New Putin Documentary for PBS’s FRONTLINE

PBS’s FRONTLINE has slated the premiere of its latest documentary on Vladimir Putin, Putin’s Crisis, on July 11.

From Michael Kirk, Mike Wiser and Vanessa Fica, the team behind Putin and the President, Putin’s Road to War and Putin’s Revenge, the new documentary explores how the long-serving Russian president’s grip on power may be slipping amid discontent around the war in Ukraine and the recent armed revolt by Russian mercenary Wagner Group.

The new documentary will draw on new interviews and the creative team’s years of reporting on the Russian leader. It will premiere on PBS stations and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel on July 11 at 9 p.m. EDT. It will be available to watch in full at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS app at 7 p.m. EDT. PBS International is distributing Putin’s Crisis internationally.

Putin’s Crisis is a FRONTLINE production with the Kirk Documentary Group. Kirk is the director and writer, alongside Wiser. Fica is reporter.

“Enormous damage has been done to Putin’s authority, to his image as somebody ruthlessly in control of all the levers of power in Russia,” Kori Schake, a director at the American Enterprise Institute, told FRONTLINE. “Putin has been revealed to be indecisive, to not be in control and to be vulnerable to future challenges like the one Prigozhin posed.”

“Even a failed coup can be dangerous,” said Peter Baker, New York Times journalist and co-author of Kremlin Rising. “It reveals that the emperor has no clothes, right? It reveals that it is conceivable to stand against him. And if you are Putin, you are looking around that room and you are saying, ‘Which of these people has a knife in his belt? Which of these people might be thinking of moving on me next?’”