This Audible production has me wondering how my life could have been quite different if I'd followed that path instead of the translation path. A fruitless wondering of course, but I can't help myself. He says he has seen evidence that Russian soldiers have used what are known as "elephant gas masks" to torture civilians across the decades in Chechyna and Ukraine. I have never previously read about Putin. Altough I knew some things because of my hightened interest in the western reporting of Putin's involvement in Hungarian politics. If you want an in-depth reporting into Putin's life this is most certainly not it. But I am not sure whether there is any which can be acurate regarding the level of secrecy around him. But for someone like me who is not aware about the Russian history, this book provided interesting tidbits about how the USSR came to be the Russia as it is now.

Putin: The explosive and extraordinary new biography of Putin: The explosive and extraordinary new biography of

Russian politics in the past 2 decades at the highest echelon has revolved around one man and this takes a look at some instances of his journey from the clearly unsavvy media engagement at the start to how he controls the global narrative. How probably placed in as a nobody to keep the seat warm or a puppet with strings but he cut off those strings and choked (figuratively) the very people who had attached the strings. It also captures the tussles internally and externally with Crimea and Ukraine getting their spotlight. Then later we heard the medic give the time of death. Just hearing it and then knowing that person is now dead. He'd only been in the custody of that prison for 20 minutes."It's the mental toll of doing the propaganda, but it's also the mental toll of being taken out as well," Mr Aslin said. After the fall of the erstwhile Soviet Union, Russia went into a spiral of violence and dire financial straits under the bumbling leadership of Boris Yeltsin. Russia transformed itself into an era of the free market economy after decades of tight governmental control on the economy, entrepreneurship and finance in the country. But this transformation was far from smooth, and during the reign of Yeltsin, crony capitalism held sway over the country. Rampant crime and corruption were commonplace. Yeltsin’s hold on the country was dithering all the more because of the scourge of addiction to alcohol that he was suffering from. It was at this juncture that the ruling elite decided that a newcomer who would firmly remain in their control should be brought to the helm of affairs in the country. What Mr Aslin has been through in the past year and a half has been incredibly traumatising. In writing his book, he has had to relive that trauma within months of being released. The separatist uprising in Chechnya was another challenge that Putin faced early on in his tenure as the President. Islamic terror had raised its ugly head in the Muslim dominated province conveniently camouflaged as a fight for independence. The western nations found this to be a perfect situation to destabilise the Putin regime and they left no stone unturned in trying to foment trouble in the restive province. The Beslan hostage-taking incident by Chechen separatists led to the death of almost 300 children primarily due to the inept handling of the situation by the Russian Government. But Putin used this tragedy to ensure a stranglehold on the provinces where he installed his cronies to head the local governments.

Books UK Killer in the Kremlin - Penguin Books UK

These people need to be found and sentenced and I think the only way for that to happen is to have something similar to The Hague or some huge war crimes tribunal."I'm a fairly calm fellow; I don't usually get het up about things. But I was, let's say, concerned when I tuned into the Moscow Echo radio station and heard that the Kremlin had put a price on my head. The announcement didn't quite say 'dead or alive'. But it came close...' Mikhail Khodorkovsky, March 2021

Books UK The Russia Conundrum - Penguin Books UK

And then the other side of it, that was very heavy on me because I didn't want to say any of this stuff because anyone who's ever followed me for years, they know that I'm extremely pro-Ukrainian and pro-freedom."We heard the guard beating him with the truncheon. But the difference this time was when he was doing it, there were no screams or anything," he told 7.30 in Kyiv. They took me to Donetsk. There was some guy waiting there. He just continued to beat me with a police baton. And this is where that scar came from," he said pointing at his forehead. Mr Aslin wrote Putin's Prisoner with John Sweeney, the legendary British war reporter who for over 20 years has documented how the Kremlin's troops have tortured both civilians and POWs. Mikhail Khodorkovsky has seen behind the mask of Vladimir Putin. Once an oil tycoon and the richest man in Russia, Khodorkovsky spoke out against the corruption of Putin's regime - and was punished by the Kremlin, stripped of his entire wealth and jailed for over ten years. Now freed, working as a pro-democracy campaigner in enforced exile, Khodorkovsky brings us the insider's battle to save his country's soul. Offering an urgent analysis of what has gone wrong with Putin, The Russia Conundrum maps the country's rise and fall against Khodorkovsky's own journey, from Soviet youth to international oil executive, powerful insider to political dissident, and now a high-profile voice seeking to reconcile East and West.

Aiden was beaten and tortured by his Russian captors. Then

In April 2021, Putin changed the law to allow himself to be President until 2036. So, I guess he doesn't plan to be going anywhere. I'm not sure that is a good thing for the world, or for Russians who are in dire straits; suicide is rampant. When some of the hardest people on earth are driven to that, there is something very wrong. He was beaten, stabbed, tortured and forced to record propaganda videos. He was then sentenced to death by a sham court in Donetsk. There is a recording, still accessible on YouTube, of Mr Aslin handcuffed and being interviewed by a British-born pro-Russian blogger Graham Phillips.This audiobook can be described as an introduction to the topic , the history and what makes Putin so formidable. The narration and the effects are really nice and creates the sense of anticipation and intrigue about the outcomes. In that way the performance is really nice. The worst part is I don't even know his name. I don't know what unit he was from. All I know is he was a tanker," he said. Singled out by Russian forces I did not know snipers shot more than 100 student protestors in the Ukraine in 2014. Little green men, the locals called the soldiers that suddenly appeared in the city. For Mr Aslin, his experience with the Russian justice system has also left scars. In June last year, with fellow Brit Shaun Pinner and Moroccan national Brahim Saaudun, he was one of three POWs sentenced to death by firing squad.