Putin: His Life and Times review - the collapse that shaped the man who would be tsar

Philip Short's meticulous new biography forces us to look at Vladimir Putin's most appalling acts from a Russian perspective In his speech on the night of the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, which Philip Short describes as "pulsating with anger and resentment" at 30 years of Russian humiliation, Putin seethed: "They deceived us... they duped us like a con artist... the whole so-called western bloc, formed by the United States in its own image is... an empire of lies." For those who dismiss t...