In an interview for the FRONTLINE documentary “Putin’s Road to War,” Susan Glasser, columnist at The New Yorker and coauthor of "Kremlin Rising," discusses how military force has been key to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rise to power.

“One thing that you get from looking at the whole sweep of Putin’s two decades in power is to understand that, for him, the use of military force has accompanied every step along the way of his journey to become Russia’s longestserving leader since Josef Stalin,” she tells FRONTLINE.

Glasser is a columnist and staff writer at The New Yorker. She previously served as editor of Politico and editorinchief of Foreign Policy magazine. She spent four years as a Moscow bureau chief for The Washington Post and is the coauthor, with Peter Baker, of "Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the End of Revolution."

The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE's Mike Wiser on March 4, 2022. It has been edited for clarity and length.

“Putin’s Road to War” premieres March 15, 2022. Watch the trailer now:    • Putin's Road to War (trailer) | FRONT...  

This interview is being published as part of FRONTLINE’s Transparency Project, an effort to open up the source material behind our documentaries. Explore the transcript of this interview, and others, on the FRONTLINE website: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/ab...

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