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

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The world is on their side,” one old friend tells Matthews while doom-scrolling the news at her barstool. “But Russians? Everyone hates Russians. Even most Russians hate people like us, who are against the regime.” Winner of the Pushkin House Book Prize 2023*A Telegraph Book of the Year* A Times Best Book of Summer 2023*Shortlisted for the Parliamentary Book Awards*An astonishing investigation into the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war - from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol.The Russo-Ukrainian War is the most serious geopolitical crisis since the Second World War - and yet at the heart of the conflict is a mystery. 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. [9] Even Ukrainian Russian speakers do not like to join Putin’s Russia. After all, they are much richer than the Russians. Owen Matthews | The Orwell Foundation". www.orwellfoundation.com. 17 October 2010 . Retrieved 24 May 2023.

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. 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.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. 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.

True, this is not a classic war reporter’s tale of frontline action. Some of Matthews’s accounts of key battles, for example, are not first-hand but recreated through interviews and cuttings. In recounting how Kremlin troops were woefully ill-prepared, for example, he draws on testimony to a Ukrainian war crimes court by a young Russian squaddie who pleaded guilty to shooting a civilian after his armoured convoy was ambushed.We hear the story of Vadim Shishimarin, a 21 year old Russian solider whose experience of the war involved sitting for days in a parked armoured vehicle, being blown up, seeing a dozen of his comrades killed, wandering through the countryside north of Kiev, sleeping in sheds and pigsties before turning himself at the fist Ukrainian town. The only reason we know this story of incompetence and waste is that, as he tried to escape in a stolen car, he gunned down Oleksandr Shelipov, a retired man out for ride on his bike. Matthews co-wrote the 2015 Russian television series Londongrad and played an episodic role in it. [33] Matthews also played the US Ambassador to Moscow in the 2017 Russian television series The Optimists. [34] 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 [24] Matthews details the exodus of some million people from Russia to countries across Eastern Europe and beyond and then considers the far-reaching ramifications of sanctions as well as Putin’s failed attempts to weaponize gas.

The use of second-hand sources, though, is the only way to provide a proper overview: in a war this big, no reporter can be everywhere. And besides, much of this book’s value is in exploring the war’s deeper roots. Thus did Putin fall in with the Orthodox Church-influenced Far Right, who see Mother Russia as the last bastion of traditional Christian values. We meet zealots like Alexander Dugin, a white-bearded Soviet-era intellectual who is a kind of anti-Vaclav Havel, quoting Heidegger as he rails against godless Western liberalism. And we tune into religious broadcasting like Tsargrad TV – Orthodoxy’s answer to Fox News – where moral rot is blamed on gays and human rights busybodies funded by George Soros. The invasion, says Matthews, was “the final triumph of an elderly Russia over a young one, of paranoid Soviet-minded conspiracy theorists over... post-Soviet practical capitalists.” This means that the book ends on more pessimistic note than is in retrospect justified. In September the Ukrainian army was pushing to recapture as much land as possible before winter set in and Europe froze under a natural gas embargo. As I read this in late January 2023 Europe hasn't frozen, wholesale gas prices have fallen and most Western nations are tripping over themselves to donate heavy weapons to Ukraine. Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of Russian America (Bloomsbury 2013), a history of Imperial Russia's doomed attempt to colonise America, was shortlisted for the 2014 Pushkin House Prize [16] for books on Russia. [17] [18] [19] [20] Feb 2022, quote formerly pro-NATO Putin rightly stating before wrongly invading, "De-Nazify Ukraine."

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

Matthews was educated at Westminster School and studied Modern History at Christ Church, Oxford. [6] Journalism [ edit ] That is the result of Putin's war. 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. What could Ukraine do against the second best army in the world? Drawing on over 25 years’ experience as a correspondent in Moscow, as well as his own family ties to Russia and Ukraine, journalist Owen Matthews takes us through the poisoned historical roots of the conflict, into the Covid bubble where Putin conceived his invasion plans in a fog of paranoia about Western threats, and finally into the inner circle around Ukrainian president and unexpected war hero Volodimir Zelensky. Matthews has, therefore, set himself a difficult task by seeking to write “a first draft of the history of how the war began – and how the conflict moved from Russia’s blitzkrieg through stalemate to Ukrainian counter-offensive.” The focus of the book is what Matthews describes as “the most compelling mystery at the heart of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine…what was the true reason that Putin decided to go to war?” In his Pushkin House Book Prize-nominated “Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin’s War Against Ukraine,” Owen Matthews explores the sources of this monumental miscalculation.