Other non-fiction books: The Life And Evil Times of Nicolae Ceausescu (1991); Trading With The Enemy: Britain’s Arming of Iraq (1993); Big Daddy – Lukashenka, The Tyrant of Belarus (2012); Church Of Fear: Inside the Weird World of Scientology (2013); North Korea Undercover: Inside the World’s Most Secret State (2013); Murder On The Malta Express: Who Killed Daphne Caruana Galizia (co-authored with Carlo Bonini and Manuel Delia, 2019). It is anyone’s guess as to where this war will take Putin and Russia, let alone Zelensky and Ukraine.

Anyway, although most of his musings are backed with hard facts, some just appear to be blatant rants and speculations, for instance, Sweeney's accusations of him being a bastard, pedophile, bisexual, etc. Killer" is a page-turner par excellence in which John reveals an hypnotic, often poetic and always riveting writing style which left me impatient for the next read, each time I put it down. The overall view of the malignant narcissist is he is delusional, isolated and possibly unstable due to medication. Please note that some countries may charge the recipient duties on the 'import' of parcels from time-to-time.This account, which includes first hand reporting from the streets of Ukraine under siege, we travel back in time to Putin's early years (adopted? It gives many detailed examples of his vindictive and controlling methods and how any criticism has put people’s live at risk. After a career with the BBC, Sweeney is now determined to let the world know the Russia story under Putin, and the evidence that that this man is a sadistic psychopathic kleptocratic pleoneviat (look it up).

Then again, who can blame him if there is an alcohol problem there since he’s been, seen and done it all during his years as a journalist? No one is completely sure but a history of events sure gives us a good idea of the evil that is Putin.

In the midst of one of the darkest acts of aggression in modern history - Russia's invasion of Ukraine - this book shines a light on Putin's rule and poses urgent questions about how the world must respond. What struck me most, though, were the first-hand accounts of the Ukrainian people suffering at the hands of the Russian dictator; this really served to humanise the war narrative and reiterated why the Ukrainians must win.

John has profoundly provided a gift for all mankind to an awareness of the courageous who went before us, for all of us!

THE TIMES A gripping and explosive account of Vladimir Putin's tyranny, charting his rise from spy to tsar, exposing the events that led to his invasion of Ukraine and his assault on Europe. I’m not surprised to learn he makes other leaders wait when meeting with him – clearly a power thing. He has helped free seven people falsely convicted of killing babies, starting with Sally Clark and Angela Cannings. As a reporter, first for The Observer, then the BBC Sweeney has covered wars and chaos in more than eighty countries and been undercover to a number of tyrannies including Chechnya, North Korea and Zimbabwe. I must admit that still plowing through John Sweeny's excellent paperback edition "Killer in the Kremlin", so it really a brief review of what I have read.

John Sweeney, o autor do livro, é jornalista de investigação e chegou a trabalhar para a BBC durante alguns anos e tem 30 anos de experiência em ambientes de guerra. The catalogue of Putin's crimes, for which he has never been brought to account, are depressing indeed. What we see is a long list of people who are blown up, poisoned, shot, fall from windows, and die in air crashes with the background information of events and people's movements confirmed or where necessary suggested using interviews and information from others such as Bellingcat, courageous Russian journalists and others. At the time, Sweeney worked for the rival newspaper The Observer, and had given an interview on BBC Radio Guernsey alleging that they had been involved in corruption. Most notably, Seamus Martin from The Irish Times has described the book as “infuriatingly selective with the truth”.

the author admits, ‘I still don’t understand why Vladimir Putin started his idiot war’ against Ukraine. One spoke of his BTR (armoured personnel carrier) breaking down and being towed into battle by a lorry. I believe that what is happening in eastern Europe is a consequence of Carlyle’s Great Man theory of history. The story-line is, of course, selective, and he doesn’t explicitly say that the coup and counter-coup in Moscow in August 1991 were planned mainly by different factions in the KGB. At first I was worried this book wouldn’t offer much which was new, but Sweeney’s career holding Putin to account, as well as his highly personable writing style, ensured there was much new material to learn from in this book.