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

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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. By mid-March, even Matthews himself has to leave for a while, fearing that his 19-year-old son, a Russian passport holder, may get drafted. Yet amidst this chaos and personal upheaval, he has produced a book that is not merely the first full account of the war, but may set the standard for some time to come. 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.” Chapter 2 (“And Moscow is Silent”) gives a brief biography of Putin that largely aligns with the conventional Western interpretation. As the Chapter title suggests, much is made of Putin’s distress at the fall of the Soviet Union (Matthews quotes Boris Reitschuster’s claim that the infamous ‘Moscow is silent’ moment is “the key to understanding Putin”) and its development into simmering anti-NATO resentment. The last part of Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 summarise the history of post-USSR, pre-Zelensky Ukraine, including the Euromaidan protests and the subsequent conflict in the Donbas. This is a grim conclusion – and very different from the cheerleading optimism that has informed much of the conflict’s coverage so far. Indeed, parts of this book left me wanting a stiff drink, like Matthews’s old Moscow pals. But as a historical rough draft of this century’s first major conflict, it’s compelling – if uncomfortable – reading.

Dining With the Author: Dangerous Misadventures With Owen Matthews". HuffPost. 28 April 2014 . Retrieved 5 June 2015.Matthews, Owen (11 October 2022). Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin's War Against Ukraine. Mudlark Press. ISBN 9780008562748. An astonishing investigation into the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war – from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol. 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. 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.

Imagine that Russia had colonised America". News – Telegraph Blogs. Archived from the original on 28 August 2013. 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. 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.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] After a year of the conflict, the world wonders how the second best army in Ukraine (the Russian) is doing. And it is that the Russians are fighting a 20th century war in the 21st century. NATO is providing kyiv with modern weapons and although they are not tanks or planes, they are missiles capable of destroying tanks and planes. 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. 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. Matthews’s analysis of why the invasion has foundered also offers insights. He challenges, for example, the notion of Kyiv’s armed forces as outnumbered amateurs, pointing out that during the last eight years of the simmering Donbas conflict, some 900,000 Ukrainians have served, “making a vast reserve force with recent combat experience”.

An astonishing investigation into the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war - from the corridors of the Kremlin to the trenches of Mariupol. Matthews’ focus on the major Russian non-Putin characters makes Chapter 4 and 5 the best and most interesting parts of the book. Matthews describes Surkov as “the most paradoxical and fascinating figure ever to have worked in Putin’s Kremlin”, and makes his case well. 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. The first section of Chapter 5 deserves a book of its own (perhaps by Matthews, perhaps by Mark Galeotti, whose work Matthews draws on) charting the long, agonising decline of the so-called “liberals” in the Kremlin, from Yegor Gaidar to Surkov, as they consistently failed to deliver the results that successive Russian leaders wanted. 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]I found the book fairly objective, which is a plus point. It oversimplifying to cast Ukraine as the good guys and Russians as the bad guys. Ukraine did have its issues and not everyone is blameless. Most rational people act in rational ways and Putin is no exception, although the invasion turned out to be a catastrophic blunder, and a gross misreading of the situation, he still acted as he did for a reason. That's what Overreach is all about.