Books

Suing the Kremlin

Martin Sixsmith

Vladimir Putin came to power by destroying the Russian oligarchs, the entrepreneurs who grew rich during Russia’s chaotic transition from communism and exercised unseemly influence over the government of Boris Yeltsin. Putin confiscated their companies and used the profits to build the Kremlin’s war chest for the invasion of Ukraine. He and his cronies siphoned off billions for themselves.

Drawing on exclusive interviews and explosive new material, in Suing the Kremlin Martin Sixsmith tells the astonishing story of what happened to the men Putin dispossessed. Some were sent to labour camps, forced into exile or murdered. Some attempted to fight back, but with no success.

Yet for the past twenty years, a small, determined team of legal experts based in London has been pursuing Putin and his rogue state through courts across the globe. Acting on behalf of Group Menatep – the holding company founded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s wealthiest oligarch – they have set out to reclaim this vast stolen fortune and to prove that even the most powerful men in the world are not beyond the reach of international law.

Hardback

ISBN: 9781800755062

Published: June 4, 2026

Ebook

ISBN: 9781800755079

Published: June 4, 2026

Category:

Reviews for Suing the Kremlin

‘In his tightly focused new book, Suing the Kremlin, Martin Sixsmith shows how a determined effort by lawyers has, astonishingly, opened the possibility of redress for those who have been expropriated by Russia’s leader’ Telegraph

‘The sometimes nerdy but always fascinating core of “Suing the Kremlin” is the two-decade-long legal saga that the expropriation spawned, which Martin Sixsmith rightly says will be studied by generations of lawyers … Mr Sixsmith’s well-paced book, readable in a single sitting, shows that Mr Putin’s vindictive, capricious Russia was no place to invest in long before his bloodthirsty adventurism in Ukraine’ Economist

‘In this jaw-dropping book, Sixsmith, who was the BBC’s Moscow correspondent during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, tells the story of Putin’s confiscation of Yukos, his persecution of its employees, and how the revenues he accrued from such confiscations allowed the Kremlin to amass a vast national war chest’ Daily Mail

Author

Martin Sixsmith

Martin Sixsmith was for many years BBC correspondent in Moscow. He wrote the book relating to the film Philomena. He has written a number of books on Russia and also broadcast his own 12 part series on the History of Russia for BBC Radio 4.