Punishing Putin

‘A brilliant book’ Alastair Campbell, The Rest is Politics

‘The essential, must-read insider account of the West’s cat and mouse economic warfare against Russia and how it is changing the face of global trade. Magisterial and gripping’ Catherine Belton

‘A brilliant, engagingly written and timely book’ Owen Matthews

‘A very good book’ Mark Galeotti

Undeterred by eight years of timid US sanctions, Vladimir Putin ordered his full-scale assault on Ukraine on 24 February 2022. In the hours that followed, Western leaders weaponized economic tools in a world-changing financial experiment. The goal was to sap the strength of Putin’s war machine by damaging its economy, without risking a global recession in the process.

In Punishing Putin, veteran journalist Stephanie Baker uncovers how this furious financial war has unfolded, from seizing superyachts to manipulating the global price of oil to blocking the sale of military technology. Baker reveals how the West mobilized an army of white-collar-crime investigators to crack down on illicit Russian money, targeting oligarchs and their enablers for sanctions evasion.

Filled with propulsive, fly-on-the-wall details, Punishing Putin takes us into the frantic backroom deliberations that led to a whole new era of economic statecraft and radically rearranged global alliances, influencing world order for generations to come.

Author Biography

Stephanie Baker is an award-winning journalist and Senior Writer on the investigations team at Bloomberg, and has been writing about the Russian invasion of Ukraine since February 2022. Stephanie has chronicled the rise and fall of Russian billionaires and has written extensively about sanctions placed on Russia since 2018. She lived in Moscow during the mid-1990s, reporting on the economic transformation of Russia for The Moscow Times, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Bloomberg. Stephanie has appeared regularly on BBC TV and Radio, Bloomberg Television, NPR and PBS. Punishing Putin is her first book.