Putin's progress

"Vladimir Putin seemed to have come from nowhere when he succeeded the ailing and incompetent Boris Yeltsin as President of Russia in March 2000. It was as if he had taken the Kremlin by stealth - perhaps, it was whispered, using the skills he acquired as a senior agent in the KGB." "In fact, as Peter Truscott shows in this book, Putin's rise to prominence owes more to a combination of canny manoeuvring and blat, the traditional Russian system of cronyism and patronage. A fiercely loyal citizen of St. Petersburg, from a poor but stable background, he has throughout his life maintained close…