Does Putin Have to Die? - by Ilya Ponomarev & Gregg Stebben (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The Story of How Russia Becomes a Democracy after Losing to Ukraine.

To understand the significance of this book, Does Putin Have to Die?, you must first understand the significance of the author:

• Ilya Ponomarev was a member of the Russian Parliament, or State Duma, from 2007-2016.
• In 2014, he was the only member of the Russian Parliament to vote against the annexation of Crimea.
• However, this was not the first time he survived after opposing Putin.
• His vote against the annexation of Crimea did, however, lead to him being forced into exile from his own country while he was a sitting member of Parliament.
• At the time of the annexation of Crimea, Ponomarev predicted it would lead to a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
• He also vowed at the time that if Russia did invade Ukraine, he would fight on the side of Ukraine. And that's what he is doing today.

Opposing Putin is a risky proposition; for instance, a fellow Russian Parliament member turned dissident, Denis Voronenkov, was on his way to see Ponomarev when he was shot and killed in March 2017 by Russian intelligence.

Ponomarev has lived in Kyiv since 2016. As a result of Voronenkov's murder, he now receives personal protection by the Ukrainian Security Service. And as he said in a recent television interview, "I keep a machine gun by the door."

But if you ask Ponomarev why he joined Ukraine's armed territorial defense forces, he will reply:

"I'm not fighting against Russia, I'm fighting against Putin and Putinism and Russian fascism."

In this book, Ponomarev offers his plan for how the Russian people can purge their country of Putin, Putinism, and dictatorship, and turn it into a democracy.

Review Quotes

"Putin's Russia is a challenge for all of the free world; maybe the biggest ever. It is great to see Russians who are ready to not just criticize him, but to fight against him with all means--and to propose a better future for the country. Thank you, Ilya!"
--Oleksiy Honcharuk, former Prime Minister of Ukraine

About the Author

llya Ponomarev is a Russian politician, tech entrepreneur, and investor. A member of the Russian Parliament from 2007-2016, he chaired the Innovations and Venture Capital subcommittee, and became a leader of the Russian protest movement in 2011. Forced into exile by Putin in 2016, he moved to Silicon Valley and then Kyiv, where he established an investment company that, as the first Ukrainian company traded in the US, went public on NASDAQ in 2018. He's a regular speaker at US-based think tanks like Atlantic Council, CSIS, and Heritage Foundation; at universities like Yale, Stanford, and MIT; and he's interviewed frequently by leading US and European media.

Gregg Stebben is the author of 20 books, including White House: Confidential and Internet Privacy for Dummies. In his career as a journalist for media brands ranging from Forbes to Esquire to Men's Health, he has interviewed hundreds of newsmakers and politicians including US Presidents Trump, Clinton, and George H. W. Bush, and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. He is a frequent guest on radio, and a veteran of over 15,000 interviews on local US radio stations and syndicated shows. In March 2022, he went to Poland and Ukraine to report live on the Russian invasion.