Narrator: Imagine being the man who made the king. Sergei Pugachev, once known as "the Kremlin's banker," was a powerful insider who played a pivotal role in orchestrating Vladimir Putin's rise to the presidency. He believed he was saving Russia from a return to Communism. Yet, years later, Pugachev found himself in London, his vast business empire seized by the very regime he helped create. His cars were bugged, his life was threatened, and he became a hunted man, a victim of the system he had unleashed. How does the kingmaker become the exile? The answer lies in a story of power, money, and the deep-state security apparatus that never truly disappeared.

In the groundbreaking investigation Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West, author Catherine Belton meticulously documents this transformation. She reveals that Putin's rise was not an accident, but the culmination of a long-planned operation by the KGB to reclaim the country, seize its economic heights, and wage a new kind of war against the West.

Narrator: The fall of the Soviet Union is often seen as a victory for Western democracy, but Belton argues it was, in many ways, an inside job orchestrated by the KGB. As the USSR crumbled, progressive elements within the security services recognized the system was unsustainable. They didn't plan to surrender power; they planned to transform it.

Their strategy was to create an "invisible economy." In the final years of the Soviet Union, the KGB and Communist Party officials began siphoning billions of dollars in state funds into a web of offshore accounts and "friendly firms." This black cash, or obschak, was intended to be a war chest to preserve the KGB's influence networks and fund future operations. When the official state collapsed, the men who knew where the money was hidden were the KGB operatives. They were employees of a non-existent state, but they held the keys to its secret wealth, ready to build a new kind of power structure from the ashes of the old.

Narrator: Before he was president, Vladimir Putin was the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg in the chaotic 1990s. This period, Belton reveals, was the crucible where the methods of his future regime were forged. The city was in crisis, with severe food shortages. Putin was put in charge of a program to trade raw materials like oil and rare metals for food imports.

The food, however, rarely arrived. An investigation led by a local democrat, Marina Salye, found that Putin's committee had issued over $95 million in export licenses to obscure front companies, with virtually no food delivered in return. The money vanished into offshore accounts. Belton shows this was not just simple corruption; it was a blueprint. The scheme was designed to create a hard-currency slush fund to maintain the KGB's networks. During this time, Putin also forged crucial alliances with organized crime figures, like the Tambov gang, to take control of strategic assets like the city's sea port and oil terminal, blurring the lines between the state, the security services, and the criminal underworld.

Narrator: By the late 1990s, President Boris Yeltsin's health was failing, and his administration was mired in corruption scandals. The Yeltsin "Family," his inner circle of relatives and oligarchs, was terrified of prosecution if their rivals came to power. They needed a successor who would be loyal, ruthless, and guarantee their security.

They chose Vladimir Putin. Figures like Sergei Pugachev saw him as a disciplined, reliable operator who could protect them. To clear the path for Putin, they orchestrated the removal of Prosecutor General Yury Skuratov, who was investigating the Family's corruption. They used kompromat—a videotape of Skuratov with two prostitutes—leaked on national television. Putin, then head of the FSB, publicly confirmed the tape's authenticity, sealing Skuratov's fate. The Yeltsin Family believed they were hiring a loyal guard dog. They failed to understand they were handing the keys to the Kremlin to the KGB, underestimating Putin's training in deception and his ultimate ambition.

Narrator: Putin's ascent was cemented by a wave of national terror. In 1999, a series of apartment bombings across Russia killed hundreds of civilians, creating a climate of fear that Putin, as the new Prime Minister, expertly exploited. He blamed Chechen terrorists and launched a brutal second war in Chechnya, casting himself as the strong, decisive leader Russia craved. His approval ratings soared from single digits to over 70 percent.

However, Belton highlights the deeply disturbing questions surrounding the bombings. The most chilling incident occurred in the city of Ryazan, where residents discovered a bomb in their apartment building's basement. Local police identified the explosive as hexogen, the same type used in the other attacks. But before the suspects could be caught, the head of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev, announced it was all a "training exercise" and the sacks contained only sugar. The case was classified, and the local FSB officers involved were silenced. The bombings, whether a genuine tragedy or a cynical false-flag operation, served as the catalyst that propelled Putin to the presidency.

Narrator: Once in power, Putin's men moved to seize control of the economy. The defining moment was the destruction of Yukos, Russia's most successful oil company, and the jailing of its head, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Khodorkovsky was one of the original oligarchs, but he broke the new rules: he funded opposition parties and planned to build a pipeline to China and sell a major stake in Yukos to an American oil giant.

This was a direct challenge to the Kremlin's control. In 2003, Khodorkovsky was publicly arrested in a dramatic raid. The state then hit Yukos with billions of dollars in back-tax claims and systematically dismantled it. Its prize asset, Yuganskneftegaz, was sold in a rigged auction to a shell company registered in a provincial pub, only to be immediately acquired by the state-owned Rosneft, run by Putin's close ally Igor Sechin. The Yukos affair was a clear signal: the era of independent oligarchs was over. Russia's strategic assets now belonged to the state, and the state belonged to Putin's KGB men.

Narrator: With control of Russia's vast energy wealth, Putin's regime began to weaponize its cash. Belton documents the creation of a massive offshore financial network, a global obschak, used to enrich the inner circle and fund influence operations abroad. Schemes like the "Moldovan Laundromat" and "mirror trades" through Western banks like Deutsche Bank funneled tens of billions of illicit dollars out of Russia.

This black cash was used to corrupt foreign officials, fund far-right and far-left political parties across Europe to weaken the EU, and support separatist movements. The goal was to dismantle the Western system from within. This network also cultivated influential figures in the West. For example, the book details how individuals with ties to Russian intelligence and organized crime, like Felix Sater, used real estate deals to build a relationship with Donald Trump, whose financial vulnerabilities made him an attractive target long before he ran for president. The Trump Tower Moscow project, though never built, served as a constant dangle to keep him engaged.

Narrator: The central, chilling takeaway from Putin's People is that the modern Russian state is not a conventional government but a kleptocracy run by security service operatives. It is a system where state power is a tool for personal enrichment, and that wealth is then weaponized to conduct a covert, continuous war against the West. Catherine Belton's work reveals that the KGB was never defeated; it simply mutated, adopting the tools of capitalism to further its long-term strategic goals of restoring Russia's imperial power and dismantling the Western liberal order.

The book leaves us with a deeply unsettling question: How do you confront a regime that has so successfully woven its illicit money and influence into the very fabric of Western finance, politics, and society? It challenges us to recognize that the battle is not just geopolitical, but is being fought in our courtrooms, our stock markets, and our political campaigns, forcing a difficult reckoning with our own vulnerabilities.