Reviewer Peter Dabbene Interviews Yvonnick Denoël, Author of Putin’s Fortune
As ceasefire negotiations grow more intense between Ukraine and Russia, it’s understandable if you’re hoping for a quick agreement. Millions have been killed and maimed, the destruction is catastrophic, and Russia’s aggression only seems to grow worse.
With a perfect sense of timing, Yvonnick Denoël is here with a fresh reminder that Vladimir Putin is not your average dictator. This war was always about greed and corruption, which pretty much sums up Putin’s twenty-five year reign as leader of Russia.
Yvonnick’s Putin’s Fortune is the graphic novel needed for this exact moment, and we’re thrilled he agreed to take a few probing questions from Peter Dabbene. Let’s never forget that the Ukrainian people deserve the right to choose their future.
You have a track record of writing about secrets, spies, and conspiracies: Have you always been drawn to the shadowy parts of history? Why? What’s your motivation?
I am first and foremost a historian. My PhD was on a very different topic. I read a few books about spies when I was young, but I really became interested in intelligence history through my work as a publisher. It was not planned, but little by little I became a specialist in that field. The more I read about it, the more frustrated I was by the gap between academic research, often interesting but not accessible to all readers, and memories from former spies, sometimes sensational but not always reliable. Some journalistic approaches were excellent, others lacked historical background. So I thought it could be an exciting challenge to try and write myself the kind of books I was looking for.
What was your process for investigating Putin’s Fortune? Was there anything you uncovered that truly shocked you, or were you mostly confirming secrets that were already suspected or rumored to be true?
I was educated on the subject of Putin’s corruption system more than a decade ago through discussions with former intelligence officers. Russia’s economic predation by Putin’s gang, however shocking, was actually well documented by Western services, but not publicized, as it seemed wiser not to antagonize a foreign head of state with whom reconciliation still seemed possible. Since 2022, there is no possible turning back for Putin and it became easier for me to find sources and recoup their allegations. I found a number of incredibly precise open source investigations to back this story (they are quoted in the list of sources).
As I write this, the EU is debating the idea of seizing Russian assets to aid Ukraine. It’s clear from those discussions that it’s a tricky subject, even though the path of how that money came to be in the EU relates directly to the corruption exposed in this book. Is there any chance that Putin’s fortune might be restored to the people of Russia? Do you think a book like Putin’s Fortune could change the minds of those opposed to using those funds for Ukraine?
In this graphic novel, I imagined that Putin’s opponents create a slush fund to finance the hunt of Putin’s assets all over the world. It was an educated guess, nothing more … but one of my sources told me “How did you know? Who told you?” So yes, we can imagine that parts of Putin’s gigantic wealth will be recovered and transferred to a new Russian regime after Putin is gone … but there might as well be another dictator after him, who knows? The choice of a graphic novel format, which was a first for me, was driven by the desire to inform as many readers as possible about the true nature of the Russian regime, in a more entertaining way than a lengthy textbook. It is a small contribution, among others: I think that more and more people realize that we don’t really have other options than to back Ukraine.
In some ways, Putin is larger than life, but in others he’s just a simple criminal who happened to have access to the wealth of an entire country. His invasion of Ukraine could prove to be one of his greatest achievements, or his greatest failure. Is Putin as smart as he wants everyone to think he is? Give us three words to describe him.
Putin experienced what most dictators did before him: his foreign intelligence service, which was basically opposed to the war in Ukraine for good reasons, was not able to contradict him, because in Russia you just want to please the supreme leader, who knows better than anybody. This being said, I think Putin is a very cold-blooded, ruthless, calculating leader who is able to correct his mistakes. He just has gone too far in this war to accept even a ceasefire. He cannot afford to appear weak or overwhelmed. So his only option is to push, again and again …
After reading Putin’s Fortune, I felt gratitude and relief that these secrets have been exposed, but disappointed in the level of complicity of European and American companies that bypassed ethical standards to earn their share of stolen Russian money. After publishing Putin’s Fortune, are you more cynical about the world, or do you see the book’s existence as a small correction, reorienting the world’s moral compass a bit closer to true north?
One of the lessons of this book is that Putin’s corruption could not exist, at least at this level, without many complicities from Western operators, who just put their greed before any moral consideration. During three decades, they have seen Russian oligarchs as a wealthy and rustic clientele on which their businesses could flourish. So yes, you cannot work on a project like that without experiencing some disillusions. But making this book available is a way of saying: here is the brutal Russian reality that affects us, all made available in an easy-to-read format. Don’t say that you weren’t told about it.
The final page of the book provides a good laugh, through a statement from the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, who is shown calling Putin’s Fortune “pure provocation—a collection of gossip and fantasies …” and goes on to say, “None of us is even drawn properly—it’s a disgrace!” There doesn’t seem to be any public record of that statement, so I assume it’s a tongue-in-cheek comment fabricated by you, in the obfuscatory style of Russian propaganda? And more seriously, have you ever felt targeted or endangered by Putin’s network because of your work on this book?
There was no public reaction from the Kremlin, maybe because they understood it would be good publicity for the book. Or maybe to them, it is just a silly French graphic novel, nothing serious. We don’t deserve retaliation in their mind. It is true that they have so much to do right now. We’ll see what happens when English and Polish editions are published this year.
What’s next for you? Do you have another project in the works that you can reveal?
Yes, Gildas and I started a new project, this time an American story … but it is too soon to tell you more!
Peter Dabbene
