Putin's Prisoner: My Time as a Prisoner of War in Ukraine

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He says he has seen evidence that Russian soldiers have used what are known as "elephant gas masks" to torture civilians across the decades in Chechyna and Ukraine. Film-maker Angus Macqueen has helped create a platform of award-winning documentaries, Russia On Film

Putin: His Life and Times review – the collapse that shaped Putin: His Life and Times review – the collapse that shaped

For Mr Aslin, his experience with the Russian justice system has also left scars. In June last year, with fellow Brit Shaun Pinner and Moroccan national Brahim Saaudun, he was one of three POWs sentenced to death by firing squad. Another low point during the Putin years was the crisis in Ukraine where the ruling dispensation was trying to gain admission into the European Union. Putin convinced the Ukrainian Government to remain within the Russian sphere of influence and the uprisings that happened in Kiev were ruthlessly put down. Eventually, Russia invaded Crimea (a part of Ukraine) which was of strategic importance to Russia. This invited the wrath of the western nations in the form of sanctions. From Putin's point of view, he was probably right in his approach to the crisis because the western powers were trying to undermine the strategic interests of the country. I have never quite read about Russian history. It was always a bit of a mystery to me why Russia and US, after fighting on the same side in WW2 proceeded to have this nuclear arms race and cold war with USA. And why is Russia not as developed as US is, and was considered among the developing BRICS economies in 90s and early 2000's. Since then, China has zoomed ahead of course, and while Russia is still considered hugely influential in global politics, they don't have the economic might you might imagine.

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I think he's a bit of a hero because of that, and I know writing the book was difficult for him," Mr Sweeney said. I saw the elephant gas mask in Kherson police station. And I know that the elephant gas mask torture was used in Izyum. So, what you have is for 23 years a system of torture on a massive scale." I have never previously read about Putin. Altough I knew some things because of my hightened interest in the western reporting of Putin's involvement in Hungarian politics. If you want an in-depth reporting into Putin's life this is most certainly not it. But I am not sure whether there is any which can be acurate regarding the level of secrecy around him. Critics point to Putin’s work for the KGB as revealing the core of the man, as so often investing its members with inhuman powers of control, deception, amorality and evil. Short, instead, places the real shaping of the man both before and after his KGB years. Born in the harsh courtyards of postwar Leningrad, he emerged a cautious operator, shy and unreadable, but with a startling streak of brutality. Working for the city’s famously liberal mayor through the whirlwind of chaos and violence that swept his city and Russia in the early 1990s, he forged lasting bonds with everyone from the new business elite to leading mafia bosses and senior players in the Kremlin. He labelled himself a bureaucrat, not a politician. Avoiding conspicuous consumption and not known for swimming in the oceans of corruption around him, he was at the same time not above buying himself a dissertation towards a Candidate of Sciences degree, whose subject was “Strategic Planning for the Rehabilitation of the Mineral Resources Base in the Leningrad Oblast”. Its true author, according to Short, would later receive “several hundred million dollars’ worth of shares”. Loyalty is a trademark and his friends have done very, very well over the years, as the puritan has spectacularly lost his inhibitions. His subsequent rise was public yet shadowy, a sequence of well-chosen battles engaged when he knew he could win. Who remembers that Putin asked the BBC’s Bridget Kendall to moderate the first of his annual phone-ins to speak to the nation and the world? There is a recording, still accessible on YouTube, of Mr Aslin handcuffed and being interviewed by a British-born pro-Russian blogger Graham Phillips.

Putin: The explosive and extraordinary new biography of Putin: The explosive and extraordinary new biography of

Loved the narrative - brilliant short episodes and a novice level treatment for world politics. The Ukraine Maidan episode (Green men) and the school shootout episodes were brilliant and you were cheering for him. The use of disinformation to tilt scales and vest power - scary, but true! (You only need to look at Fox news).I relished reading about the Cold War years and the novels set in Big Brother times. This book is as gripping, if not more on one man's political shrewdness. He is the man who made Trump grovel at Helsinki! It's the mental toll of doing the propaganda, but it's also the mental toll of being taken out as well," Mr Aslin said. I did not know snipers shot more than 100 student protestors in the Ukraine in 2014. Little green men, the locals called the soldiers that suddenly appeared in the city. You'd go out and they would mention something about the death sentence that's coming, your court case or saying that you're going to be shot." A gripping and explosive account of Vladimir Putin's tyranny, charting his rise from spy to tsar, exposing the events that led to his invasion of Ukraine and his assault on Europe.

Books UK The Russia Conundrum - Penguin Books UK

After the fall of the erstwhile Soviet Union, Russia went into a spiral of violence and dire financial straits under the bumbling leadership of Boris Yeltsin. Russia transformed itself into an era of the free market economy after decades of tight governmental control on the economy, entrepreneurship and finance in the country. But this transformation was far from smooth, and during the reign of Yeltsin, crony capitalism held sway over the country. Rampant crime and corruption were commonplace. Yeltsin’s hold on the country was dithering all the more because of the scourge of addiction to alcohol that he was suffering from. It was at this juncture that the ruling elite decided that a newcomer who would firmly remain in their control should be brought to the helm of affairs in the country.

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Russian politics in the past 2 decades at the highest echelon has revolved around one man and this takes a look at some instances of his journey from the clearly unsavvy media engagement at the start to how he controls the global narrative. How probably placed in as a nobody to keep the seat warm or a puppet with strings but he cut off those strings and choked (figuratively) the very people who had attached the strings. It also captures the tussles internally and externally with Crimea and Ukraine getting their spotlight. Mr Aslin said he made himself a promise at the time that if he made it out alive he would tell that soldier's story. It features in his new book, Putin's Prisoner: My Time as a Prisoner of War in Ukraine.

Killer in the Kremlin: The instant bestseller - a gripping

The worst part is I don't even know his name. I don't know what unit he was from. All I know is he was a tanker," he said. Singled out by Russian forcesLoyalty is a trademark and his friends have done very, very well over the years’: Putin speaking at a rally in Moscow, February 2012. Photograph: Yuri Kadobnov/AFP/Getty Images And the history of where he started is as dramatic as his exploits have been so far. This audible series is not all that detailed, but it gives you a very good introduction of how someone installed as a puppet, can refuse to be one and end up taking the power that was not meant to be his. Some of the anecdotes just show how Putin does indeed live up to the Bond villain persona attributed to him. The 29-year-old was one of the last defenders of the besieged city of Mariupol. In April last year, his unit surrendered when they ran out of food and ammunition, after mounting a two-month resistance inside the Ilyich Steelworks. Mikhail Khodorkovsky has seen behind the mask of Vladimir Putin. Once an oil tycoon and the richest man in Russia, Khodorkovsky spoke out against the corruption of Putin's regime - and was punished by the Kremlin, stripped of his entire wealth and jailed for over ten years. What Mr Aslin has been through in the past year and a half has been incredibly traumatising. In writing his book, he has had to relive that trauma within months of being released.