This is the Guardian.

Today, for the second anniversary of the war in Ukraine, you'll hear stories of heroism and sacrifice.

This is not one of them.

Part one of a special three-part series. stories. with well-known faces about their midlife challenges and expectations.

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So what happened was I met a contact.

Tom Burgess is an investigation's correspondent for the Guardian in London.

She came to the Guardian and we went and sat by the bar at the bottom of the building

by the canal and as we sat there talking about which is dirty

money and how it's conquering the world she mentioned a Ukrainian name Vladimir

Salto and pointed me towards his business interests, his money-making.

And I started to follow that thread and follow it, and follow it, and follow it, and follow it, and it took me all the way to the front line in Ukraine.

We're on the road approaching Herson at a beautiful winter morning clear blue sky except for the vapid trails of what we think

as a Russian jet.

And what it reveals me was something fundamental about the war and that's that Putin is trying to

conquer Ukraine with troops and missiles and artillery rounds but there's a much more

subtle but no less powerful technique as well which is something

he's been doing ever since he was a KGB officer back during the Cold War.

...