How Putin rose to power is spelled out by Russian journalist Masha Gessen. She says Putin, a KGB operative with little government experience before he was first elected in 1999, was specifically selected by the elite cohort that surrounded former President Boris Yeltsin.
Journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser are with The Washington Post. From 2001 to 2004, the pair, who are married, served as the Moscow bureau chiefs for the Post. The two have collaborated on a new book, Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the End of Revolution. In it, Baker and Glasser describe President Vladimir Putin’s shift away from democracy toward what they call authoritarianism.
In the The New Yorker, Michael Specter writes about the murders of 13 journalists in Russia that have taken place since Vladimir Putin took office in 1999. Specter’s article is “Kremlin, Inc: Why are Vladimir Putin’s opponents dying?”
