We need to talk about Putin. Of all the leaders of state nobody is as maligned, studied, and over-analyzed as Russian President Vladimir Putin. He’s a KGB thug, he’s playing three dimensional chess while everyone else is playing checkers, and he’s turned a state into decline into a global superpower through information warfare. No one is as cunning as Putin.

But that’s not quite true. Here to help us dispel myths and set the record straightish is friend of the show Mark Galeotti. Galeotti is an expert on the Russian military, politics, and underworld, the author of many fine books and an honorary professor at University of College London and a Senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

He’s got three books coming out this month. One is We Need to Talk About Putin: How the West Gets Him Wrong and another is Russian Political War: Moving Beyond the Hybrid.

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Everything You Know about Putin (and Russia) Is Wrong