FROM RUSSIA WITH BLOOD

PUTIN’S RUTHLESS KILLING CAMPAIGN AND SECRET WAR ON THE WEST

HEIDI BLAKE

William Collins, 352pp, £20

‘Heidi Blake and her colleagues at Buzzfeed have produced the most damning indictment on Vladimir Putin and the Russia he rules,’ wrote Hugh Macdonald in the Glasgow

Herald. ‘There will be those who cavil that not much new has been brought to the table in the published book... But Blake’s triumph is that she can pull an extraordinary tale of larceny on a grand scale, corruption of unprecedented levels and serial murder into a brisk, comprehensible narrative. She is particularly adept at drawing characters and her story has a gaudy cast. The most conspicuous can be colourful and reckless or are dedicated and honest. They share a common fate. They end up dead. They are poisoned by radioactive material, choked on dog leads, shot outside their homes or found impaled on railings outside a bijou London residence.’

Roger Boyes, reviewing the book for the Times, felt that Blake ‘has to stretch a little to make the case that the Kremlin is behind every Russian hit job in the home counties’. Nonetheless, it is clear that the ‘GRU military intelligence, which recruits freely from the ranks of Spetsnaz special forces veterans, has plenty of trained killers in its ranks. And the development of toxins as useful secret weapons – disguising provenance, masking murder as death by natural causes – has added to the threat. By embracing hybrid warfare in all its dimensions, Russia has opened the way for the broad use of murder squads abroad. It won’t always be possible to demonstrate that Putin is holding a smoking gun, and that is precisely the point: he is the master of credible deniability.’

‘Blake is particularly adept at drawing characters and her story has a gaudy cast’