To predict what Vladimir Putin might do next in Ukraine, it’s helpful to remember his first and foremost education — in the dvor.  

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Organized crime and violence reign supreme in post-Soviet Russia. In this world, the rules of the dvor prove invaluable — for the men fighting over the jewels of the Soviet industrial empire, and for Vladimir Putin.

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Putin grows up as a small, scrawny kid in a poor neighborhood with few ways up. Enter judo and the KGB. 

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Soviet baby boomers are born into a country ravaged by war. Given that parents are largely absent — either dead, traumatized, or working to make ends meet – children spend most of their time in the dvor, the urban courtyard. The dvor is Vladimir Putin’s world.

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The Soviet Union suffers unthinkable horrors during World War II. Leningrad, the city into which Vladimir Putin is born, loses more than a million of its citizens to starvation, and Vladimir Putin’s parents barely make it out alive.

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In the West, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is always seen as one of two things: KGB spy or judo master. But to anyone who’s ever lived in the Soviet Union, Putin is something else entirely: a street kid. Join journalist Julia Ioffe as she explores how Putin’s childhood taught him lessons that shape his thinking and actions to this day.

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