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

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After a year of the conflict, the world wonders how the second best army in Ukraine (the Russian) is doing.

Featuring murder and betrayals, and a flawed but principled KGB man as its hero, it unfolds in the aftermath of Stalinism, amid the scars left by the purges, denunciations and Great Patriotic War. Chapter 4 considers the roles of Aleksandr Dugin, Konstantin Malofeev, Metropolitan Tikhon, Sergei Glazyev and Vladislav Surkov, alongside factors such as Russia’s success in Syria and Putin’s contempt for Zelensky that together created a political, ideological and economic environment in which outright invasion was possible. Matthews’ answer may come as a surprise to a casual reader, because he emphasises the role of key figures in Putin’s inner circle, rather than the Russian President himself.

Wikipedia will do the job, but this is a disappointing omission presumably caused by constraints on what must have been a rushed editorial process. The difference between the Russians and the Ukrainians: the Russians did not know where they were going or what they were going to do. Unfortunately, this is often only true in the sense of history as “things that happened” – the interesting questions of history, those requiring careful arguments about causation and counterfactual, await more distance, better sources, and the attention of experts. Patruschev is also thought to have been behind the planning and execution of both the Litvinenko assassination and the attempted assassinations of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. I think we missed an opportunity at that time because I think it's what he (Putin) wanted, and we could have grabbed hold of him!

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. 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. To Putin, it was the single betrayal that brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union, depriving the old empire of one of its most industrialised zones. An astonishing investigation into the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war – from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol.

Chapter 2 (“And Moscow is Silent”) gives a brief biography of Putin that largely aligns with the conventional Western interpretation.

Belarus’s president Aleksandr Lukashenko has been missing from public view since being taken ill during a Victory Day parade in Moscow on 9 May. 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.

Owen Matthews brings his own experience to the account from two angles: that of a man raising a family, with his Russian wife, living in Russia; and of a journalist who has reported from within and about Russia and its politics and wars for over a quarter of a century.