The Kremlins Vote

A plot against the United States' election, born in Moscow . . . Two top US officials are gunned down while visiting London. A trail of deception misleads the CIA. And former intelligence operative Jayne Robinson is viciously targeted during a high-risk foray into Russia. Robinson, previously a long-term MI6 officer, is covertly deployed by the CIA in a deniable operation to handle one of its biggest assets in the Kremlin and to get to the bottom of a threat that seems likely to engulf the White House-just as the next presidential election looms. The mission becomes deeply personal for Robinson when it emerges one of the victims is married to one of her best and oldest friends. But nothing is what it seems in this vortex of deception and deceit. As she gets closer to the truth behind the killings, Robinson finds herself challenged to the core while fending off threats from unexpected directions. The Kremlin's Vote, book number one in the Jayne Robinson series, is a gripping modern spy thriller with unexpected twists that will be difficult to put down.

In the freezing winter of 2011, in what was a watershed moment, 100,000 took to Moscow’s streets to protest Putin’s landslide election victory amid widespread allegations of corruption and vote-rigging. A few months later, Pussy Riot hit headlines around the world when they were arrested following their anti-Putin demonstration in a Russian Orthodox cathedral. Now, Marc Bennetts takes us straight to the beating heart of the opposition movement, introducing a generation of Russian dissidents, all united by their hatred of Putin and his bid to silence all political adversaries. We meet a bustling cast of urban youth, blogging and tweeting to expose the injustices of the regime, and a rag-tag bunch of dissenters – from Bolshoi ballerinas to skinhead nationalists. Featuring interviews with everyone from Gary Kasparov to top Kremlin loyalists, this is the definitive guide to the vicious battle for Russia’s soul.

Following his re-election on 18 March 2018, by a respectable but not wholly earned margin of victory, Vladimir Putin will embark on what will, under present constitutional arrangements, be his final six-year term in office. Putin’s Russia is ruled by an opaque and shifting power structure centred on the Kremlin. It is now devoid of authoritative institutions beyond that framework that would enable Russia to develop into a fully functional or accountable state. The main objective of the incumbent regime is to protect its hold on power. It will therefore continue, between now and 2024, to follow the three main policy guidelines set by Putin in 2012: to do without significant structural economic reforms because of the political risks attached to them; to control the population; and to pursue ‘great power’ ambitions.Notwithstanding some modest economic recovery latterly, all indications are that economic performance will be mediocre at best in the coming years. A context of ‘neo-stagnation’ is anticipated. The domestic interests of the population at large will continue to take second place to the security and military expenditure favoured by the leadership. Managing the relationship between the regions and the federal centre will take imagination and care.The ‘vertical of power’ of Putin’s vision is not the coherent structure that its name suggests. Shifting ‘understandings’ of what is permitted or required determine patterns of behaviour, not clear laws or independent courts. The FSB, the successor to the KGB, operates at the heart of the system – at times in rivalry with other agencies – both as a disparate security collective and as a group with its own interests in fleecing the public. Corruption is inherent in the Putinist order of things. The natural pathology of these factors is for repression and extortion to continue to rise.As 2024 approaches, the question of who or what will replace Putin will come increasingly to the fore. There is already a sense that Russia is entering a post-Putin era. The vote for him on 18 March is one of accepting the inevitable, not a personal triumph. There is no organized group around him to manage an eventual replacement, or to be ready to consider what his successor’s (or successors’) objectives should be.Putin’s abiding commitment to Russia’s right to be a great power, dominant over its neighbours, was once more made plain in his ‘state of the nation’ address to the Federal Assembly on 1 March, along with the distortions that go with it. The use, just two weeks before the presidential election, of a military-grade nerve agent to poison a former GRU officer and his daughter in the UK city of Salisbury has reinforced the case for greater vigilance as to the real nature of the present Kremlin.The West should pay close attention to the Kremlin’s human rights record over the next several years, and the way it fits with Russia’s existing international obligations. The exercise of justice is a basic obligation of all states, and a clear indicator of a country’s future development. Putin’s Kremlin is not the whole of Russia: the Russian people will to an important degree judge the countries of the West by their moral record in considering what may be good for Russia in due course.

A forensics approach to detecting election fraud -- The fingerprints of fraud -- Russia -- Ukraine 2004 -- Ukraine 2006 and 2007 -- The United States.

Water torture . . . A US army dam engineer is targeted in a Kremlin honeytrap and a Russian mole killed in Ukraine after passing on key information to the CIA. The question is why? Operative Jayne Robinson is asked to find out. As Moscow prepares to invade Ukraine, Robinson uncovers evidence of a Russian plot, masterminded by a mystery Kremlin puppet, to destroy a critical hydroelectric dam. But which one? As the young dam engineer disappears after hearing too much, apparently kidnapped by a dangerous Russian seductress, Robinson finds herself in a desperate race against time down the River Danube to locate him. Nothing is what it seems: Robinson is forced to take on spiraling risks-urged on by a US President who is preparing for a visit to Kyiv to support his Ukrainian counterpart. To make progress, Robinson gets involved in a high-stakes game of international poker with a top-level asset inside the Russian president's inner circle-who was recruited under coercion. But with the threat of a biblical-scale flood looming, can the asset now be trusted? Can Robinson find out which dam is at risk? Which shadowy figure is behind the plot to destroy it? And can her knife-edge operation to rescue the missing engineer succeed? The DAM KEEPER, book number five in the internationally top-selling Jayne Robinson series, is another gripping spy thriller with dramatic twists that will keep readers up deep into the night.

An extraordinary behind-the-scenes portrait of the court of Vladimir Putin, the oligarchs that surround it, and the many moods of modern Russia that reads like a "real House of Cards"(Lev Lurie). All the Kremlin's Men is a gripping narrative of an accidental king and a court out of control. Based on an unprecedented series of interviews with Vladimir Putin's inner circle, this book presents a radically different view of power and politics in Russia. The image of Putin as a strongman is dissolved. In its place is a weary figurehead buffeted--if not controlled--by the men who at once advise and deceive him. The regional governors and bureaucratic leaders are immovable objects, far more powerful in their fiefdoms than the president himself. So are the gatekeepers-those officials who guard the pathways to power-on whom Putin depends as much as they rely on him. The tenuous edifice is filled with all of the intrigue and plotting of a Medici court, as enemies of the state are invented and wars begun to justify personal gains, internal rivalries, or one faction's biased advantage. A bestseller in Russia, All the Kremlin's Men is a shocking revisionist portrait of the Putin era and a dazzling reconstruction of the machinations of courtiers running riot.

In The Kremlin's Noose Amy Knight tells the riveting story of Vladimir Putin and the oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who forged a relationship in the early years of the Yeltsin era. Berezovsky later played a crucial role in Putin's rise to the Russian presidency in March 2000. When Putin began dismantling Boris Yeltsin's democratic reforms, Berezovsky came into conflict with the new Russian leader by reproaching him publicly. Their relationship quickly disintegrated into a bitter feud played out against the backdrop of billion-dollar financial deals, Kremlin in-fighting, and international politics. Dubbed the "Godfather of the Kremlin" by the slain Russian-American journalist Paul Klebnikov, Berezovsky was a successful businessman and media mogul who had an outsized role in Russia after 1991. Worth a reported $3 billion by 1997, Berezovsky engineered the reelection of Yeltsin as president in 1996 and negotiated an end to the 1995–96 Chechen war. Despite his own wealth, power, and influence, once he became Putin's enemy, Berezovsky was forced into exile in Britain, where he waged a determined campaign to topple Putin. Kremlin authorities responded with bogus criminal charges and demanded Berezovsky's extradition. Death threats soon followed. In March 2013, after losing a British court battle with another Russian oligarch, Berezovsky was found dead at his ex-wife's mansion outside London. Whether he died from suicide or murder remains a mystery. The Kremlin's Noose sheds crucial new light on the Kremlin's volatile politics under Yeltsin and Putin, helping us understand why democracy in Russia failed so badly. Knight provides a fascinating narrative of Putin's rise to power and his authoritarian rule, told through the prism of his relationship with Russia's once most powerful oligarch, Boris Berezovsky.