Thank you Scribner for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own. No review was required in return for an advance reading copy and no review was promised.

I just finished Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia, by Stephanie Baker.

The book was about the United States’s efforts to stop Putin through economic sanctions. It was a world-wide coalition, but the US efforts was what the book focused most of its discussion on. There were also stories about individual oligarchs having their assets seized.

One of the highlights of the book was the discussion of the case of Charles McGonigal, who had been the FBI’s former head of counterintelligence in New York, before he went to work for a Russian oligarch and eventually pled guilty to sanctions evasion and money laundering. Another highlight of the book was the discussion of “citizenship by investment” in which Russians were able to launder money through Cyrus.

I found this book to be very inconsistent. There were times when the narrative was interesting, but too many when it wasn’t. Due to that inconsistency, I am going to have to give this one a C. Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, a C equates to 2 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

I originally finished reading this on June 28, 2024,