Owen Matthews' 'Overreach'

“Everything we thought we shared with the civilised world was borrowed. Moscow literary editor Varvara Babitskaya, February 2022


“Though neither Putin’s siloviki – nor even ultra-conservative philosophers like Aleksandr Dugin – would put it in these terms, a war of national salvation was the only force powerful enough to stop the encroachment of the modern world and radically cut the country off from the West.”
Owen Matthews, Overreach

I enjoyed Owen Matthews' book Overreach. He speaks English and Russian as his first languages. He strongly backs the Nato line on the Ukrainian war but even so he explains that the invasion happened because "not to strike would be to abandon Ukraine to the west and fatally expose Russia to the encroaching existential political and military threat".

The threat included a CIA inspired regime change.

In other words he agrees that Putin acted under provocation, at least in his mind. He is not trying to recreate the USSR or conquer Poland.

Nato commanders had assumed that Russia could quickly conquer Ukraine but the Russian army was in terrible shape, much of the money spent on it stolen.

A quarter of a million Russians left the country in the week the invasion started, considerably more than the initial Russian invasion force.

Two very important points. The risings in the Donbass were orchestrated by the Kremlin, not by Igor Girkin or the local people - and the people of the Donbass with few exceptions do not want the area to revert to Ukraine.