'Putin's Russia' was written by the murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya. She demonstrates - with devastating and detailed examples - the way Putin has presided over the corruption of society in the pursuit and retention of power, bringing the cynical methods of his years in the KGB/FSB to his suppression of freedoms and control of the state.

It is a deeply disturbing indictment, revealing a Russia that is returning to the suppression and brutalities that were endemic before the coming of perestroika. Vladimir Putin, a product of Russia's murkiest intelligence service, is still busy sorting out individuals and media when his autocracy is challenged, and crushing liberty just as he did earlier in his career.

The West has been craven in turning a blind eye to Putin's mockery of democracy and freedom. It has looked on and pretended not to see the atrocities in Chechnya. And Anna Politkovskaya has herself become the latest in a sad procession of journalists who have been silenced because they dared to speak out about the truth.

Anna made a special contribution to the highlighting of brutalities by the Russian army in Chechnya. But she illustrates, with detailed examples, the brutality inside the Army as a whole - not just in Chechnya - and the way it is a law unto itself, with chronic bullying within its own ranks; military courts that routinely protect soldiers who have abused or murdered civilians; and the way this malaise is sanctioned from the top and spreads out to brutalise the wider society.

Because Putin relies on the support of the Army as part of his powerbase and popular image, he makes no attempt to rein in the Army's lawlessness, and indeed supports the Army in its status and freedom of action. But it is a brutal and crudely macho culture, with - for example - over 500 soldiers dying from beatings at the hands of their officers in 2002 alone.

Politkovskaya gives examples of these beatings, backed up by evidence. She also gives detailed evidence of specific cases of abuse, such as the rape and murder of a Chechen girl by Colonel Budanov, and the appalling attempts of the Army and State, first to cover up what had happened, and then to try to exonerate the soldier with a concocted psychological report by Tamara Pechernikova (who in Soviet days was responsible for sending dissidents to psychiatric hospitals and feeding them psychotropic drugs... the people who filled the ranks of the Soviet secret police have risen to thousands of positions of power and influence in Putin's Russia).

The young Chechen girl herself, Elza Kungaeva: snatched from her home, stripped, raped, murdered, hidden (in foetal position) in a shallow grave - then accused by the Army of trying to kill the Colonel (notwithstanding the fact that the Colonel who was drunk had been beating up a junior officer for fun then drove into a village at midnight and had the young girl dragged away). When soldiers arrived afterwards, he was standing in his underpants over the raped girl's naked body, and he ordered them to bury her. Then the Russian Army tried to blame the girl.

Hundreds of similar cases have occurred - atrocities the Russian Army has tried to cover up. The appalling abuse of a civilian population. And this Chechen War is Putin's claim to popularity.

The Russian Army is like a prison camp behind barbed wire, where young conscripted soldiers are subject to abuse by older officers and where 'beating the crap out of someone' is a basic method of training... the very way Putin said he would deal with enemies inside Russia when he came to power.

Putin's mentality is cold, cynical, unpleasant - he nurtures racism and a populist kind of nationalism. He suppresses - freedom of the media, voices of dissent. He tolerates endemic corruption and bribery at all levels of society. With his increasing stranglehold on the media, Russia's young democracy is slipping back towards a state where individuals must be subordinated to the power at the top. This former KGB/FSB officer has all the 'macho' posturing and unimaginative, stunted ruthlessness of Soviet figures from the past. He is the classic 'little man'.

He stands in the way of Russia, the 21st Century, and the flowering of democracy. Even the idea would sound feminine and enfeebling to him. He is determined to use his power to hold on to power. It is the same old Russian story. Tragically, the brave woman who re-tells it has been murdered. In Putin's Russia, that's what happens to voices of dissent. To use Putin's own words, three days after her murder: 'She was extremely insignificant.'