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

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It needs to be updated but it is excellent to know what Putin thought to start the war, what was his plan and why what he thought did not come out. When the war with Ukraine began, Western countries decided not to help Kiev, they thought that in less than a week the Russians would take full control of the country. In September 2022, during the 7th month of the Ukraine War, interviewed by Channel 4 about his nine meetings with Vladimir Putin, ex-NATO Head Robertson said, "At the first meeting (in Moscow, Oct 2001) Vladimir Putin clearly said, 'I WANT RUSSIA TO BE PART OF WESTERN EUROPE. The story told here brings together the history of Putin and his immediate and very tight circle, the siloviki , from their days in the KGB to the present. Readers seeking more focus on events since February 2022 with a more chronological structure could also consider Luke Harding’s Invasion: The Inside Story of Russia's Bloody War and Ukraine's Fight for Survival.

Explains in great detail all of the many mistakes Putin has made - most of them involving overreach. How and why did Putin decide to throw decades of carefully-constructed macroeconomics and diplomacy out of the window and launch a war so reckless and risky that the details were kept even from most of his most senior ministers right up until the very moment of the invasion?These individual accounts often contain great courage and selflessness, but there are others which hold depravity. I was really impressed by the thoroughness of the narrative in Overreach (great title), and would have awarded 5 stars but I found the early part of the book, describing the history of Ukraine in great detail, to be too long-drawn out. There was a time before the invasion of Ukraine when even the Kremlin’s opponents would talk of living in ‘vegetarian’ times. In 2016-18 Matthews appeared regularly as a guest on Russian political talk shows 60 Minut (Russia's top-rated talk show on Russia-1); NTV's Mesto Vstrechi and Russia-1's Evening with Vladimir Solovyov. He remained convinced that belief was the only gravity that could hold his contradictory world of duty and lies together.

Owen Matthews, a veteran journalist covering Russia, tells the story of the run-up to Putin's invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 and the months that followed. The lack of maps or an index (there is a reference list) will drive readers elsewhere for the necessary reminders about who the supporting characters are and where events are occurring. Chapter 2 (“And Moscow is Silent”) gives a brief biography of Putin that largely aligns with the conventional Western interpretation. 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.Nor, in a country that still suffers an “addiction to imperial fantasies”, is it likely that Putin’s replacement will be Gorbachev 2. Chapter 5 continues with the consolidation of influence in the hands of the “tiny group of men” whom Matthews claims led Russia to war.

It was chosen as the 'coup de coeur etranger' (favourite foreign book) at the 2013 Nancy Literary Festival, Le Livre sur la Place. At 68, Putin was already two years past the life expectancy of the average Russian male, and would be a “lame duck” in five years. I’m delighted to be working with Joel Simons and the world-class HarperCollins team to produce this first draft of history. Matthews describes Surkov as “the most paradoxical and fascinating figure ever to have worked in Putin’s Kremlin”, and makes his case well. 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 portrait of Patrushev is also helpful for introducing readers to an essential figure in Russia’s recent past, the current war, and possibly the future too. A combination of the nationalist minded idealogues getting closer to him, his sense of grievance against the West since Maiden and pandemic isolation helped sway him.