Putin's Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia Book

On page 29 of 'Putin's Labyrinth', Levine writes: "The more confident Putin became about Russia's ascendancy, the more willing he seemed to rattle Europe occasionally and poke America in the eye with some frequency." Rings very true at a point where Putin has put Ukraine in a state of civil war. Where Putin has swung the time back to the days of Soviet Union, and where journalists are shot, sometimes in cold blood, because they wrote the truth. Like Anna Politkovskaya, a daring crusader of justice for those who suffered the atrocities of Chechnya, and who showed how the Russia under Putin was like former USSR, a combination of "worst of both worlds", combining Mafia capitalism with KGB policing in another strong critical book of Putin, 'Putin's Russia'. For all the truth she revealed, she was bid goodbye with three bullets lodged in her chest, one inside her head. Journalism of truth in Russia is, quite evidently, dangerous (to put it in mid terms).

Another journalist fallen victim to the journalism of truth in Russia was Paul Klebnikov, the editor-in-chief of Forbes Russia, which was where he proclaimed that Boris Berezovsky, the multi-millionaire oligarch of Russia, was also the Godfather of the Kremlin. Maybe that got him killed, or maybe not. Maybe his book, 'Conversations with a Barbarian', his interview with the Chechen leader Khozh-Ahmed Noukhayev got him killed. In Russia, especially in the Soviet-styled Russia of Putin, you never know. It was said that he was working on a very important story, a "revealing" story, until, of course, he too was gunned down by a 9-millimeter Makarov pistol. Four bullets lodged inside Klebnikov's stomach- the guy obviously knew too much.

Alaxander Litvinenko was a KGB defector, and also the author of 'Blowing up Russia', a book on the apartment bombings in three Russian cities including Moscow, which he claimed were engineered by Putin for going to war with Chechnya; something that, to me at least, sounds both interesting and highly relevant considering the reputation of Putin and the KGB. Litvineko's life was as sad as it was interesting- he only attracted attention during the end of his time, when he was poisoned, and pictures of his dire state circulated around the World. Until then, more or less, he remained an ignored defector, although a defector who had the support of Berezovsky, and a defector who had, if nothing, some interesting anecdotes and back-stories.

'Putin's Labyrinth', more or less, revolves around these three, and other important characters including some of the survivors of Nord-Ost. The biggest asset for the book is its flow of prose. Levine perfectly combines reportage with memoir, and forms some kind of mixture, an easy to read study of what Putin's Russia really was, is, and would be- because the man is going nowhere, he has too many tricks up his sleeve, and he doesn't shy away from throwing intelligent tantrums. Also, the book couldn't have been more timely, as I mentioned earlier. Its Soviet all over again. Its a maze, a labyrinth which is hard to break into, and when you actually do, its hard to get out. Its a trap.

Thomas Friedman rightly wrote that "a wise Putin would have been fighting today to get Russia into the European Union, not to keep Ukraine out. But that is not who Putin is and never will be." Putin will forever be concerned with who is writing or saying what against him, and whether he deserves to be riddled with bullets. Putin will forever be etched inside that labyrinth of his, Putin's labyrinth.