Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin and Russia’s War Against Ukraine

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He remained convinced that belief was the only gravity that could hold his contradictory world of duty and lies together. But he was no longer sure he had preserved enough of it to make the center hold.” Putin is totally weakened: perhaps it would be the best result for the West, the bad thing is that Russia is leaving more and more of the international concert and this is bad for the world in general and especially for the Russians.

As we near the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine the inevitable flood of books begin in earnest. Of this first draft of history Owen Matthews contribution stands head and shoulders above the rest.Writing with authority and clarity, Matthews weaves disparate events into a bloody tapestry of invasion and resistance.

Owen Matthews writes about Russia for The Spectator and is the author of Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin’s War Against Ukraine.A respected journalist draws on deep knowledge to explain the thinking behind Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Using the accounts of current and former insiders from the Kremlin and its propaganda machine, the testimony of captured Russian soldiers and on-the-ground reporting from Russia and Ukraine, Overreach tells the story not only of the war’s causes but how the first six months unfolded. Feb 2022, quote formerly pro-NATO Putin rightly stating before wrongly invading, "De-Nazify Ukraine." Bullough, Oliver (18 March 2019). "An Impeccable Spy review – wine, women and state secrets". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712 . Retrieved 3 August 2019.

What I admire most about the author’s writing in this book is it’s remarkable frankness. He does not try to achieve fake “balance” by making the Ukrainian Government sound as bad as the Russian Government. But what all sides overlook and their genuine mistakes are on full display and are carefully and shrewdly observed.A good, well written book. My only reservation is this: if you are interested in Ukraine, read a decent paper each day and maybe listen to or watch programmes or Podcasts about the Russian invasion, almost all of the content will be broadly familiar to you. So claims that it is "astonishing" or in some way revelatory are overdone.

Matthews co-wrote the 2015 Russian television series Londongrad and played an episodic role in it. [32] Matthews also played the US Ambassador to Moscow in the 2017 Russian television series The Optimists. [33] Imagine that Russia had colonised America". News – Telegraph Blogs. Archived from the original on 28 August 2013. Thinking with the Blood, ( Newsweek, 2014), a personal reportage based on a journey across war-torn Ukraine in the late summer of 2014, was published as an ebook. [8] Moscou Babylone (Les Escales, 2013), a novel based on Matthews' experiences in Moscow in the 1990s, has been published in French, [20] German [21] and Czech. It was chosen as the 'coup de coeur etranger' (favourite foreign book) at the 2013 Nancy Literary Festival, Le Livre sur la Place. [22] The book is remarkably well written, given that it must have been produced in haste. Matthews brings not only a lifetime of working in and studying Russia, but an eye for detail. He humanises the stories of soldiers (from both sides) as well as civilians caught up in the onslaught. These individual accounts often contain great courage and selflessness, but there are others which hold depravity.The title refers to Putin’s hubris in launching the Ukraine invasion, yet this book is much more, charting how the dream of reclaiming Moscow’s old empire went from “the marginal fringes of Russian politics to become official Kremlin policy”. Measured against this standard, and considering the circumstances under which it was produced, the book is a success. Part 1 covers the historical origins of the 2022 invasion, stretching from Kyivan Rus��� to the election of Volodymyr Zelensky as President of Ukraine in 2019. Chapter 1 (“Poisoned Roots”) is necessarily concise and touches lightly, if at all, on many of the controversies of early Russian and Ukrainian history, but Matthews does a good job emphasising the fundamental uncertainty of key issues. The author briefly goes over some key battles such as the one for the Hostomel airport. However, there are few details about other major battles such as the siege of Mariupol and Azovstal. The war crimes at Bucha are covered in more detail including the story of the young Russian soldier that committed war crimes and was subsequently captured and sentenced to life in prison. Various actors in the war such as the foreign volunteers, the Chechens, the Wagner mercenaries are each discussed in turn. L'Ombre du Sabre (Les Escales, 2016) A novel inspired by the author's own experiences as a reporter in Chechnya in the 1990s and in Eastern Ukraine in 2014 [23] Rough edges and a weaker third act do not prevent Overreach from achieving its aims. It is timely, compelling and arguably more perceptive than could reasonably be expected so soon. It is strongly recommended, especially for readers who have been following the war since February 2022, or who have some prior knowledge of Putin or Russian politics.