Accidental Czar

3.5 stars. This covered a number of things I was somewhat familiar with (for example, the Pussy Riot arrests, the poisoning of Yushchenko, the Chechen school siege at Beslan, and the downing of the Malaysia Airlines flight over Ukraine), but it put all of that -- and many other events -- into context, providing a better understanding of Putin and Russia. A lot of helpful background information about the country's history and Putin's rise to power. I read somewhere that it was supposed to be funny or witty, at least to some extent, but I saw almost no humor in this (which is probably not really surprising, considering the subject matter).