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

GUEST: Owen Matthews - writer, historian, and journalist.
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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.
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#ukraine #ukrainewar #russia #zelensky #putin #propaganda #war #disinformation
#hybridwarfare #foreignpolicy #communism #sovietunion #postsoviet
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CHAPTERS:
02:42 The mystery is why did Putin start his 'senseless' war
09:23 COVID isolation and poor information led to bad decisions
12:56 Why placing primary blame for war on NATO is a red herring
19:33 Support for joining NATO was low in Ukraine prior to 2014
24:24 Russia believes it's a global power with US as it's nemesis 7
30:42 Has Russia hit rock bottom? No - it can always get worse
40:00 Hybrid information autocracy - was everyone a Kremlin puppet?
51:02 Russia's New Year show - close to being a Hunger Games parody
56:23 Many liberals have buckled down to collaborate with the regime
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SPEAKER:
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.
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BOOKS:
Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin and Russia’s War Against Ukraine (2022)
Red Traitor (2021)
Black Sun: Based on a true story, the critically acclaimed Soviet thriller (2019)
An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent (2019)
Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of a Russian America (2013)
Stalin's Children: Three Generations of Love and War (2011)
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