[Book Talk] "Russia in Four Criminals" by Federico Varese (Polity Press, 2024)

What can four criminals tell us about the fate of a nation? In this discussion, Federico Varese presents his new book, which traces Russia's turbulent transformation from the late Soviet period to the Putin era through the lives of four figures: a traditional mobster, an oligarch, a prison drug-dealer who documented state-sanctioned torture, and the architect of the world's most dangerous computer virus.

Together, their stories illuminate how corruption, the weaponisation of law enforcement, and the entanglement of crime and politics did not emerge overnight — but were built, decade by decade, into the foundations of the Russian state. Varese also turns a critical eye on the West's willingness to look away, first under Yeltsin and then under Putin, and asks what that complicity has cost us.