Catherine Belton - Putins People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West

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CATHERINE BELTON worked from 20072013 as the Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times, and in 2016 as the newspapers legal correspondent. She has previously reported on Russia for the Moscow Times and BusinessWeek. In 2008, she was shortlisted for Business Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards. She lives in London.

Russian organised-crime leaders, their members, their associates, are moving into Western Europe, they are purchasing property, they are establishing bank accounts, theyre establishing companies, theyre weaving themselves into the fabric of society, and by the time that Europe develops an awareness its going to be too late.

Former FBI special agent Bob Levinson

I want to warn Americans. As a people, you are very nave about Russia and its intentions. You believe because the Soviet Union no longer exists, Russia now is your friend. It isnt, and I can show you how the SVR is trying to destroy the US even today and even more than the KGB did during the Cold War.

Sergei Tretyakov, former colonel in Russian Foreign Intelligence, the SVR, stationed in New York

Putins identity card as a Stasi officer would have given him direct access to Stasi buildings and made it easier for him to recruit agents.

Putin handled sleeper agents otherwise known as illegals while serving in Dresden as a liaison officer between the KGB and the Stasi.

Katerina, or Katya, the second daughter of Putin and his wife Lyudmilla, was born while the family was stationed in Dresden in August 1986.

Sergei Pugachev (left), known then as the Kremlins banker, worked closely with Pavel Borodin (right), the Kremlin property department chief, during the nineties.

In 1999, Russian president Boris Yeltsin (right) was facing a growing challenge from Yevgeny Primakov (left), the former spymaster he anointed prime minister.

Yeltsins daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko, and her husband Valentin Yumashev, Yeltsins former chief-of-staff.

On the stroke of midnight, New Years Eve 1999, Yeltsin (right) handed over the presidency to Putin.

Putins election as president was good news for Pugachev (right), pictured here with Putin during an evening in St Petersburg together with close allies Vladimir Yakunin and Yury Kovalchuk.

Putins war in Chechnya helped propel his vault to the presidency and ensured the rise of the St Petersburg siloviki, the men of force led by Nikolai Patrushev, then Federal Security Service chief (right).

The free-for-all days of plenty for Yeltsin-era oligarchs such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky (left) and Borls Berezovsky (right) were numbered after Putin took the presidency.

Russias one-time richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky (left), and his closest lieutenant Platon Lebedev facing trial in 2005 for fraud and tax evasion.

The wealth at the command of Igor Sechin, chairman of state oil major Rosneft (left), and Gennady Timchenko, founder of oil trader Gunvor (right), grew rapidly following the Kremlin takeover of Khodorkovskys Yukos oil major.

Yury Kovalchuk, the biggest shareholder in Bank Rossiya.

Martin Schlaff, the billionaire former Stasi agent who allegedly smuggled embargoed technology through Dresden in the 1980s.

Konstantin Malofeyev, the Russian Orthodox tycoon.

Kremlin-connected tycoon Dmitry Firtash was at the centre of a shadowy gas trading scheme between Russia, Ukraine and Turkmenistan.

Putin comforted Lyudmilla Narusova, the widow of his former mentor, Anatoly Sobchak, the St Petersburg mayor, who died mysteriously just a month before Putin was elected president in 2000.

The kandidat rezident striding into the glittering Andreyevsky Hall during his inauguration as president in May 2000.

More than 115 hostages died in October 2002 after Russian special forces disbursed an unidentified gas into Moscows Dubrovka theatre in a desperate attempt to break a siege by Chechen terrorists.