Master of mayhem

The West has appeased Russian dictator Vladimir Putin for far too long, argues UK war reporter John Sweeney in his latest book.

- ANDREW ANTHONY

That Vladimir Putin is a ruthless tyrant with blood on his hands is not exactly a revelation, but few writers have made the case with as much passionate conviction as former BBC reporter John Sweeney.

As the war in Ukraine seemingly worsens by the day, it's sobering to be reminded of the litany of crimes, both domestic and international, committed by the Russian President. In his new book, Killer in the Kremlin, Sweeney highlights the fact that any citizens who oppose Putin are likely to be defenestrated, suffer a mysterious poisoning, get shot or, if lucky, end up doing a long prison sentence.

Sweeney has followed Putin's career since before his appointment as Russian President at the turn of the century. It's a path that is filled with death and destruction on a terrible scale, from Chechnya in 2000 to Ukraine 22 years later, but it also features a great many brave individuals and their inevitable targeting. They include people such as the former secret agent Alexander Litvinenko, killed by polonium poisoning in London in 2006; Anna Politkovskaya, the courageous investigative journalist who was shot dead the same year; and Boris Nemtsov, the charismatic opposition leader who met the same fate just outside the Kremlin walls in 2015.

Sweeney, who met Politkovskaya and Nemtsov and knows Litvinenko's widow, names more than 30 other figures who have been poisoned, shot, fallen from tall buildings, or died in other unlikely ways. All of them, he says, have paid the price of challenging Putin. 

He is in Kyiv when we speak on Zoom, a city in which he's been mostly based since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. "It feels like being an American reporter in London in 1940," he says. "I'm willing the Ukrainians to win, to survive Vladimir Putin's killing machine, and they're doing very well."