Russia's invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022 caught many people by surprise. It should not have. This was an imperial war long in the making. It was a war that fulfilled the long-held needs and aspirations of Russia's president, his allies and dependents, and a large section of Russian society that had become willing accomplices in and cheerleaders for the state's imperial project. To paraphrase the sociologist Charles Tilly: war made Vladimir Putin, and Vladimir Putin made war. This book shows how.

Leningrad

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in Leningrad, today's Saint Petersburg, in 1952. The city young Vladimir knew bore the scars of its gruelling siege by the Nazis during the Second World War, a rundown wreck of broken buildings and hungry people. Thousands of orphaned, disowned and impoverished children roamed streets ruled by violent gangs. Putin shares his slight stature with many others of his generation, for they are the children of those who suffered most. Indeed, his may owe something to his mother's malnourishment.

Young Vladimir was raised in a shabby and spartan tenement block where the living accommodation was small and essential services communal. The Putins were by no means the worst off. Theirs was a middling lifestyle for 1950s’ Leningrad. Vladimir's father was a factory foreman. After a stint in the navy, he had served in an NKVD (secret police) unit operating behind enemy lines before transferring to the regular army where he was seriously injured. His paternal grandfather had reached an altogether more elevated status as Stalin's chef. He had served Lenin before that. Putin's mother worked in a factory too. Vladimir was the couple's third son, but his siblings were long dead before he was born. He was an unremarkable school student, but a resourceful and tough-minded player in a very rough city. He occasionally loitered with the street gangs but ultimately chose a different path for himself. Like young people on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Vladimir was captivated by spy movies. He wanted to serve the state, as his grandfather had. Judo club taught him the discipline and focus he needed. Legend has it that he presented himself to Leningrad's KGB headquarters and volunteered for service. The bemused officials turned him away and told him to apply again when he had obtained his law degree.