Gilles Favarel-Garrigues, Senior researcher at CERI/CNRS, has recently published La verticale de la peur. Ordre et allégeance en Russie poutinienne (The Verticality of Fear. Order and allegiance in Putin's Russia) with La Découverte. In his book based on twenty years of research, Gilles Favarel-Garrigues explores the political and social roots of Putinism, and how fear has become a pillar of the Russian president’s geopolitics. The book offers original keys to understanding how such a destructive power endures and, perhaps, how it extends far beyond the walls of the Kremlin. The following is an interview with the author. Interview by Corinne Deloy. English version by Miriam Périer and Caitlin Gordon Walker.