The raging question in the world today is who is the real Vladimir Putin and what are his intentions. Karen Dawisha’s research provides an answer, describing how Putin got to power, the cabal he brought with him, the billions they have looted, and his plan to restore the Greater Russia. She presents extensive new evidence about the Putin circle’s use of public positions for personal gain even before Putin became president in 2000. She documents the establishment of Bank Rossiya, now sanctioned by the US; the rise of the Ozero cooperative, founded by Putin and others who are now subject to visa bans and asset freezes; the links between Putin, Petromed, and “Putin’s Palace” near Sochi; and the role of security officials from Putin’s KGB days in Leningrad and Dresden, many of whom have maintained their contacts with Russian organized crime.

Karen Dawisha is the Walter E. Havighurst Professor of Political Science and founding director of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She received her Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, and her research and teaching focus on post-communist transitions and Russian politics. Dawisha’s latest work, Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? (Simon & Schuster 2014), chronicles the rise of Vladimir Putin during his time in St. Petersburg in the 1990s. With painstaking research to support her claims, Dawisha exposes how Putin’s friends and coworkers from his formative years have accumulated mass amounts of wealth and power. She has been featured in the New York Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs, and has spoken at the Woodrow Wilson Center, U.S. State Department, and the Hudson Institute.