An American journalist, historian, and one of the foremost Western experts on Russia’s political and moral transformation, he served as Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times and longtime contributor to the Wall Street Journal, spending over four decades chronicling Russia’s descent from late Soviet stagnation into Putin’s authoritarian system. Best known for investigating the 1999 apartment bombings that killed nearly 300 people and propelled Putin to power, he presented evidence in Darkness at Dawn that Russia’s own security services staged the attacks—an act he calls “the original sin of Putin’s rule.”