Vladimir Putin has had a major domestic and international impact since being elected Russian President in March 2000 and yet remarkably little is known about the man in the West. Putin: Russia's Choice, written by one of the UK's leading scholars of Russian politics, is the first major study of the man and his politics. Sakwa's discussion provides the biographical and political context to explain Putin's astonishing rise from anonymous KGB apparatchik to leader of one of the world's most important and significant countries.