Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West – Catherine Belton

Description

To understand the world you are living in — the wars, the disinformation, the political interference, the energy crises, and the specific texture of global instability that defines the 21st century — you need to understand one story. How a small group of KGB operatives, led by a former intelligence officer from St. Petersburg, took advantage of the chaos of the Soviet collapse to seize control of the Russian state, its natural resources, its financial system, and ultimately its relationship with the rest of the world.

Catherine Belton — former Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times and one of the most decorated investigative journalists covering Russia — spent years conducting the interviews, building the sources, and assembling the evidence that produced Putin’s People. The result is the most comprehensively researched, most authoritatively sourced, and most consequential work of non-fiction published in the 21st century on the subject of Russian power.

Available now on Cliffmatt Books for only Ksh 100.

What This Book Reveals:

The KGB’s Long Game:

• How the KGB — far from being dismantled with the Soviet Union — survived, adapted, and systematically repositioned itself to take back control of Russia during the chaotic 1990s
• The specific network of former KGB officers — Putin’s people — who used the cover of the post-Soviet economic free-for-all to seize strategic assets, build financial empires, and accumulate the specific kind of power that cannot be voted away
• Why the conventional Western narrative of Russia’s 1990s — a chaotic but genuine attempt at democratic transition — missed what was actually happening beneath the surface of the reforms
• The specific mechanism by which a KGB lieutenant colonel from St. Petersburg became the most powerful man in the world’s largest country — not by popular mandate but by the patient, strategic placement of loyal operatives at every node of economic and political power

The Looting of Russia:

• How the privatisation of Soviet state assets — presented to the world as the creation of a market economy — was actually the systematic transfer of national wealth into the hands of a small group of people with the right KGB connections
• The specific financial structures — offshore accounts, shell companies, compliant Western banks — through which Russian state wealth was extracted, hidden, and deployed
• The oligarchs — who they are, how they made their money, which ones genuinely made independent fortunes and which ones are effectively custodians of Kremlin wealth
• Why the distinction between “Putin’s money” and “Russia’s money” is largely fictitious — the specific financial architecture that makes the Russian state and its leadership’s personal enrichment effectively indistinguishable
• For Kenyan readers: the specific parallels — not identical but structurally recognisable — between the mechanisms of elite capture that Belton documents in Russia and the specific patterns of state capture that Kenyan readers recognise from their own political experience

Turning on the West:

• How Russian money penetrated Western financial systems — London, Cyprus, Switzerland, the United States — with the specific complicity of Western banks, law firms, and property markets that profited from not asking where the money came from
• The specific political interference operations — in elections, in media, in think tanks, in political parties — that Putin’s network deployed across Europe and America
• Why the West was so slow to see what was happening — the specific ideological, financial, and institutional blindspots that allowed a KGB operation of extraordinary ambition to operate in plain sight for two decades
• The Ukraine dimension — how Ukraine became the specific point of confrontation between Putin’s project of Soviet restoration and the democratic order he had spent twenty years infiltrating and corrupting
• For Kenyan readers: Russia’s Africa strategy — its specific use of the Wagner Group, disinformation operations, and elite corruption in African countries including neighbours of Kenya — makes this not just a story about Europe and America but a story with direct African relevance

The System Putin Built:

• The siloviki — the security service veterans who form the inner circle of Russian power; who they are, how they think, and what they want
• The specific ideology — not communism, not conventional nationalism, but a specific blend of KGB institutional loyalty, Orthodox Christian civilisational claim, and imperial nostalgia — that holds Putin’s system together
• Why the system is more durable than it looks — the specific mechanisms of control, co-optation, and fear that have kept it stable despite its evident dysfunctions
• The business model of Russian power — how the Kremlin maintains loyalty through the controlled distribution of access to theft; why the people inside the system have overwhelming financial incentives to maintain it

The Investigative Journalism Behind the Book:

• How Belton built her sources — the specific courage, patience, and professional skill required to report on a system that has killed journalists who got too close
• The legal war against the book — how multiple Russian oligarchs sued Belton and her publisher upon publication; and why those lawsuits, ultimately unsuccessful, are themselves evidence of how accurately the book hit its targets
• Why Putin’s People is considered definitive — the specific combination of source depth, document access, and analytical framework that makes it the authoritative account rather than one of many
• The awards and recognition — shortlisted for multiple major awards; praised by every serious commentator on Russia and geopolitics as essential reading

Why Putin’s People Is Essential Reading for Kenyans in 2025:

Russia’s relationship with Africa — and specifically with Kenya’s neighbourhood — has intensified dramatically. Wagner Group operations in Sudan, Somalia, and across the Sahel; Russian diplomatic and disinformation activity across the continent; the specific use of food security, energy, and debt as geopolitical levers — all of these are extensions of the system Belton documents. Understanding how that system works, who built it, and what it wants is not optional for any Kenyan who wants to understand the geopolitical environment their country is navigating.

Beyond the geopolitics, Putin’s People is one of the most important books ever written about how state capture actually works — how a small, connected elite uses the apparatus of a state to enrich itself while appearing to govern in the public interest. That story has direct relevance everywhere in the world, including Kenya.

Who This Book Is For:

• Every Kenyan with a serious interest in global politics, geopolitics, and the specific forces shaping the international environment Kenya operates in
• University students and academics in political science, international relations, economics, and history who want the most thoroughly researched account of how authoritarian kleptocracy actually works
• Kenyan journalists, civil society leaders, and anti-corruption researchers who want the most detailed case study available of how state capture operates at the highest level
• Business and finance professionals who want to understand the specific mechanisms of money laundering, offshore finance, and the political economy of corruption
• Readers of The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Perkins), Dead Aid (Moyo), The Future of Capitalism (Collier), and The Whole Truth (Baldacci) who want the most rigorously evidenced account of how power and money actually work at global scale

📖 Author: Catherine Belton 📄 Format: PDF eBook (instant download via WhatsApp or email) 💰 Price: Ksh 100 only 🚀 Delivery: Instant after M-Pesa payment confirmation 👉 Order now on cliffmatt.co.ke — Pay via M-Pesa, receive your PDF instantly.