Vladimir Putin's rise is traced from the chaos of Yeltsin's Russia, when a little-known former KGB officer worked his way into the right circles before emerging as the country's dominant figure for two decades and counting. Academics and historians walk through the key turning points: the consolidation of power in the early 2000s, the crackdown on independent media, the assassinations and disappearances of opposition figures, and the military interventions in Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine that punctuate his rule. The film treats false-flag operations and manufactured crises as recurring tools of statecraft, and spends time on the deliberate construction of Putin's public image, from staged displays of physical strength to state television's framing of him as Russia's indispensable protector. Interview commentary is woven with archival news footage and photographs spanning his career. Rather than a single biography, it works as an accounting of method, how a relatively obscure bureaucrat built an durable authoritarian system, and why, after twenty-plus years, removing him looks nearly impossible.