Intrigue, corruption and war: these are the ingredients of a power game that has seen a certain Vladimir Putin become President of the Russian Federation. Autumn 1998: Russian President Yeltsin is seriously ill. A sort of unofficial politburo, including Yeltsin's daughter Tatiana, her future husband and the oligarch Boris Berezovsky, de facto ran official business. The group, which has no legitimacy and is referred to as "the family" by Russian journalists, is feverishly searching for a candidate to succeed Yeltsin. The post of Prime Minister is intended as a springboard. But several proposals from the "family" for a new Prime Minister failed in the Duma, the Russian Parliament. In the end it was Yevgeny Primakov who prevailed, against the wishes of the "family". But Primakov, in his fight against corruption, quickly became an embarrassment. Vladimir Putin, who had already been promoted to head of the FSB domestic intelligence service, helped the "family" to discredit the Prosecutor General's investigations - and thus recommended himself to the Yeltsin family, who allowed him to rise from head of the FSB to Prime Minister. But how could this pale apparatchik, still completely unknown to the public, make a name for himself among the electorate in just a few months? The film tells the story of the manoeuvres that brought Putin to the Kremlin, providing an in-depth insight into the political make-up of Russia in the second half of the 1990s.