Masha Gessen is not so sure. A Russian-born writer who grew up in America and now lives in Moscow, and the author of a new book about Putin, Gessen believes that even as he consolidates his power, Russia is seeing the first signs of the inevitable fall of what she describes as ‘this small and vengeful man’.

The tumultuous events of last December, when tens of thousands took to the streets of Moscow and cities across Russia in the biggest anti-government rallies since the fall of the Soviet Union, were the harbinger of what she describes as ‘a revolution’.

Putin will win the election. That, in itself, is not a mechanism for change, Gessen says, ‘because it’s not an election. But I think it will be a catalyst. I think it’s the beginning of the end for Putin. How long this process will last is hard to tell. But I think it is more likely to be a matter of months rather than years.’ She pauses. ‘At least, I hope so.’

Gessen’s book, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, provides a compelling and exhaustive portrait of a man who rose without trace from being a minor KGB and St Petersburg bureaucrat to become what Gessen describes as ‘the godfather of a mafia clan’, who has amassed a personal fortune that in 2007 was estimated by one Kremlin insider to be $40 billion.

Vladimir Putin: ‘the godfather of a mafia clan’ – Telegraph

From Amazon.Com:

The Man Without a Face is the chilling account of how a low- level, small-minded KGB operative ascended to the Russian presidency and, in an astonishingly short time, destroyed years of progress and made his country once more a threat to her own people and to the world.

Handpicked as a successor by the “family” surrounding an ailing and increasingly unpopular Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin seemed like a perfect choice for the oligarchy to shape according to its own designs. Suddenly the boy who had stood in the shadows, dreaming of ruling the world, was a public figure, and his popularity soared. Russia and an infatuated West were determined to see the progressive leader of their dreams, even as he seized control of media, sent political rivals and critics into exile or to the grave, and smashed the country’s fragile electoral system, concentrating power in the hands of his cronies.

As a journalist living in Moscow, Masha Gessen experienced this history firsthand, and for The Man Without a Face she has drawn on information and sources no other writer has tapped. Her account of how a “faceless” man maneuvered his way into absolute-and absolutely corrupt-power has the makings of a classic of narrative nonfiction.

Amazon.com: The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (9781594488429): Masha Gessen: Books