Hi, I'm Nambulantakombo and my podcast, Dear Dota, is available now.

It's a handbook to life for daughters everywhere. Find out more at the end of this podcast.

Being an informed citizen is not always easy. You want to know what's going on,

to stay up to date with the big news stories that affect your fellow humans across the planet.

But the nonstop delusive important events makes it difficult to completely understand the headlines.

That's where we hope the explanation from the BBC World Service can help.

I'm Anu Anand and in this series I asked some of my BBC colleagues to help me break down big global news events

using archive recordings made on the ground to make sense of why these stories are important.

There's also, I can tell you nothing. Gunfire is getting very close and people are running towards us.

So somebody with some kind of guns coming close to this way.

Today we look at Russia under Vladimir Putin. This is the explanation from the BBC World Service.

Russia was a global superpower during the Cold War. But when the communist era ended,

its power suddenly declined. Today Russia is ruled by President Vladimir Putin,

a former spy whose internal repression and external aggression have polarized opinion across the globe.

Today I'm joined by BBC correspondent Sarah Rainesford.

She began reporting from Russia just as Vladimir Putin first took over in the year 2000

and she spent more than two decades on and off living and working there.

But in August 2021 she was expelled.

Apparently that's it. My whole story with Russia is over.

Stay with the explanation for the next 15 minutes to understand how Russia has moved from repression

to freedom and back again over three decades.

Sarah in that video clip you're wearing a purple face mask one of those disposable ones.

...