This is my review of this book on Good Reads

I bought this book via Kindle, I think it was less than NZ$8. The recommendation came from an internet videoblog, from Alexander Mercouris. (He is a very well informed commentator on geopolitical issues, which run counter to the narrative that the average Westerner will get from their government, commentators or the media - with which I heartily concur) Ian Proud is a British diplomat with an interest in economics - for instance he's done quite a lot of work on sanctions on Russia, not just the latest ones, but those imposed after the re-annexation of Crimea. His upbringing is as a working class Manchester boy making good, rather different from his colleagues who come from the higher echelons of society and private education - hence the like cause of his being a "misfit" He was in the Diplomatic Service from 1999 to 2022, and in the Moscow embassy 2014 to 2019 - important times indeed.

This book by Ian Proud then is a useful ballast to this counter opinion which I have taken aboard, in that Ian Proud has some plangent criticisms to make about the status of UK diplomacy with Russia - basically there is none. He describes the failure of training, the failure of leadership, the failure of the politicians. For instance, more than half those Brits working in the Moscow embassy do not speak Russian. He describes the unwillingness, the refusal really, of successive Foreign and Commonwealth Secretaries and London politicians to engage with Russia at all. This isolates the UK even more following Brexit, and its other countries that make some running, admittedly ineffectually. He points to these failures as important factors in the time from 2010 onward leading up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, how this diplomatic failure (NATO and US included) then failed Ukraine so disastrously. In other words, as I've said all along, this war was not an unproved attack by Russia on Ukraine, but a well signalled last straw for the Russians feeling their strategic interests being ignored and the threat of a long border with Ukraine being NATO's springboard for action against Russia. This was not paranoia on Russia's part, the US has never made any secret of its aim to diminish Russia and for regime change and Russian disintegration if possible.

The book is written very informally, almost a diary really, Ian describes his writing as a memoir. It is written by a very intelligent and observant eye, not wearing blinker. It describes the personalities of those involved and the doings in the Embassy and other outlying consulates in Russia. It is quite amusing in places - bringing as he does the "underdog's" misfit opinions in a rather refined or stifling atmosphere. I really enjoyed this book, almost a page turner. I would hope that this might be a bit of an eye-opener who have swallowed the official narrative hook line and sinker up to now. Not your fault, this has been a highly successful deliberate conning of the public in regard to Russia and its attack on Ukraine. The moral high ground on which the West wishes to rest its case turns out to be a very unstable quicksand or quaking mire indeed.

23/6/2024 The son of a good friend of mine works in the NZ embassy in Moscow. he says everything is just so quiet, no one to look after or rescue. Moscow seems to function normally. My friend was over there the week before the attack on the Crocus Hall, they had been warned by the US embassy two weekends prior not to go to any public places that weaken, he had to cancel a visit to the Bolshoi Ballet. russia fatally lets its guard down when that weekend had passed and Putin had been elected.