Recommended: Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin

In today's Russia, Vladimir Putin calls all the shots. He is known to Kremlin insiders (only partly in jest) as "tsar". Unlike Stalin, however, Putin doesn't rule through terror; he rules through an affiliation of supporters, most of them personal friends from his days in St Petersburg, whom he has made quite wealthy. One might think of his role as the "godfather" of an extended Mafia family, or perhaps (as Judah suggests in the book), as the monarch of England in the court of Elizabeth I, juggling the allegiances of powerful barons.

To understand what is going on in the Ukraine these days, one has to understand Putin - what motivates him, what his world view is, what his objectives are, and what political constraints he has to work under. One has to also understand what the ordinary Russian thinks, hopes for, and expects, and why Putin had such a wide appeal in Russia for so long (and still does, though it is diminishing).

Ben Judah's 2013 book Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Live with Vladimir Putin is a good starting point. Judah, a journalist whose work has appeared such places as The Economist, The Financial Times, and Foreign Policy, spent five years crisscrossing Russia and talking to government officials, ordinary Russians, and oligarchs, and has assembled a fascinating portrait of Vladimir Putin's  rise to power, and the cultural shifts occurring in Russia that first elevated Putin and now hinder him.

Well worth reading.