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Trump’s Putin Lust & The Final Frontier of Democracy

A candid and searing look at Trump’s most astounding provocations, from Barr and Putin to Xi and Playboy, in conversation with Susan Glasser and Peter Baker, the authors of The Divider.

Former President Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Former President Trump and Vladimir Putin. Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP
Julia Ioffe
September 21, 2022

When I first moved to Moscow in September 2009, I brought with me a red paperback copy of Kremlin Rising. It had been published in 2005, the year its married co-authors, Susan Glasser and Peter Baker, left their posts as the Washington Post’s Moscow correspondents. The book carefully and powerfully chronicled how a relatively unknown KGB officer named Vladimir Putin got himself appointed president and went about systematically dismantling a fledgling Russian democracy.