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

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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”. Russia loses the war: Putin can be removed and assassinated, his successor will surely be much worse. Even Ukrainian Russian speakers do not like to join Putin’s Russia. After all, they are much richer than 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. In Part 3, Matthews attempts to devote the same careful analytical attention to events following the February 2022 invasion. The results are mixed, in large part because these events are simply too recent. Matthews adopts a thematic, rather than strictly chronological account. Important topics, such as shifts in Western attitudes to the war and the effectiveness of economic sanctions, receive attention. However, Matthews is constrained by the limited information available at the time of writing. In February 2023 the question of Western resolve, while less pressing than in late 2022, remains open in the face of a potentially protracted conflict. A full understanding of the true impact of economic sanctions, and the consequent decoupling of Russia from Western economies, awaits the sort of detailed analysis by economists that will take years.

Putin had made his official message clear in the characteristically direct and universally comprehensible way he had communicated for two decades – the language of boss–subordinate relations. At its most superficial, he had signalled that recognition of the Donbas republics was right and proper, in the collective and unanimous opinion of Russia’s top public statesmen. Subconsciously, but with equal clarity, he had also denoted who was in the inner circle, who was in the chorus, who was on the edges. And most of all, who was the ultimate boss. 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. 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. 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, Overreachtells the story not only of the war’s causes but how the first six months unfolded. Matthews opens “Overreach” with diary-style fragments that begin on the night of Feb. 23, 2022. From the halls of Putin’s Novo-Ogarevo residence to the presidential palace in Kyiv, to the cities of Belgorod, Bucha, Kherson, and even a small town in Oxfordshire, U.K., this introductory chapter sets the stage, weaving together the individual threads that will form Matthews’ narrative.An astonishing investigation into the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war - from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol. 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] An astonishing investigation into the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war – from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol. Matthews, Owen (11 October 2022). Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin's War Against Ukraine. Mudlark Press. ISBN 9780008562748. Feb 2022, quote formerly pro-NATO Putin rightly stating before wrongly invading, "De-Nazify Ukraine."

This then, provides the reader with accounts, quotes and insight from current and former insiders, blended with those of people who fought/are fighting or suffered from Putin's "Limited Special Operation", as the first six months of this war unfolded. 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. 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.

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Stalin's Children: Three Generations of Love and War (Bloomsbury, 2008), a memoir of three generations of Matthews' family in Russia, was named as a Book of the Year by The Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph. [11] [12], shortlisted for The Guardian First Books Award, [13] The Orwell Prize, [14] and France's Prix Medicis Etranger. [15] Stalin's Children was translated into 28 languages.

Written at what must have been hypersonic speed, Overreach is a remarkable achievement, with Matthews’s expert eye like an all-seeing drone buzzing from one side of the conflict to the other. We drop in everywhere from Putin’s long white table to Zelensky’s bunker, via the siege of Kyiv and the trenches of Mariupol. Moscou Babylone (Les Escales, 2013), a novel based on Matthews' experiences in Moscow in the 1990s, has been published in French, [21] German [22] 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. [23] His inner clique, it seems, knew the war would isolate Moscow internationally, but figured it was still worth it. By turning Russia into somewhere that no liberal wanted to live, they could ensure power passed to their own children, many of whom already hold top government jobs. A country where millions died in socialism’s name now resembles the hereditary Tsarist aristocracy before it. 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] But the particularly interesting responses came from the members of the Putin cabinet who were clearly the most uncomfortable with the unfolding events. This group included the men best informed about Russia’s position in the world, its economy and on the real situation on the ground in Ukraine.

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

His analysis of Zelensky’s inner circle is less extensive but equally compelling. Through quotes from the Ukrainian president’s closest advisers, Matthews documents Zelensky’s unparalleled optimism in the first week of the war as well as the effect of his visit to the horrifying scenes at Bucha. Overreach คลี่คลายคำถามข้างต้นและคำถามอื่นๆ ที่เกี่ยวข้องกับต้นตอของสงครามอย่างน่าสนใจ ผ่านการย่อยข้อมูลมหาศาลและการสัมภาษณ์คนหลายร้อยคนทั้งในและนอกเครมลิน กระบวนการได้มาซึ่งข้อมูลของผู้เขีย��ก็น่าติดตามไม่แพ้เส้นเรื่องหลัก ทหารรัสเซียหลายคนให้การหลังจากที่ตกเป็นเชลย บางคนยอมให้ข้อมูลแบบนิรนาม ต้องนัดพบกันในสวนสาธารณะตามเวลาที่กำหนด คนสนิทของปูตินหลายคนยอมให้ข้อมูลแต่ระวังตัวแจ ชาวรัสเซียจำนวนมากที่รักชาติแต่ไม่รักปูตินอยากให้โลกรู้ว่าพวกเขาคิดอะไร Matthews was educated at Westminster School and studied Modern History at Christ Church, Oxford. [6] Journalism [ edit ] Nor, in a country that still suffers an “addiction to imperial fantasies”, is it likely that Putin’s replacement will be Gorbachev 2.0. Nationalism, Matthews says, is a far more powerful current in Russia than pro-Western liberalism. He adds: “A military defeat at the hands of NATO weaponry would likely strengthen, not weaken, that tendency.”