June 22nd: Hitler Invades The USSR

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Organized crime and violence reign supreme in post-Soviet Russia. In this world, the rules of the dvor prove invaluable — for the men fighting over the jewels of the Soviet industrial empire, and for Vladimir Putin. 

The Soviet Union suffers unthinkable horrors during World War II. Leningrad, the city into which Vladimir Putin is born, loses more than a million of its citizens to starvation, and Vladimir Putin’s parents barely make it out alive. 

Putin grows up as a small, scrawny kid in a poor neighborhood with few ways up. Enter judo and the KGB. 

To predict what Vladimir Putin might do next in Ukraine, it’s helpful to remember his first and foremost education — in the dvor.