A Russian investigative duo publishes a quarter-century portrait of Vladimir Putin
Roman Badanine and Mikhaïl Roubine's inquiry "Le Tsar en personne" reaches French bookshops on September 17, with Le Monde running exclusive excerpts and an interview with Badanine.
Le Monde is publishing extensive excerpts from "Le Tsar en personne," a book-length investigation into Vladimir Putin's quarter-century in power, co-written by journalists Roman Badanine and Mikhaïl Roubine. The book arrives in French bookshops on September 17, according to Le Monde.
In an interview accompanying the excerpts, Badanine argues that the war in Ukraine should be understood above all as a tool for Putin's political survival rather than as the expression of any fixed ideology. "Pour Poutine, la guerre en Ukraine n'est qu'un moyen de se maintenir au pouvoir," he told Le Monde.
According to Le Monde, the two authors set out to dismantle what they describe as the lies underpinning the Putin regime, presenting a portrait of a leader driven less by doctrine than by an unlimited cynicism about the exercise of power.
The paper frames the book as an "enquête choc," a description that signals its ambition to reassess the record of Putin's twenty-five years in office rather than to add a routine biography to the shelf.
No publisher, translator or further details of the book's contents were given in the material reviewed here.
Sources
This article was written from these reports.
