While he stoked up his public image, the body count of his critics grew. In an exclusive extract from his new book, Philip Short charts the Russian president’s inexorable rise
During Putin’s second term, his view of his status and role as head of state had altered. When a journalist asked him whether he trusted other leaders, he replied: “You can’t ask a question like that to someone at my level. How can I trust or not trust someone else? I trust only myself.” It was the loneliness of a monarch. “He trusts no one, not even his own people,” said his old acquaintance the film-maker Igor Shadkhan, who felt that he was becoming estranged even from those who had formerly been close to him.
Early on, a personality cult had started to build. A factory in Chelyabinsk, in the Urals, which used to make watches with a portrait of Stalin, began manufacturing Putin watches
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