Best books… Luke Harding

Collusion

How Russia is Reshaping our Politics

by Steve Vogel, 2019 (John Murray £25). George Blake is the last surviving Cold War traitor. Now 97 and living in Moscow, he sent dozens of agents to their deaths and told the KGB of a CIA tunnel dug under the Berlin Wall. He was caught and jailed, only to escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison. Is Blake repentant? Not one bit. A gripping espionage tale.

by Grigory Rodchenkov, 2020 (WH Allen £20). Rodechenkov ran Moscow’s secret doping programme and helped Russian athletes cheat their way to victory in the London and Sochi Olympics. His memoir recounts how he did

A Very Expensive Poison Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem and

The bestselling author of and favourite books about Russia. His latest,

(Guardian Faber £14.99), is out now

it, with help from Putin’s FSB spy agency – the same outfit that poisoned Alexander Litvinenko. Not surprisingly, Rodchenkov is in hiding.

chooses his

In fact, it was a ruse to catch assassins sent by Moscow and he came back to life the next day. A Russian journalist, his memoir of the war in Chechnya is lyrical and brutal – a set in the mountainous North Caucasus.

Catch-22

by Catherine Belton, 2020 (William Collins £25). In this book, Belton – an investigative journalist and long-time Moscow correspondent – delves into the murky world of Russian kleptocracy, a place of secret deals and Swiss bankers. We learn that as a young KGB spy in East Germany, Putin allegedly met with radical West German terrorists. Their mutual goal: to wreak havoc on the West.