In the Kremlin food chain, assassins are more valuable than spies, while both are expected to persecute émigrés.

Below is the foreword to the recently released paperback edition.

Four months after the war started, Russia has admitted it lacks IT specialists. But its proposed solution might only benefit the country’s neighbors.

The Kremlin has done everything possible to seal off Russian citizens from independent news media, and it’s failing.

Russians are fleeing their country in droves. Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan; Estonia, Latvia, Montenegro. In the first two weeks of the war alone, Georgia took in 25,000 Russians, and Armenia was receiving some 6,000 Russians per day. By the end of March, 60,000 Russians had gone to Kazakhstan.

Putin’s war — and the unprecedented tidal wave of global sanctions it has provoked — is having a particular impact on those young, technologically oriented Russians who represent the future of the country’s economy.