Book Review: Putin's People by Catherine Belton

Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West - Catherine Belton

Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West by Catherine Belton | Goodreads

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Highly Recommended

Catherine Belton’s Putin’s People is less a conventional political biography and more a forensic examination of how money, power, and state institutions fused to produce modern Russia under Vladimir Putin. For readers seeking to understand Putin not just as a man, but as a system, this book is essential reading—even if it leaves you uneasy about where responsibility truly lies. 

Origins: Perestroika, Collapse, and the Intelligence State

Belton begins the narrative in the early 1990s, just before the Soviet Union collapsed. Russia lagged far behind the West technologically, while Dresden - where Putin served as a KGB officer- had become a hub for smuggling and covert intelligence networks.  During Perestroika, KGB closely monitored the Soviet Union’s deepening economic crisis, even as they failed to anticipate the full scale of its collapse. These chaotic times, the book suggests, profoundly shaped Putin’s worldview: secrecy mattered more than transparency, control more than openness, and the state above all else.

The 1990s: Oligarchs, Chaos, and Opportunity

A pivotal moment came in 1995 with the “loans-for-shares” scheme. Cash-strapped, the Russian government borrowed from private banks, offering shares in major state enterprises as collateral. When the state defaulted, these shares were auctioned off at laughably low prices, creating Russia’s oligarch class almost overnight. Wealth concentrated in a handful of businessmen close to Boris Yeltsin, inequality soared, and privatization became synonymous with corruption and asset stripping rather than investment. 

The book documents the ruble’s devaluation, the loss of nearly $40 billion in 1998 to Russian government, and the moment Russia teetered on the edge of debt default and financial collapse. Out of this near-failure emerged a centralized kleptocracy—or “state capitalist” model—where power fed inward while hollowing out the state.

During this turbulent decade that Vladimir Putin rose quietly but steadily through the ranks of St. Petersburg’s city administration, serving as an adviser and deputy to Mayor Anatoly Sobchak. This positioned him as a key power broker in Russia’s second-largest city. At this juncture, I see him as a far more brutal and corrupt real-world counterpart to Mike McLusky from Mayor of Kingstown: both figures wield informal influence in gritty, lawless systems where official rules matter less than personal leverage.  

The book then describes his ascent to the prime minister as a KGB loyalist and then to presidency as a peaceful transition of power. Putin presented himself as a restorer of the Russian state, insisting that all of Russia’s history—no matter how brutal—should be honored and preserved.

Crushing the Oligarchs: The Khodorkovsky Case

One of the book’s strongest threads is the power struggle between Putin and the oligarchs, epitomized by his clash with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, CEO of Yukos. Khodorkovsky’s arrest in 2003, after publicly challenging Putin over corruption, marked a turning point. It was widely seen as a warning shot to independent oligarchs: political autonomy would not be tolerated. The narrative tracks how the Kremlin systematically captured state institutions and strategic sectors, particularly oil and gas. 

Catherine Belton excels in stating how western financial interests especially from EU eager to stay invested in Russian energy, largely ignored concerns over legal abuse and democratic backsliding. This complacency reflected a broader Western arrogance - viewing post-Soviet Russia as a weakened resource piñata rather than a future strategic threat.

The System Consolidates: Money, Institutions, and Ideology

London emerged as a key stage in this drama: a global hub where Russian money flowed freely, often outweighing security concerns. Catherine Belton links Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump to the same ecosystem of Russian-linked money and influence, suggesting both episodes exposed how Western democracies could be nudged, financed, or amplified by businessmen aligned with the Kremlin’s broader strategic goals.

Belton presents Putin as a modern-day Tsar: shaped by Cold War memories and determined to restore Russia’s lost stature. Belton also traces Putin’s broader geopolitical goals: the de-Americanisation of Europe - an effort aided by Western political fractures and figures who openly questioned long-standing alliances. 

Belton also notes, almost in passing, how the Kremlin quietly leaned on the Orthodox Church as a moral counterweight to Western liberalism, reviving older ideas like “Moscow as the Third Rome,” with echoes of Alexander Dugin’s Eurasian thinking.

What the Book Does—and Doesn’t—Do

Still, Belton’s achievement is substantial. A journalist with more than 15 years of reporting experience in Russia, she lays bare how Russian wealth and political leverage became corrosive forces within Western institutions themselves.  The book touches only lightly on how Putin’s rise affected ordinary Russian citizens. The social dimension of this transformation often feels underexplored. Notably, the book contains no documented discussion of CIA involvement. Reviews emphasize KGB and FSB activities, money laundering, and Western complicity, but the absence of CIA analysis feels questionable given the broader geopolitical comparisons being made.

Final Assessment

Putin’s People offer a sobering portrait of Russia’s journey—from post-Soviet collapse, through oligarch-driven chaos, to a tightly controlled system under Putin that blends authoritarian politics with financial discipline and strategic ruthlessness. This book is not a sentimental book, nor a populist one. It is, instead, a cold ledger of how power is built, defended, and exported.