book review

Last April I got an email from an American expat in Russia, Phil Butler, asking me whether I would be interested in contributing a short biography for an upcoming book entitled “Putin’s Praetorians: Confessions of the Top Kremlin Trolls”.  Phil described the future book as a collection of bios from some of the most “notorious” Kremlin-fanboys and, of course, I immediate liked the idea.  At the very least, this was going to be fun, so I agreed and soon sent Phil a short description of how I, a “White Russian”, ended up being a self-confessed and categorically unapologetic “Putin groupie”.  Then I more or less forgot about all this and resumed my normal work.  Three months later Phil emailed me again with a draft version of the book and asked me to check it out.  I took a look and …