Very scary…but extremely topical

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.

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An amazing achievement - to get this extensive research . Shocking facts , an eye opener . A must read! Hi

An amazing achievement! One can’t take it for granted tas it’s not a regular journalistic work but an extensive achievement of hard and at times, risky job . An eye opener, worrying picture- a must read!

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weak start - strong finish

the story honestly started out pretty boring and got more and more interesting. if I wasn't interested in the topic as such I probably wouldn't have reached the interesting part but I am glad I did.

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Scary but necessary reading

All our politicians should read this book and understand the malevolent nature of the current regime in Russia. For our sake and for that of the poor Russians who have to live within it.

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Extremely interesting

interesting, shocking and sometimes unbelievable. Occasionally too many names to recall. Definitely worth another listen.

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Informative, jaw dropping account of how Putin came to power and remained

I wanted to understand who Putin is, why he is who he is - this book answered so many questions I had in my head since the start of his war on Ukraine.

If you ever believed the KGB were a thing of the past or were ever in doubt about Putin’s dictatorship and history, his dubiously easy rise to presidency, his aggression, illegal bloodshed, mass murder, secret plots, corruption, fraud, bribery, money laundering, the rise of oligarchy, unimaginable vulgar greed and wealth, organised crime, grand theft of lands and finance that don’t belong to them for the sole benefit of their self-serving selves, inventing crimes against its own country’s business owners in order to steal billions of roubles or dollars as well as committing those individuals to prison camps, then please read this brilliant in depth and insightful book by Catherine Belton.

If only Putin were capable of utilising his intelligence for the greater good of Russian society and globally, instead of gaslighting them purely for himself, Ukraine and the rest of our world would be a safer place. But he is not capable of this human trait, as just like any other ruthless autocratic sociopathic narcissist, he possesses zero empathy for others.

The West cannot escape some responsibility for Putin being able to fund his war. If the greedy, gullible and blinkered high society of the United Kingdom - including the Tory party who unashamedly accepted enormous sums of dirty cash, with London being the biggest laundromat in the world (as well as those in other western nations) had prevented Putin’s infiltration of ill-gotten wealth laundered through the West - perhaps the horrors of what we are witnessing today, could have been avoided.

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Great book

Read with World for Sale and Red Notice (great trio)

The speed is a bit quick so I listened on 0.8x.

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Interesting but narrator not great

I enjoyed the content but the narrator's staccato voice and the slightly high pitch was off putting

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Incredible

Just hoping we get a follow up that deals with the invasion of Ukraine! Incredibly dense with information and has completely changed my understanding of how Russia operates

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detailed descriptions

It is a great book, especially for people who has connection to post soviet era

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