A brilliant, deeply reported and deeply felt account of how Putin's Russia descended into delusion, madness and evil from a reporter with a better understanding and experience of Russia than almost any observer writing today.

Owen Matthews

Haunting and insightful...(a) pitch-perfect account of how his adopted country descended into evil and madness.

Edward Lucas, The Times

Vivid...a particularly fine addition to the genre

Financial Times

To understand how Vladimir Putin dominates Russia, you must study how his propaganda works. Other books have explored the country's disinformation state, but this one charts its evolution into a wartime dictatorship.

Economist

An unflinching journey in the dark night of the Russian mind under Putin - written by a top British reporter who knows it with an unrivalled quarter-century of intimacy.

Peter Pomerantsev

Bennetts blends informed analysis of Russia's descent into autocracy under Putin with the kind of personal insights that only come from living in the country for a quarter of a century.

Peter Conradi