Owen Matthews - Has Putin Turned into a Reckless Gambler - Risking Everything in his War on Ukraine?

Russian’s assault on Ukraine in 2022 presents the most serious  geopolitical crisis since the Second World War, and the first time a  country has sought to expunge a sovereign nation from the map of the  world since the NAZI era. And yet at the heart of the war is a mystery.  Vladimir Putin apparently lurched from a calculating, subtle master of  opportunity to a reckless gambler, putting his regime – and Russia  itself – at risk of destruction. He also thought the ‘regime’ in Kyiv  could be toppled in 10 days through a blitzkrieg operation carried out  from Russian and Byelorussia territory. Why?  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 seeks to explain this mystery in a first draft of the history  of the Russo-Ukrainian war of 2022-23. With its panoramic view,  Overreach is an authoritative and highly detailed record of a conflict  that has shocked Europe and the Western world to its core.   

Owen Matthews is a British writer, historian, and journalist. His first  book, Stalin's Children, was shortlisted for the 2008 Guardian First  Book Award and the Orwell Prize for political writing. He is a former  Moscow and Istanbul Bureau Chief for Newsweek. Owen is half-Russian,  speaks the language to a native level and studied Modern History at  Christ Church, Oxford. From 2006 to 2012 he was Newsweek's Moscow Bureau  Chief and is now a Contributing Editor at the magazine. In 2014 he  reported for Newsweek on the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, and this year  wrote one of the first substantial books on the 2022 full-scale war:  Overreach: Inside Story of Putin's War Against Ukraine.