Owen Matthews

In Overreach, Owen Matthews draws on his unrivalled network of contacts to deliver unique insights into Putin’s administration, security services, armed forces and propaganda machine. He sheds light on the decision-making processes within the Kremlin, and the consequences that have shaken Europe to its core.

The book chronicles how Vladimir Putin lurched from calculating and subtle master of political opportunity to reckless gambler whose aggression threatens to destroy both the foundations of his own regime and of Russia itself. Overreach transports the reader into the Covid bubble where Putin conceived his invasion plans in a fog of nationalist fantasy and bad information – and into the inner circle around Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky, the TV star president who became the war’s most unexpected hero.

Testimonies of captured Russian conscripts, Ukrainian civilians who escaped from occupation, and of the last journalists in besieged Mariupol tell the story of the war as it unfolded on the ground. Matthews’ interviews with men who launched Putin’s career, and others who have worked with him for years, help the reader understand Putin’s motivations and get inside the head of the world’s most secretive and dangerous leader.

Overreach is an important and unparalleled piece of investigative journalism that will be the first to offer readers a panoramic view of how the most serious geopolitical crisis since World War II began – and how its endgame is likely to unfold.

1963. In a desolate Russian penal colony, the radio broadcasts news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy…

Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vasin’s new posting as director of a gulag camp in the middle of the frozen tundra is far from a promotion. This is where disgraced agents, like Vasin, disappear – sent to die forgotten. And quietly. But tensions in the camp are running high and when a violent revolt breaks out, Vasin finds himself on the run. With him is a mysterious prisoner – who holds the key to the most dangerous secret in the world: who ordered Kennedy’s murder.

In a breathless race that takes them through the Soviet Union – from the barren Siberian wastelands to the stunning halls of the Katerina Palace and the grey streets of Leningrad and Moscow – Vasin must stay one step ahead of the most ruthless spy and police organizations in the world . . . and keep the most wanted man in Russia alive. It’s a journey that will push Vasin’s loyalty, morality and his patriotism to the limit. And he must confront the ultimate choice: fall in line, or die fighting the system.

One the least known but most terrifying moments in modern history – when the fate of the world lay with a lone, nervous Soviet naval officer one hundred meters under the Caribbean sea – lies at the heart of this breathtaking new Cold War thriller from the author of the acclaimed Black Sun.

The year is 1962, and KGB Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vasin is searching for ghosts: for evidence of the long-rumoured existence of an American spy embedded at the highest echelons of Soviet power. But it’s while on this wild goose chase, a high-stakes espionage race against a rival State agency, that Vasin first hears whispers of an ominous top-secret undertaking: Operation Anadyr.

As tensions flare between Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy over Russian missiles hidden in Cuba, four Soviet submarines – each carrying tactical ballistic missiles armed with thermonuclear warheads – are ordered to make a covert run at the U.S. blockade in the Caribbean . . .

1961. Hidden deep within central Soviet Russia is a place that doesn’t appear on any map: a city called Arzamas-16. Here dedicated scientists and technicians are building the most powerful nuclear device the world will ever see – three thousand times more powerful than Hiroshima.

But days before the bomb is to be tested, a young physicist is found dead. His body contains enough radioactive poison to kill thousands. The authorities believe it is suicide – they want the corpse disposed of, the incident filed and forgotten. But Moscow is alarmed by what’s going on in this strange, isolated place.

And so KGB major Alexander Vasin is sent to Arzamas to investigate. What he finds there is unlike anything he’s experienced before. His wits will be tested against some of the Soviet Union’s most brilliant minds – eccentrics, patriots and dissidents who, because their work is considered to be of such vital importance, have been granted the freedom to think and act, live and love as they wish. For in Arzamas, nothing can be allowed to get in the way of the project. Not even murder . . .