Shadow State

 

Shadow State by Luke Harding (2020 Guardian-Faber softcover 336pp)

Luke Harding was the Moscow reporter for The Guardian newspaper until the Russian government decided they didn’t like him. After repeatedly breaking into this flat and bugging him they kicked him out of the country. But Harding hasn’t stopped writing about Russia. Over the last decade he’s produced several books relating how the Russian state and organised crime have fused together and become a menace to the rest of the world. The stand-out book for me was “A Very Expensive Poison” where he narrowed his focus to the case of Alexander Litvinenko who died after drinking tea laced with radioactive Polonium in 2006.

“Shadow State” rather than focussing on one specific case or topic, seems more like an exercise in bringing the reader up to date with what’s happened since the earlier books. Many things are covered starting with the 2018 Skripal nerve-agent attack and moving rapidly on through topics like Russian internet trolls, The Wagner group mercenaries, Ukraine and Trump. A lot of Trump. He gives us detailed accounts of what the Muller report uncovered re Trump & Russia and then follows the progress of the events and personalities that led to Trump’s impeachment in 2019. Along the way he gives us fascinating mini word-portraits of some of the people who just keep popping up in the grand narrative. Some he meets in person while others prove elusive.

In the end his opinion is that Russia is trying to re-shape the west to suit its needs via covert and not so covert methods. Western politicians and power-brokers seem either blind to this or just can’t resist the potential rewards for themselves and their cronies.

An easy read if you’re interested in the topic. He knows his material and has impeccable sources. I just wish he’d concentrated more on one subject area rather than the grab-bag of items it ended up as. Perhaps we’ll still get a separate book on the Salisbury incident by Harding, one can only hope.