Understand | Inside Putin’s head

How did we arrive, a year ago now, at the outbreak of a war in Ukraine? The answer to this question, reduced to its simplest expression, can be summed up in one word: Putin. The great person responsible for this murderous invasion is him. Hence the importance of understanding what its true nature is and what drives it. Our editorial writer Alexandre Sirois offers you today four sources to try to see more clearly.

Putin thehomo sovieticus

In the late 1990s, the publication of black book of communism, where we identified the excesses of this ideology, had caused a stir. Today, in this new “black book”, specialists decipher the Putin phenomenon in about twenty chapters on as many themes. Their indictment is as implacable as it is instructive. Among other things because it demonstrates the consistency of Putin’s logic. Convinced that the dissolution of the USSR was the worst geopolitical tragedy of the last century, Putin, “a cruel and cold being, trained in the political school of the old KGB”, seeks to restore Russia to greatness. This means, upstream, deploying efforts to “radically change the mentalities of the Russian population and prepare them for the exploit and the sacrifice in the name of the fatherland”. Downstream, this means in particular waging war “against the principles that the West is supposed to embody” and embarking on bloody “conquests”. The essay is both instructive and terrifying. And it explains Putin’s “Ukrainian obsession”, while accompanying it with a warning: Russia must be “severely” punished “for its aggression and must not be allowed to start again”.

Putin’s Black Book

Under the direction of Galia Ackerman and Stéphane Courtois

Robert Laffont/Perrin

453 pages

Putin the Godfather

Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen is something of a whistleblower. She has long understood that “Putin’s goals are brutality, domination and unlimited power”. For many years, she repeats it on all the stands. Putin, the faceless man, where she reveals the true nature of the Russian tyrant, was originally published in 2012. It has just been republished with an unpublished foreword and that is very good news. Because it has not aged a bit and remains one of the most enlightening works on the Russian politician, but also on the system he put in place after his arrival at the head of the country at the very end of 1999. Masha Gessen investigated the workings of this system “based on absolute control”. She takes us with her behind the scenes of this mafia state, where those who dare to challenge the godfather Putin are often, brutally and summarily, eliminated.

Putin, the faceless man

Masha Gessen

Fayard

340 pages

Putin 101

This book by Briton Darryl Cunningham can be summed up easily: it is essentially a condensed, comic strip, of a handful of essays on Putin (including that of Masha Gessen). In short, if this book were a course, it would be Putin 101. This is what makes it interesting, for anyone who wants to quickly understand how Putin’s transformation took place, “from a bureaucrat who saw himself to entrust the destinies of an immense country to a megalomaniac dictator”. And how the consolidation of his power is the source of terrible slippages, inside and outside Russia. The most recent being of course the invasion of Ukraine. It is that for the Russian president, “there is no Russian empire without Ukraine”, explains the cartoonist. “With his culture and his resources, that’s what he’s trying to recover. As a good old-timer of the KGB, he wants to rediscover the old days of Soviet power. »

Putin: the rise of a dictator

Darryl Cunningham

Delcourt

160 pages

Putin the chief poisoner

From the first episode of Putin Poisonthis short series produced by journalists from Agence France-Presse (AFP), it feels like being immersed in a podcast type crime documentary (true crime). Normal. Vladimir Putin’s most famous rival for the past decade, Alexei Navalny, is the main character of this podcast. And he was the target of a spectacular poisoning attempt two and a half years ago. But this is far from being the only reason to be interested in the fate of this Russian opponent, today in prison. Its history is that of the autocratic system put in place by Putin, which neutralizes the dissidents deemed the most threatening and which stifles any dispute in the bud. It is therefore also that of the consolidation of Putin’s power, in defiance of the human rights and freedoms of the Russian people.