FRONTLINE and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation trace Vladimir Putin's rise from an unemployed KGB officer in the chaos of early 1990s St. Petersburg to two decades of consolidated power in the Kremlin. Producer Neil Docherty and correspondent Gillian Findlay interview former colleagues, business partners, and Kremlin insiders, several of whom describe how city contracts and favors flowed through Putin's office during his years as a deputy mayor. The film follows him from that municipal post to the presidency, examining the deaths and disappearances of journalists and business rivals who crossed him along the way, and the fortunes amassed by men in his inner circle. Archival news footage and courtroom material chart the Yukos affair and the imprisonment of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky as a turning point in how Putin dealt with dissent. The documentary treats the corruption allegations as a pattern rather than isolated scandals, building toward a portrait of a system built to protect one man's hold on power.