Registration REQUIRED by 4pm on March 2, 2026 in order to attend this event.
Please join the Program on U.S.-Russia Relations at the Harriman Institute for a book talk by Roman Badanin. Moderated by Elise Giuliano.
“The Tsar In Propria Persona” is the product of Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin’s reporting at investigative media outlet Proekt that, since its launch in 2018, has repeatedly exposed the commercial and personal relationships that underpin the Putin regime.
In their book, Badanin and Rubin manage to penetrate Putin’s inner circle of friends and family in their forensic account of the former KGB agent’s rise to power, violating a decades-long Kremlin-imposed taboo on any mention of the Russian leader’s private life.
In doing so, “The Tsar In Propria Persona” fills the void around Putin left by official biographies and silenced sources. The book draws on (often anonymous) human sources, documents, news clips, and memoirs to piece together one of the most in-depth portraits of Putin and his circle so far. Source
Roman Badanin is the founder and editor-in-chief of Proekt (The Project, in English) and Agentstvo (The Agency, in English), media organizations that have been targeted by the Russian government for their investigative reporting into the most powerful forces in their country. He started Agentstvo in the summer of 2021 after Russian authorities outlawed Proekt, the nonprofit investigative news organization he founded in 2018. It was Russia’s first nonprofit news organization. Badanin has been working as a journalist in leading independent Russian news organizations for 20 years. He previously was deputy editor-in-chief at Gazeta.Ru, editor-in-chief at Forbes Digital (Russia), RBC News Agency, and editor-in-chief of Dozhd (TV Rain), an independent Russian TV channel. He has also been affiliated with the Gorbachev Foundation and the Russian Academy of Sciences as a researcher and studied history at Moscow State University.
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