- Exiled journalists Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin won France's new Prix Strasbourg for their taboo-breaking book on Putin's rise and private life.
- The book reads like a spy novel, based on more than two decades of reporting and hundreds of interviews, some witnesses later disappeared.
- Prix Strasbourg, launched in 2026, awards substantial prizes; winners will be honored in Strasbourg in September and the book publishes in France next month.
A taboo-breaking book about Vladimir Putin’s rise to power and private life, written by two exiled Russian journalists, won a newly established French literary prize on Tuesday.
The book, titled “The Tsar in Propria Persona: How Vladimir Putin Deceived Us All”, draws on more than two decades of investigative reporting by journalists Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin.
The work won a newly-established literary award called Prix Strasbourg awarded by EBRA, France’s largest regional newspaper group, and its parent company, Credit Mutuel Alliance Federale.
The book is due to be published in France next month.
It reads “like a spy novel”, the jury said, describing the book as a “fascinating and shocking work about a figure who is himself fascinating and shocking”.
“It is the result of several hundred interviews with witnesses, some of whom later disappeared under tragic circumstances.”
A high-profile Russian journalist, Badanin is the founder and editor-in-chief of Proekt, an investigative media outlet created in 2018.
Both Badanin and Rubin, his deputy at Proekt, live in the United States after coming under pressure in Russia.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) said last year when the book’s Russian edition was published that Badanin and Rubin traced the former KGB agent’s rise to power and broke a Kremlin-imposed taboo about Putin’s private life “at great personal risk”.
The book “contrasts the official image of the Russian president, now in his 26th year in power, as a leading defender of traditional values against Western decadence with the reality of his private life — where extramarital affairs, nepotism, and connections to organised crime reign”.
Launched in 2026, the Prix Strasbourg aims to be a literary prize that is “open to the world” rather than “Paris-centric”, said Mathilde Reumaux, chief executive at EBRA Editions.
The prize seeks to distinguish itself through its substantial endowment, with 20,000 euros ($23,000) awarded to the overall winner and 55,000 euros distributed across all categories.
Other prize winners include Haitian author Thelyson Orelien and French journalist Marion Dubreuil.
The winners will receive their awards in Strasbourg in September.
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