Hubert Seipel has access to Putin like no other Western journalist. (Der SPIEGEL)
How did Vladimir Putin go from being a KGB officer in the GDR to becoming the most powerful figure of the new Russia, which constantly moves further away from Western conepts? Hubert Seipel was the only Western journalist, who managed to accompany Putin during the last five years.
Without demonizing, but with a critical distance, he paints the most differentiated portrait of power seeker Putin that exists today.
Since the events on the Maidan square, relations between East and West are frosty, with a good chance of a new East-West divide. Hubert Seipel's book is the story of a mutual alienation and disappointment. It allows deep insights into the motives and ideas of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

Hubert Seipel, born in 1950, former editor and foreign correspondent for STERN and Der SPIEGEL, is one of Germany's most renowned investigative journalists, specialising in complex economic and political matters. In 2012, the ARD broadcast Seipel’s documentary Ich, Putin – ein Portrait. At the beginning of 2014, he held the first worldwide television interview with Edward Snowden. In November 2014, he interviewed Putin on his position in the Ukraine conflict for the ARD. Twice his films received the German Television Prize, the Helmut-Schmidt Journalist Prize and the Adolf-Grimme-Prize.