The Failure

When Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the world was taken by surprise. Yet Western intelligence agencies had long warned that such a war was coming. In this gripping investigation, Katja Gloger and Georg Mascolo show how political leaders ignored these warnings for decades-and how critics of Germany's Russia policy were sidelined or silenced. Based on previously classified documents and interviews with dozens of eyewitnesses, the authors reconstruct the hidden context of Putin's much-praised speech before the German Bundestag in 2001. They uncover a secret back channel to the Kremlin involving a former agent of East Germany's secret police 'Stasi', shed light on a little-understood military cooperation between Russia and Germany, and explain why Putin's nuclear threats ultimately sent a German chancellor on a diplomatic mission halfway around the world.

Katja Gloger is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author, who has spent more than thirty years covering Russia and international security policy. A historian of Eastern Europe by training, she reported for Stern magazine for many years from Moscow and Washington. Over the course of her career, she has interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin.

Georg Mascolo is one of Germany's leading investigative journalists and a bestselling author. He served as editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel and later headed the investigative reporting network of the major public television broadcasters NDR and WDR and the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. The network played a leading role in publishing the "Panama Papers". His reportage on the fall of the Berlin Wall has been included in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.

Germany's relationship with Russia is one of the most consequential factors in European security. Over the last three decades, Berlin's policy toward Moscow has been shaped by deeply rooted national prejudices and misperceptions, as well as the personal convictions and predilections of German leaders and their interactions with Vladimir Putin. Katja Gloger and Georg Mascolo, two of Germany's top investigative journalists, brilliantly lay this out in their best-selling book. Their careful analysis, firsthand observations, and sharp conclusions about their country's missteps should resonate as strongly in the US as they did in Germany.
-Fiona Hill, senior fellow, Center on the United States and Europe, The Brookings Institution; former deputy assistant to the President and senior director for European and Russian Affairs, U.S. National Security Council.