The recent prisoner exchange that freed U.S. hostages, Russian political prisoners, and other wrongfully detained people from Vladimir Putin’s gulag served as a stark reminder about the nature of the Kremlin’s so-called criminal justice system.
In one sense, it is a hostage-taking machine used to kidnap innocent foreign citizens who can later be swapped for politically connected Russian criminals – including drug dealers, arms traffickers, and hitmen – who were convicted after receiving the benefit of due process and fair trials in Western courts of law.
And in another sense, Russia’s so-called criminal justice system is a terror machine, used to frighten Russian dissidents by sending the message that those who oppose Putin’s autocratic and kleptocratic regime will pay with their freedom — or in the case of Aleksei Navalny, with their lives.
On The Power Vertical Podcast this week, host Brian Whitmore discusses Putin’s hostage-taking terror machine and what it reveals about today’s Russia with Mikhail Zygar, author of the bestselling, highly acclaimed, and must-read books “All The Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin” and “War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine”
SHOW NOTES
Mikhail Zygar’s Substack newsletter, The Last Pioneer, can be accessed here.
Zygar’s 2016 book, All the Kremlin’s Men can be purchased here. His 2023 book, War and Punishment can be purchased here. And his published op-eds in The New York Times can be accessed here.
The Power Vertical Newsletter on Substack can be accessed here. Recently published work by Brian Whitmore can be accessed here and here.