Despots: How Trump is Turning America into Putin's Russia

A razor-sharp analysis of the increasing – and terrifying – parallels between Trump’s America and Putin’s Russia, from the former BBC Moscow Correspondent and Sunday Times bestselling author Martin Sixsmith.

Since his re-election as US president, Donald Trump has made good on things he only dreamed of accomplishing in his first term. He has smashed constitutional constraints, trampled on free speech, suborned the judiciary, demonised the media and crushed protests on the streets. He has secured the backing of America’s oligarchs by the offer of mutual enrichment and inflated his personal wealth by flouting ethical standards. US foreign policy is no longer based on values but on greed, while at home the White House has intervened in almost every area of people’s lives, sending the National Guard into America’s cities, telling educators what schoolchildren should be taught and threatening universities when they beg to differ.

According to Martin Sixsmith, the BBC’s long-serving former Moscow and Washington Correspondent, it is all eerily familiar from what Russia went through in the early-2000s.

Despots is Sixsmith's account of how two aspiring dictators came to power in nominally electoral democracies then dismantled the pillars of democracy from within, one following confidently in the footsteps of the other. As in Putin's Russia, so in Trump's America: the US is fast-forwarding through what Russia endured in the first five years under Putin, and the parallels this time are much clearer, more overt and increasingly terrifying.

Review

Terrific. Gripping, terrifying, urgent and necessary. -- Ian Rankin

Despots is not only timely but exceptionally valuable. No one is better equipped than Sixsmith to make this ruthless but scrupulous comparison between Putin and Trump. His rare combination of first-hand experience with thorough research makes for a gripping and chilling read. It is an arsenal of telling insights and compelling analysis. Anyone who cares for democracy and freedom and who fears for the future of both should go and read it. -- Jonathan Dimbleby

About the Author

Martin Sixsmith (Author)
Martin Sixsmith studied Russian at Oxford, Leningrad and the Sorbonne. He was a Slavics Tutor at Harvard and wrote his postgraduate thesis about Russian poetry. From 1980 to 1997 he was the BBC's correspondent in Moscow, Washington, Brussels and Warsaw. From 1997 to 2002 he worked for the British government as Director of Communications and Press Secretary to several cabinet ministers. He is now a writer, presenter and journalist. He is the author of non-fiction titles including Russia - the Wild East, Putin's Oil, The Litvinenko File and The War of Nerves. His bestselling 2009 book, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, was adapted for film and became the multiple Oscar-nominated Philomena, starring Steve Coogan and Judi Dench.

Daniel Sixsmith (Author)
Having completed degrees in History and Russian Studies, Daniel Sixsmith worked as an archaeologist in Siberia and Kazakhstan before turning to historical research and writing. He contributed to the BBC Radio 4 series Russia: The Wild East, and co-authored The War of Nerves: Inside the Cold War Mind, which was named a Washington Post non-fiction book of the year in 2022, and Putin and the Return of History. He lives with his partner and daughter in London.