# ‘The choice was prison or exile’: journalists who fled Russia publish grim portrait of Putin

https://mins.news/en/item/68869

- The Guardian, 2026-09-22 10:58 UTC
- World
- Original: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/22/vladimir-putin-biography-russia-journalists-exile

> Russian journalists Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin describe the threats, raids and repression that forced them into exile in 2021. Their nearly 800-page biography portrays Vladimir Putin as a modern tsar and dictator capable of “limitless cruelty”, drawing on decades of investigative reporting and hundreds of interviews.