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The Vory: Russia's Super Mafia

Author: Mark Galleotti

Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 2018, pp. 344

Galleotti, a Russian expert at the Institute of International Relations in Prague, explores how the Russian underworld has evolved under Putin, and how the regime has both exerted control over it and also used it for semi-covert operations, which the government can distance itself from in public. Although the underworld can be used when violence and ruthlessness are required, Galleotti stresses that many criminals now have sophisticated financial and technological skills.