putin responded by annexing Crimea—which had been gifted from Russia to Ukraine during the Soviet era—and by backing a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Then, in 2022, he launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine, but failed to take Kiev, the capital. Heavy fighting has since claimed hundreds of thousands of lives . The Russian armed forces have been accused of purposely targeting civilians and committing torture and other atrocities, prompting the International Criminal Court to issue a warrant for Putin’s arrest (though he is unlikely to stand trial).

The Man Without a Face : The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin , by Masha Gessen, published by Riverhead Books, 2012. The Strongman : Vladimir Putin and the Struggle for Russia , by Angus Roxburgh, published by I.B. Tauris, 2012. First Person : An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin , 2000. ‘The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin,’ by Steven Lee Myers. The New York Times , November 8, 2015. The Making of Vladimir Putin. The New York Times , March 26, 2022. Putin, Vladimir. Encyclopedia Britannica

HISTORY Vault: Vladimir Putin

A gripping look at Putin's rise from humble beginnings to brutal dictatorship, and his emergence as one of the gravest threats to America's security.

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

Biography of Vladimir Putin: From KGB Agent to Russian President

• European History Figures & Events
• Wars & Battles
• The Holocaust
• European Revolutions
• Industry and Agriculture History in Europe
• American History
• African American History
• African History
• Ancient History and Culture
• Asian History
• Latin American History
• Medieval & Renaissance History
• Military History
• The 20th Century
• Women's History

Early Life, Education, and Career

• Prime Minister 1999

Acting President 1999 to 2000

First presidential term 2000 to 2004, second presidential term 2004 to 2008, second premiership 2008 to 2012.

• Third Presidential Term 2012 to 2018

Fourth Presidential Term 2018

Invasion of ukraine, interference in 2016 us presidential election, personal life, net worth, and religion, notable quotes, sources and references.

• B.S., Texas A&M University

Vladimir Putin is a Russian politician and former KGB intelligence officer currently serving as President of Russia. Elected to his current and fourth presidential term in May 2018, Putin has led the Russian Federation as either its prime minister, acting president, or president since 1999. Long considered an equal of the President of the United States in holding one of the world’s most powerful public offices, Putin has aggressively exerted Russia’s influence and political policy around the world.

Fast Facts: Vladimir Puton

• Full Name: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
• Born: October 7, 1952, Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia) 
• Parents’ Names: Maria Ivanovna Shelomova and Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin
• Spouse: Lyudmila Putina (married in 1983, divorced in 2014)
• Children: Two daughters; Mariya Putina and Yekaterina Putina
• Education: Leningrad State University
• Known for: Russian Prime Minister and Acting President of Russia, 1999 to 2000; President of Russia 2000 to 2008 and 2012 to present; Russian Prime Minister 2008 to 2012.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born on October 7, 1952, in Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia). His mother, Maria Ivanovna Shelomova was a factory worker and his father, Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin, had served in the Soviet Navy submarine fleet during World War II and worked as a foreman at an automobile factory during the 1950s. In his official state biography, Putin recalls, “I come from an ordinary family, and this is how I lived for a long time, nearly my whole life. I lived as an average, normal person and I have always maintained that connection.” 

While attending elementary and high school, Putin took up judo in hopes of emulating the Soviet intelligence officers he saw in the movies. Today, he holds a black belt in judo and is a national master in the similar Russian martial art of sambo. He also studied German at Saint Petersburg High School, and speaks the language fluently today.

In 1975, Putin earned a law degree from Leningrad State University, where he was tutored and befriended by Anatoly Sobchak, who would later become a political leader during the Glasnost and Perestroika reform period. As a college student, Putin was required to join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union but resigned as a member in December 1991. He would later describe communism as “a blind alley, far away from the mainstream of civilization.”

After initially considering a career in law, Putin was recruited into the KGB (the Committee for State Security) in 1975. He served as a foreign counter-intelligence officer for 15 years, spending the last six in Dresden, East Germany. After leaving the KGB in 1991 with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he returned to Russia where he was in charge of the external affairs of Leningrad State University. It was here that Putin became an advisor to his former tutor Anatoly Sobchak, who had just become Saint Petersburg’s first freely-elected mayor. Gaining a reputation as an effective politician, Putin quickly rose to the position of first deputy mayor of Saint Petersburg in 1994. 

Prime Minister 1999 

After moving to Moscow in 1996, Putin joined the administrative staff of Russia’s first president Boris Yeltsin . Recognizing Putin as a rising star, Yeltsin appointed him director of the Federal Security Service (FSB)—the post-communism version of the KGB—and secretary of the influential Security Council. On August 9, 1999, Yeltsin appointed him as acting prime minister. On August 16, the Russian Federation’s legislature, the State Duma , voted to confirm Putin’s appointment as prime minister. The day Yeltsin first appointed him, Putin announced his intention to seek the presidency in the 2000 national election.

While he was largely unknown at the time, Putin’s public popularity soared when, as prime minister, he orchestrated a military operation that succeeded resolving the Second Chechen War , an armed conflict in the Russian-held territory of Chechnya between Russian troops and secessionist rebels of the unrecognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, fought between August 1999 and April 2009. 

When Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned on December 31, 1999, under suspicion of bribery and corruption, the Constitution of Russia made Putin acting President of the Russian Federation. Later the same day, he issued a presidential decree protecting Yeltsin and his relatives from prosecution for any crimes they might have committed.    

While the next regular Russian presidential election was scheduled for June 2000, Yeltsin’s resignation made it necessary to hold the election within three months, on March 26, 2000. 

At first far behind his opponents, Putin’s law-and-order platform and decisive handling of the Second Chechen War as acting president soon pushed his popularity beyond that of his rivals.

On March 26, 2000, Putin was elected to his first of three terms as President of the Russian Federation winning 53 percent of the vote.

Shortly after his inauguration on May 7, 2000, Putin faced the first challenge to his popularity over claims that he had mishandled his response to the Kursk submarine disaster . He was widely criticized for his refusal to return from vacation and visit the scene for over two weeks. When asked on the Larry King Live television show what had happened to the Kursk, Putin’s two-word reply, “It sank,” was widely criticized for its perceived cynicism in the face of tragedy. 

October 23, 2002, as many as 50 armed Chechens, claiming allegiance to the Chechnya Islamist separatist movement, took 850 people hostage in Moscow’s Dubrovka Theater. An estimated 170 people died in the controversial special-forces gas attack that ended the crisis. While the press suggested that Putin’s heavy-handed response to the attack would damage his popularity, polls showed over 85 percent of Russians approved of his actions.

Less than a week after the Dubrovka Theater attack, Putting clamped down even harder on the Chechen separatists, canceling previously announced plans to withdraw 80,000 Russian troops from Chechnya and promising to take “measures adequate to the threat” in response to future terrorist attacks. In November, Putin directed Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov to order sweeping attacks against Chechen separatists throughout the breakaway republic.

Putin’s harsh military policies succeeded in at least stabilizing the situation in Chechnya. In 2003, the Chechen people voted to adopt a new constitution confirming that the Republic of Chechnya would remain a part of Russia while retaining its political autonomy. Though Putin’s actions greatly diminished the Chechen rebel movement, they failed to end the Second Chechen War, and sporadic rebel attacks continued in the northern Caucasus region.  

During the majority of his first term, Putin concentrated on improving the failing Russian economy, in part by negotiating a “grand bargain” with the Russian business oligarchs who had controlled the nation’s wealth since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Under the bargain, the oligarchs would retain most of their power, in return for supporting—and cooperating with—Putin’s government. 

According to financial observers at the time, Putin made it clear to the oligarchs that they would prosper if they played by the Kremlin rules. Indeed, Radio Free Europe reported in 2005 that the number of Russian business tycoons had greatly increased during Putin’s time in power, often aided by their personal relationships with him. 

Whether Putin’s “grand bargain” with the oligarchs actually “improved” the Russian economy or not remains uncertain. British journalist and expert on international affairs Jonathan Steele has observed that by the end of Putin’s second term in 2008, the economy had stabilized and the nation’s overall standard of living had improved to the point that the Russian people could “notice a difference.”

On March 14, 2004, Putin was easily re-elected to the presidency, this time winning 71 percent of the vote. 

During his second term as president, Putin focused on undoing the social and economic damage suffered by the Russian people during the collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union, an event he called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the Twentieth Century.” In 2005, he launched the National Priority Projects designed to improve health care, education, housing, and agriculture in Russia.

On October 7, 2006—Putin’s birthday— Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist and human rights activist, who as a frequent critic of Putin and had exposed corruption in the Russian Army and cases of its improper conduct in the Chechnya conflict, was shot to death as she entered the lobby of her apartment building. While Politkovskaya’s killer was never identified, her death brought criticism that Putin’s promise to protect the newly-independent Russian media had been no more than political rhetoric. Putin commented that Politkovskaya’s death had caused him more problems than anything she had ever written about him. 

In 2007, Other Russia, a group opposed to Putin led by former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, organized a series of “Dissenters’ Marches” to protest Putin’s policies and practices. Marches in several cities resulted in the arrests of some 150 protestors who tried to penetrate police lines.

In the December 2007 elections, the equivalent of the U.S. mid-term congressional election, Putin’s United Russia party easily retained control of the State Duma, indicating the Russian people’s continued support for him and his policies.

The democratic legitimacy of the election was questioned, however. While some 400 foreign election monitors stationed at polling places stated that the election process itself had not been rigged, the Russian media’s coverage had clearly favored candidates of United Russia. Both the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe concluded that the elections were unfair and called on the Kremlin to investigate alleged violations. A Kremlin-appointed election commission concluded that not only had the election been fair, but it had also proven the “stability” of the Russian political system. 

With Putin barred by the Russian Constitution from seeking a third consecutive presidential term, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was elected president. However, on May 8, 2008, the day after Medvedev’s inauguration, Putin was appointed Prime Minister of Russia. Under the Russian system of government, the president and the prime minister share responsibilities as the head of state and head of the government, respectively. Thus, as prime minister, Putin retained his dominance over the country’s political system. 

In September 2001, Medvedev proposed to the United Russia Congress in Moscow, that Putin should run for the presidency again in 2012, an offer Putin happily accepted.

Third Presidential Term 2012 to 2018 

On March 4, 2012, Putin won the presidency for a third time with 64 percent of the vote. Amid public protests and accusations that he had rigged the election, he was inaugurated on May 7, 2012, immediately appointing former President Medvedev as prime minister. After successfully quelling protests against the election process, often by having marchers jailed, Putin proceeded to make sweeping—if controversial—changes to Russia’s domestic and foreign policy.  

In December 2012, Putin signed a law prohibiting the adoption of Russian children by U.S. citizens. Intended to ease the adoption of Russian orphans by Russian citizens, the law stirred international criticism, especially in the United States, where as many as 50 Russian children in the final stages of adoption were left in legal limbo.   

The following year, Putin again strained his relationship with the U.S. by granting asylum to Edward Snowden, who remains wanted in the United States for leaking classified information he gathered as a contractor for the National Security Agency on the WikiLeaks website. In response, U.S. President Barack Obama canceled a long-planned August 2013 meeting with Putin. 

Also in 2013, Putin issued a set of highly controversial anti-gay laws outlawing gay couples from adopting children in Russia and banning the dissemination of material promoting or describing “nontraditional” sexual relationships to minors. The laws brought worldwide protests from both the LGBT and straight communities.  

In December 2017, Putin announced he would seek a six-year—rather than four-year—term as president in July, running this time as an independent candidate, cutting his old ties with the United Russia party. 

After a bomb exploded in a crowded Saint Petersburg food market on December 27, injuring dozens of people, Putin revived his popular “tough on terror” tone just before the election. He stated that he had ordered Federal Security Service officers to “take no prisoners” when dealing with terrorists.

In his annual address to the Duma in March 2018, just days before the election, Putin claimed that the Russian military had perfected nuclear missiles with “unlimited range” that would render NATO anti-missile systems “completely worthless.” While U.S. officials expressed doubts about their reality, Putin’s claims and saber-rattling tone ratcheted up tensions with the West but nurtured renewed feelings of national pride among Russian voters. 

On March 18, 2018, Putin was easily elected to a fourth term as President of Russia, winning more than 76 percent of the vote in an election that saw 67 percent of all eligible voters cast ballots. Despite the opposition to his leadership that had surfaced during his third term, his closest competitor in the election garnered only 13 percent of the vote. Shortly after officially taking office on May 7, Putin announced that in compliance with the Russian Constitution, he would not seek reelection in 2024. 

On July 16, 2018, Putin met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Helsinki, Finland, in what was called the first of a series of meetings between the two world leaders. While no official details of their private 90-minute meeting were published, Putin and Trump would later reveal in press conferences that they had discussed the Syrian civil war and its threat to the safety of Israel, the Russian annexation of Crimea , and the extension of the START nuclear weapons reduction treaty. 

On February 23, 2022, Putin launched an unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine, which had officially declared itself an independent country on August 24, 1991. Putin justified the act with the false narrative that Ukraine was not a real country. That it “belongs” to Russia as part of a “Great Russia” and the “Russian World,” and that there is, according to Putin, no Ukrainian people, no Ukrainian language, and no separate Ukrainian history. 

After Russia launched its 2022 invasion, the United States, the European Union (EU), and other NATO member nations condemned Putin, substantially increased military, humanitarian, and economic assistance to Ukraine, and imposed a series of increasingly crippling financial and economic sanctions on Russia. In addition, hundreds of U.S. and other companies withdrew, suspended, or curtailed operations in or with Russia.

On February 8, 1994, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO ) accepted Ukraine into its Partnership for Peace, a collaborative arrangement open to all non-NATO European countries and post-Soviet states. Russia became a NATO member in June 1994 and conducted various cooperative activities with NATO, including joint military exercises, until 2014, when NATO formally suspended ties with the country. As the Cold War ended, Russia opposed the eastern expansion of NATO. However, thirteen former Soviet partnership members eventually joined the alliance.

Ukraine is not a NATO member. However, Ukraine is a NATO partner country, which means that it cooperates closely with NATO but it is not covered by the security guarantee in the Alliance’s founding treaty.

The invasion seemed to tarnish Putin’s image among the Russian people, as young citizens, along with middle-aged and even retired people, took to the streets to speak out against a military conflict ordered by their President—a decision in which, they claimed, they had no say.

Putin responded by shutting down public dissent against the attack on Ukraine. By the end of July 2022, a total of over 7,624 protesters had been detained or arrested to 7,624 since the invasion began, according to an independent organization that tracks human rights violations in Russia.

During Putin’s third presidential term, allegations arose in the United States that the Russian government had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. 

A combined U.S. intelligence community report released in January 2017 found “high confidence” that Putin himself had ordered a media-based “influence campaign” intended to harm the American public’s perception of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton , thus improving the electoral chances of eventual election winner, Republican Donald Trump . In addition, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating whether officials of the Trump campaign organization colluded with high ranking Russian officials to influence the election. 

While both Putin and Trump have repeatedly denied the allegations, the social media website Facebook admitted in October 2017 that political ads purchased by Russian organizations had been seen by at least 126 million Americans during the weeks leading up to the election.

Vladimir Putin married Lyudmila Shkrebneva on July 28, 1983. From 1985 to 1990, the couple lived in East Germany where they gave birth to their two daughters, Mariya Putina and Yekaterina Putina. On June 6, 2013, Putin announced the end of the marriage. Their divorce became official on April 1, 2014, according to the Kremlin. An avid outdoorsman, Putin publicly promotes sports, including skiing, cycling, fishing, and horseback riding as a healthy way of life for the Russian people. 

While some say he may be the world’s wealthiest man, Vladimir Putin’s exact net worth is not known. According to the Kremlin, the President of the Russian Federation is paid the U.S. equivalent of about $112,000 per year and is provided with an 800-square foot apartment as an official residence. However, independent Russian and U.S. financial experts have estimated Putin’s combined net worth at from $70 billion to as much as $200 billion. While his spokespersons have repeatedly denied allegations that Putin controls a hidden fortune, critics in Russia and elsewhere remain convinced that he has skillfully used the influence of his nearly 20-years in power to acquire massive wealth. 

A member of the Russian Orthodox Church, Putin recalls the time his mother gave him his baptismal cross, telling him to get it blessed by a Bishop and wear it for his safety. “I did as she said and then put the cross around my neck. I have never taken it off since,” he once recalled. 

As one of the most powerful, influential, and often-controversial world leaders of the past two decades, Vladimir Putin has uttered many memorable phrases in public. A few of these include: 

• “There is no such thing as a former KGB man.”
• “People are always teaching us democracy but the people who teach us democracy don't want to learn it themselves.”
• “Russia doesn’t negotiate with terrorists. It destroys them.”
• “In any case, I’d rather not deal with such questions, because anyway it’s like shearing a pig—lots of screams but little wool.”
• “I am not a woman, so I don’t have bad days.” 
• “ Vladimir Putin Biography .” Vladimir Putin official state biography
• “ Vladimir Putin – President of Russia .” European-Leaders.com (March 2017)
• “ First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President Vladimir Putin .” The New York Times (2000)
• “ Putin’s Obscure Path From KGB to Kremlin .” Los Angeles Times (2000)
• “ Vladimir Putin quits as head of Russia's ruling party .” The Daily Telegraph (2002)
• “ Russian lessons .” Financial Times. September 20, 2008
• “ Russia: Bribery Thriving Under Putin, According To New Report .” Radio Free Europe (2005)
• Steele, Jonathan. “ Putin’s legacy is a Russia that doesn't have to curry favour with the west .” The Guardian, September 18, 2007
• Bohlen, Celestine (2000). “ YELTSIN RESIGNS: THE OVERVIEW; Yeltsin Resigns, Naming Putin as Acting President To Run in March Election .” The New York Times.
• Sakwa, Richard (2007). “Putin : Russia's Choice (2nd ed.).” Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. ISBN 9780415407656.
• Judah, Ben (2015). “Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell in and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin.” Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300205220.
• Boris Yeltsin: First President of the Russian Federation
• Kievan Rus, Medieval Principalities in Eastern Europe
• Biography of Alexander II, Russia's Reformist Tsar
• Rudolf Hess, Nazi Who Claimed to Bring Peace Offer From Hitler
• Vladimir Lenin Quotes
• 6 Key European Dictators From the Twentieth Century
• Biography of Grigori Rasputin
• Influential Leaders in European History
• French Revolution Timeline: 1795 to 1799 (The Directory)
• Biography of Prince Albert, Husband of Queen Victoria
• Biography of King George VI, Britain’s Unexpected King
• The Cold War in Europe
• Biography of Ivan the Terrible, First Tsar of Russia
• The Life of Noor Inayat Khan, World War II Spy Heroine
• Robert the Bruce: Scotland's Warrior King
• Russia's Populists

• Kindle Store
• Kindle eBooks
• Biographies & Memoirs

Sorry, there was a problem.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Putin: The explosive and extraordinary new biography of Russia’s leader Kindle Edition

'A perfect mirror to its subject... should be compulsory reading' Observer Vladimir Putin is a pariah to the West. He has the power to reduce the West to nuclear ashes. He invades his neighbours, meddles in western elections and orders assassinations. His regime is autocratic and corrupt. Yet many Russians continue to support him. Under Putin's leadership, Russia has once again become a force to be reckoned with. Philip Short's magisterial biography explores in unprecedented depth the personality of Russia's leader and demolishes many of our preconceptions about Putin's Russia. To explain is not to justify. Putin's regime is dark. But on closer examination, much of what we think we know about him turns out to rest on half-truths. This book is as close as we will come to understanding Russia's ruler. 'Short's pushback against lazy, convenient myth-making is refreshing' The Times 'Elegantly written and pacy' Financial Times 'Extensively covers the dark moments of Putin's career.... The Putin of Short's book is not someone you would invite to dinner' New York Times

• Print length 789 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher Vintage Digital
• Publication date June 30, 2022
• File size 10919 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

Customers who bought this item also bought

Editorial Reviews

"Nowhere has the story . . . been told with greater authority." -- The Washington Post "Unerringly broadens the inquiry to the point where serious history begins, and serious judgments can be made." -- Financial Times "Masterfully prob[ing]." -- Wall Street Journal "The best sort of biography--deeply informed, entirely readable, and at the level of sophistication and complexity needed for its particular subject." --Richard Bernstein, coauthor of The Coming Conflict with China "Chillingly clear . . . Complete and unflinching." -- The Economist

About the Author

Product details.

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09VNYXDL5
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage Digital (June 30, 2022)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 30, 2022
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 10919 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 789 pages
• Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1847923372
• #52 in Historical Russian Biographies
• #144 in 21st Century World History
• #262 in Russian & Soviet Politics

About the author

Philip short.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 67% 20% 7% 3% 3% 67%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 67% 20% 7% 3% 3% 20%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 67% 20% 7% 3% 3% 7%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 67% 20% 7% 3% 3% 3%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 67% 20% 7% 3% 3% 3%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Customers say

Customers find the book relatively good to read, with thorough and scholarly accounts of Putin's rise.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book's content thorough, scholarly, enlightening, and well researched. They also say it holds their interest and provides plenty of detail about Putin and his rise to power.

" Very inciteful , factual and well researched." Read more

"...is, amongst the many recent publications on Putin, the most thorough and scholarly accounts of the rise and possible eventual fall of this complex..." Read more

"...I thought the book was well researched and it held my interest although keeping track of all the Russian characters since the eighties caused my..." Read more

"...of Russian during his lifetime with detailed research, thought and precision . That alone makes the work well worth the read...." Read more

Customers find the book relatively good, but the detail can be a bit much. They also say it's an excellent product.

"...Short gives a remarkably balanced reading of the interchange between the West and Russia...." Read more

"...That alone makes the work well worth the read ...." Read more

" Book is great . One I'll definitely put in my bookshelf. However, the pages are falling out. Printing quality very shoddy" Read more

"This is a relatively good read , but the detail can be a bit much, especially on foreign policy...." Read more

Reviews with images

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

Report an issue

• About Amazon
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell products on Amazon
• Sell on Amazon Business
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Become an Affiliate
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Make Money with Us
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Amazon and COVID-19
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices

• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

9 Books That Can Help You Understand Russia Right Now

A s an influx of news comes out about Russia ‘s potential influence on the U.S., many Americans may be curious to learn more about the country’s recent history. What has motivated Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and what defines its president, Vladimir Putin ?

In times of rapid breaking news and quickly shifting political positions, it can be helpful to take a step back and read something substantive for context. TIME asked experts from the Atlantic Council, the Wilson Center and other institutions to recommend books on Russia that would be accessible and illuminating for the general interest reader. Here are the volumes they suggested, covering everything from Kremlinology to the country’s cyber landscape.

Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia (2014)

By Peter Pomerantsev

Both Alina Polyakova, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, and Michael McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford, recommend this cross-section of Russian society. “The book stands out because it manages to be entertaining and very accessible to a general reader while capturing a key moment of Putin’s Russia: the emergence and consolidation of the tools of state-sponsored propaganda,” says Polyakova.

All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin (2016)

By Mikhail Zygar

McFaul and Anders Åslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, both recommend this book, with Åslund calling it an “excellent recent presentation of the people around Putin and how Russian policy is made,” though he notes “it downplays Putin’s importance too much.”

The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin (2015)

By Steven Lee Myers

Åslund, McFaul, and Sestanovich all recommend this account of the president’s ascent from a childhood of poverty, through his work for the KGB, to his powerful role at the center of the Kremlin. Åslund calls it “the best political biography of Putin.”

Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin (2013)

By Ben Judah

John Herbst, director of the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center, recommends this different look at Putin’s regime, calling it “a good overall look at Russia” that is “easy to read and impressionistic.”

Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism (2016)

By Charles Clover

Åslund recommends this historical exploration of “Eurasianism,” a theory of Russian nationalism based on geography and ethnicity. Clover traces its roots from the White Russian exiles of the 1920s through today, including interviews with close advisers to Putin.

Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia (2012)

By Thane Gustafson

Åslund calls this volume “outstanding on Russian oil.” The book explores the massive market for Russian oil, as well as the country’s economic and political dependence on the industry.

The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries (2015)

By Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan

Åslund calls this book “excellent on Russian cyber.” Through analysis of everything from hacking to digital surveillance, Soldatov and Borogan explain the potential for the Internet to either solidify or undermine totalitarianism in Russia.

Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire (2016)

By Agnia Grigas

Herbst suggests this book for its “insight into the Kremlin’s effort to regain control in the post-Soviet space.”

Peter the Great: His Life and World (1980)

By Robert K. Massie

“I think in many ways reading some really foundational but still accessible and entertaining works of history and literature will teach Americans much more about Russia that’s relevant to today, than if they simply read the latest trade or scholarly book on Russian foreign policy or Putin,” says Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Case in point: this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of “Russia’s most extraordinary autocrat, a man whose imprint is still felt on people, places and politics from the Far East to the heart of Europe, even three centuries after his death.”

More Must-Reads from TIME

• Breaking Down the 2024 Election Calendar
• Heman Bekele Is TIME’s 2024 Kid of the Year
• The Reintroduction of Kamala Harris
• What a $129 Frying Pan Says About America’s Eating Habits
• A Battle Over Fertility Law in China
• The 1 Heart-Health Habit You Should Start When You’re Young
• Cuddling Might Help You Get Better Sleep
• The 50 Best Romance Novels to Read Right Now

Contact us at [email protected]

Try AI-powered search

Our former Moscow correspondent picks seven books on Russia

A readers’ guide to the mystery that is vladimir putin.

First Person (2000). By Vladimir Putin. PublicAffairs; 208 pages; $16 and £11.99

Vladimir Putin gave notice of who he was, and what he was capable of, in “First Person”, a transcript of interviews published in 2000, at the start of his overlong rule. In his youth, he recalled, he had been a tough little hoodlum who fought rats in the stairwell of his communal-apartment building and, later, brawled with strangers on the streets of Leningrad. “A dog senses when somebody is afraid of it,” he had learned, “and bites.” He prized loyalty and feared betrayal. He was hypersensitive to slights, to both his country and himself. He bore grudges. Sometimes the Mr Putin of “First Person” appears frank, at others, cagey and withdrawn. Few people knew him well; he was seen as a grey man, inscrutable. Read our longer review of this and other books.

Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State (2004). By David Satter. Yale University Press; 326 pages; $30 and £23

David Satter was among the first Anglophone analysts to gauge the evil in Mr Putin’s system. In “Darkness at Dawn” he accused the FSB, the domestic security service, of orchestrating a string of bombings in Russia in 1999 that killed around 300 people and ignited the second Chechen war—thus helping Mr Putin, who oversaw the fighting, to secure the presidency. Few were ready to digest that theory; several Russians who pursued it came to a sticky end.

The Man Without a Face. By Masha Gessen. Riverhead; 314 pages; $27.95. Granta; £20

In this polemical biography, Masha Gessen characterised Mr Putin, then set to reclaim the presidency after a pro-forma stint as prime minister, as a killer and extortionist. This version of him—a KGB thug turned mafia godfather—had been “hidden in plain sight”, but obscured by wishful thinking and that grey veneer. Death and terror were politically useful to Mr Putin, the author wrote. He made no distinction between the state’s interests and his own. Read our review from 2012.

Putin’s People. By Catherine Belton. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 640 pages; $35. William Collins; £21.99

The gangster network that oversees Russia was definitively elaborated in “Putin’s People”. In the system of “KGB capitalism” that Catherine Belton described, government was a machine for extracting rents and expropriating assets, politics a squabble over who got them, and the president its referee. The siloviki (strongmen) were bound together by a regime of mutual blackmail, in which secrets were both weapons and liabilities; for his part, Mr Putin had spilled too much blood and made too many enemies to retire. Besides self-enrichment, the spoils were used to undermine the West, black cash sloshing around the world to fund “active measures” and the “restoration of the country’s global position”. We reviewed the book , and included it as one of our Books of 2020 .

The New Tsar. By Steven Lee Myers. Vintage; 592 pages; $22. Simon & Schuster; £9.99

The author perceptively identified the Orange revolution in Ukraine in 2004 as a breaking-point. Huge protests overturned the result of an election rigged in favour of Mr Putin’s candidate. The reversal combined personal humiliation with a geopolitical rebuff; his fear of crowds, and sense of the jeopardy of democracy, were inflamed. He “nursed the experience like a grudge”, Mr Lee Myers wrote, tightening the screws in Russia, ramping up his propaganda and setting up tame youth movements to dominate the streets. Mr Putin’s bleak Chekist mindset could not admit the possibility that Ukrainians were turning West—and rejecting him—of their own volition. Convinced that the CIA had paid or cajoled them, he embarked on a spiral of meddling that culminated in the latest invasion. By 2014, thought Mr Lee Myers, he had found a “millenarian” mission as the indispensable leader of an exceptional power. “The question now was where would Putin’s policy stop?”

Mr Putin: Operative in the Kremlin. By Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy. Brookings Institution Press; 400 pages; $29.95 and £19.99

The authors saw Mr Putin’s efforts to make Russia’s economy more resilient, and to eliminate domestic opposition, as a long-haul preparation for confronting the West. His bid to undermine Western democracies through fifth columnists, bribery and kompromat was part of the same strategy. The greyness, they wrote, had always been tactical: Mr Putin was “the ultimate political performance artist”, his mercurial public persona a way to keep his adversaries off-balance. Mr Gaddy and Ms Hill—who became the top Russia adviser in Donald Trump’s National Security Council—concluded that he was more than an avaricious gangster. His objective was to survive and overcome his foes, who, in his view, were Russia’s enemies too; to that end he was waging a long, hybrid war against the West. He would pounce on weaknesses, the pair warned, and fulfil his threats. “He won’t give up, and he will fight dirty.” Yet even these authors judged that, if only for reasons of trade, Mr Putin “does not want Russia to end up being a pariah state”. Read our 2013 review of an early edition of the book.

Day of the Oprichnik. By Vladimir Sorokin. Translated by Jamey Gambrell. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 208 pages; $16. Penguin Classics; £9.99

The book that most clearly saw where Putinism was heading was not a history or biography but a novel (first published in 2006) set in 2028. The Russia it depicts seems to exist in two time-frames at once, futuristic technology jostling with medieval barbarity and obscurantism. The country is walled off from Europe and the tsar has been restored. His word is law, but even he must “bow and cringe before China”, which (along with gas exports) props up the economy. The oprichnik of the title is one of his elite henchmen—the name comes from an order of pitiless enforcers under Ivan the Terrible. Their methods are murder and torture, their sidelines extortion and theft. Vladimir Sorokin’s satirical dystopia has come to seem more prescient than outlandish. The details are grotesque, but also, sometimes, horribly familiar. In the story, when the wall was built “opponents began to crawl out of the cracks like noxious centipedes”—imagery that anticipates Mr Putin’s dehumanisation of his critics as gnats. Chillingly, when the oprichniks gather for a debauch, one of their toasts is “Hail the Purge!”■ _______________

Our former Moscow correspondent is the author of several novels, including:

Snowdrops . By A.D. Miller. Anchor; 272 pages; $14.95. Atlantic; £7.99

An amorality tale set over a Russian winter that was shortlisted for the Booker prize. “An electrifying tour of the dark side of Moscow, and of human nature,” said the Independent .

Independence Square . By A.D. Miller. Pegasus Books; 228 pages; $25.95. Vintage; 304 pages; £8.99

A story of revolution and betrayal set during the Orange revolution in Ukraine. The Spectator called it “gripping...a searing indictment of our times”. _______________

More from The Economist reads: Our obituaries editor picks the five best biographies ever written Our Paris bureau chief picks seven books that make sense of modern France Our food columnist selects the seven essential cookbooks

More from The Economist reads

Six novels about India, perhaps the world’s most interesting place

Works of fiction about a country whose global clout, already large, is growing

Six novels you can read in a day

Reluctant to start on a big masterpiece? Try these small gems instead

The romance and reality of Paris, the Olympics’ host

Five non-fiction books about a city that is both gilded and gritty

Novels set on holiday

Some of these fictional holidays aren’t fun, but they might enhance yours

Five books on the glories and flaws of the Olympics

The games fall short of their ideals, but they’re still worth watching

What Is Driving Vladimir Putin?

Understanding Putin is crucial to deciphering his goals in attacking Ukraine. The Russian American journalist Masha Gessen recommends books on the Russian president and the forces that shaped him.

• Share full article

By Alexandra Alter

In an interview more than two decades ago, Vladimir V. Putin described his younger self, with a hint of self-congratulation, as “a hooligan.” When the interviewer asked if he was exaggerating about his tendency to get into brawls as a schoolboy, Putin took offense.

“You are trying to insult me,” he said. “I was a real thug.”

Masha Gessen, a Russian American journalist and Moscow native, recounts this exchange in a 2012 biography, “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin,” which was praised as “part psychological profile, part conspiracy study” in The New York Times Book Review. To Gessen, Putin’s unabashed description of himself as “a thug” was key to his self-image: someone who could not be bullied, who would lash out unpredictably if he felt slighted and who relished violence.

Understanding Putin and the forces that shaped him has become an urgent global concern, as leaders around the world try to determine his motivations in launching an unprovoked and disastrous invasion of Ukraine , how to best engage with him and how the conflict might evolve .

So far, the military assault appears to be a catastrophic misstep , one that has resulted in crippling economic sanctions and heavy military losses for Russia, as well as mass civilian casualties and destruction in the very Ukrainian cities Putin claims he wants to “liberate.”

To all this, Putin has said, repeatedly, in public comments that the war is going “according to plan.”

As the conflict escalates, the question of what is driving Putin has become an increasingly perplexing one, with no obvious answers, but with enormous consequences : The war will end, some experts say, when the Russian president allows it to end.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .