Why Vladimir Putin decided to arrest Evan Gershkovich
From the SWAP: A Secret History of the New Cold War by Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson. Copyright © 2025 by Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson. Published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
In the third week of March 2023, Vladimir Putin dialed onto a video call and reached for a winning tactic he had been honing since his first weeks as president. He approved the arrest of another American.
By then, Russia’s president was running the world’s largest landmass from a series of elaborately constructed, identical conference rooms. As far as the CIA could tell, there were at least three of them across Russia, each custom-built and furnished to the exact same specifications, down to the precise positioning of a presidential pencil holder, engraved with a double-headed eagle, the state symbol tracing back five centuries, on the lacquered wooden desk. Neither the 10 perfectly sharpened pencils inside nor any other detail in the windowless rooms, with their beige-paneled walls and ..