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Putin’s People

How the KGB Took Back Russia and then Took on the West

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Putin’s People

By: Catherine Belton
Narrated by: Dugald Bruce-Lockhart
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THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

‘An outstanding exposé of Putin and his criminal pals’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘Her much-awaited book is the best and most important on modern Russia’ THE TIMES

A chilling and revelatory expose of the KGB’s renaissance, Putin’s rise to power, and how Russian black cash is subverting the world.

In Putin’s People, former Moscow correspondent and investigative journalist Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and his entourage of KGB men seized power in Russia and built a new league of oligarchs.

Through exclusive interviews with key inside players, Belton tells how Putin’s people conducted their relentless seizure of private companies, took over the economy, siphoned billions, blurred the lines between organised crime and political powers, shut down opponents, and then used their riches and power to extend influence in the West.

In a story that ranges from Moscow to London, Switzerland and Trump’s America, Putin’s People is a gripping and terrifying account of how hopes for the new Russia went astray, with stark consequences for its inhabitants and, increasingly, the world.

‘A fearless, fascinating account … Reads at times like a John le Carré novel … A groundbreaking and meticulously researched anatomy of the Putin regime, Belton’s book shines a light on the pernicious threats Russian money and influence now pose to the west’ Guardian

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Critic reviews

‘This is the most remarkable account so far of Putin’s rise … Groundbreaking … several hair-raising revelations … Relentless and convincing. There are gobsmacking moments … This is a superb book’
OBSERVER
‘A fearless, fascinating account … Reads at times like a John le Carré novel… A groundbreaking and meticulously researched anatomy of the Putin regime, Belton’s book shines a light on the pernicious threats Russian money and influence now pose to the west’
GUARDIAN
‘Modern Russia in full, horrifying technicolour … this riveting, immaculately researched book is arguably the best single volume written about Putin, the people around him and perhaps even about contemporary Russia itself in the past three decades’
PETER FRANKOPAN, FINANCIAL TIMES
‘Books about modern Russia abound … Belton has surpassed them all. Her much-awaited book is the best and most important on modern Russia. It benefits from a meticulous compilation of open sources, but also from the accounts of disillusioned Kremlin insiders, former business cronies and some remarkably candid people still high up in the system. The result is hair-raising.’
THE TIMES
‘An outstanding exposé of Putin and his criminal pals … [A] long-awaited, must read book’
SUNDAY TIMES
‘Arguably the biggest story of the 21st century so far. In forensically unravelling it, journalist Catherine Belton has done a great service, producing a book that western experts on modern Russia acknowledge as vital to our understanding of the Putin phenomenon’
DAILY MAIL, BOOK OF THE WEEK
‘A serious, absolutely timely warning. No book has documented the Russian president’s leadership so indefatigably and compellingly’
DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘Meticulously researched and superbly written; terrifying in its scope and utterly convincing in its argument … The Putin book that we've been waiting for’
OLIVER BULLOUGH
‘An extraordinarily important book’
CHRIS PATTEN
All stars
Most relevant
Have often wondered how Russia operates and functions and this gives a good explanation of the current leaderships drivers and processes. really interesting and quite a damnation of western politicians, bankers and business leaders over there handling and dealings with Russia. I suspect this book may be the first of many looking to expose the corruption of Russia and the corruption of western politicians, bankers and businessmen.

Thought Provoking

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A great dissection of how Putin rose to power and how his methodology has further corrupted western democracy and economics. The damage may be irreparable but it's still worth arming yourself with the truth just in case.

brilliant and terrifying

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meticulously stitched together.
How Russia has taken over the world without the majority of people realising

a World financed by the Russian mafia

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I hope Catherine Bolton is a pseudonym and that Ms Bolton is really an Australian man, say, living in complete safety on the other side of the world. Because, if a fraction of this book is true, people have been killed for knowing and saying a lot less about the evil rise of Vladimir Putin than Catherine has committed to paper here. I thought I was not naive. I remember Anna Politkovskaya, murdered for reporting on the second Chechen war; Litvinenko and the Polonium tea; Berezovsky, Nemtsov, Magnitsky, Schripol; but to strongly imply that the ‘terrorist’ bombs in Moscow that killed more than 300 Russian civilians and provided the pretext for Putin to bomb Chechnya, was a cynical false flag operation to create a strong-leader profile for Putin leading up to his takeover as President from Yeltsin - that was news to me. And deeply shocking: could any group of people conspire so cynically? That Putin was so deeply involved in Mafia-style crime in St Petersburg that he first had to help Sobchak (his old mentor and mayor of St Pete’s) skip Russia, and then shortly after Sobchak felt safe to return following Putin’s rise to power, his heart mysteriously stopped, age 62. Wow. Like I said, very, very scary, this book.

I tend to divide history books into ‘worthy’ and ‘rollicking’, and I have a strong preference for the rollicking style - colourful characters and a fast narrative. As a reader I’m like, ‘don’t bother to cite your sources, love, I’m only going to forget them the moment I put the book down’. (I didn’t even bother to review 1776 because it really was worthy, blow by blow military history as it happened). This book falls into the ‘worthy’ category but it is suddenly SO RELEVANT that it doesn’t need to rollick. It is hard to follow with all the Russian names - I had to listen to the whole book twice, played at 0.8 speed. It was worth it. This is a must-read right now.

Very scary…but extremely topical

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A very thorough piece of work, but the way it is read was infuriating - read like a series of statements with very deliberate pauses between each sentence. I found myself too annoyed to listen to it after a while. Shame.

Poorly read.

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