THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN, Giuliano da Empoli

He was called the “Wizard of the Kremlin,” and the “new Rasputin.” At the time, his role was not clearly defined. He would show up in the president’s office when the business of the day was done. It wasn’t the secretaries who’d called him. Maybe the tsar himself had summoned him on his direct line. Or he’d guessed the right time on his own, thanks to his extraordinary talents, which everyone acknowledged without being able to say exactly what they were. This is a cracking little book. Vladislav Surkov, a businessman and politician with a background in theatre, was Putin’s “grey cardinal” for twenty years, behind some of Russia’s creepiest psyops. da Empoli was so fascinated by this man and the mystique behind him that he created a fictional version, Vadim Baranov, who came from an aristocratic family line, avant-garde theatre and reality tv to help place Putin in power and become the Wizard of the Kremlin. A BBC journalist had made a documentary arguing that Baranov was the man…