In this gripping, tightly plotted tale of espionage, Malko Linge investigates the suspicious death of a Russian oligarch in London. Boris Berezovsky is living in exile in London to avoid the wrath of Vladimir Putin. One morning, the unlucky oligarch is found dead in his bathroom, an apparent suicide. Their suspicions aroused, MI5 opens an investigation—but Prime Minister David Cameron orders the case closed. Alarmed at the renewal of Russian Cold War tricks and Moscow’s increasingly close ties to London, the CIA dispatches Malko Linge to investigate Berezovsky’s death and the British cover-up. With help from an alluring former CIA handler, Malko dives into the search for hard evidence of the Kremlin’s involvement in the affair—putting himself directly in the crosshairs of the world’s most efficient assassins.

“This firsthand account of contemporary history is key to understanding Russia's latest assault on its neighbor."—USA Today An eyewitness account by a U.S. diplomat of Russia’s brazen attempt to undo the democratic revolution in Ukraine Told from the perspective of a U.S. diplomat in Kyiv, this book is the true story of Ukraine’s anti-corruption revolution in 2013—14, Russia’s intervention and invasion of that nation, and the limited role played by the United States. It puts into a readable narrative the previously unpublished reporting by seasoned U.S. diplomatic and military professionals, a wealth of information on Ukrainian high-level and street-level politics, a broad analysis of the international context, and vivid descriptions of people and places in Ukraine during the EuroMaidan Revolution. The book also counters Russia’s disinformation narratives about the revolution and America’s role in it. While focusing on a single country during a dramatic three-year period, the book’s universal themes—among them, truth versus lies, democracy versus autocracy—possess a broader urgency for our times. That urgency burns particularly hot for the United States and all other countries that are the targets of Russia's cyber warfare and other forms of political skullduggery. From his posting in U.S. Embassy Kyiv (2012–14), the author observed and reported first-hand on the EuroMaidan Revolution that wrested power from corrupt pro-Kremlin Ukrainian autocrat Viktor Yanukovych. The book also details Russia’s attempt to abort the Ukrainian revolution through threats, economic pressure, lies, and intimidation. When all of that failed, the Kremlin exacted revenge by annexing Ukraine's territory of Crimea and fomenting and sustaining a hybrid war in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 13,000 people and continues to this day. Ukraine's Revolt, Russia’s Revenge is based on the author’s own observations and the multitude of reports of his Embassy colleagues who were eyewitnesses to a crucial event in contemporary history.

When young Russian Army Major Aleksej Marinetto gets unwillingly pulled into an international conspiracy, his life is turned upside down as he becomes a pawn used by Russian intelligence to steal secrets about an American revolutionary weapon. Forced to run to save himself and protect his family, he's thrust into a lethal chess match between Russian Committee spies and the CIA. Hunted by ruthless assassins, Aleksej must make impossible choices to try and break free from the web of lies in the shadowy world of espionage. He'll have to face off with the powerful General Sherbakov and the merciless Petrov, head of the SVR, as well as confront the betrayal of Irina, the spy he loves. From the hustle and bustle of Moscow to the treacherous streets of Rome and Brussels, Aleksej will risk it all to stop the Committee's schemes, in a race against the clock filled with twists and turns. A high-octane spy thriller charged with adrenaline double-crosses, and shocking revelations. For Aleksej, surviving means trusting his gut instinct and diving headfirst into the unknown.

This timely work shows how and why the dramatic collapse of the Soviet Union was caused in large part by nationalism. Unified in their hostility to the Kremlin's authority, the fifteen constituent Union Republics, including the Russian Republic, declared their sovereignty and began to build state institutions of their own. The book has a dual purpose. The first is to explore the formation of nations within the Soviet Union, the policies of the Soviet Union toward non-Russian peoples, and the ultimate contradictions between those policies and the development of nations. The second, more general, purpose is to show how nations have grown in the twentieth century. The principle of nationality that buried the Soviet Union and destroyed its empire in Eastern Europe continues to shape and reshape the configuration of states and political movements among the new independent countries of the vast East European-Eurasian region.

"An internal account of the political activities taking place inside the Kremlin from the fall of the USSR under the administration of Gorbachev to the future of Russia under Putin"--Provided by publisher.

Boris Berezovsky is living in exile in London to avoid the wrath of Vladimir Putin. One morning, the unlucky oligarch is found dead in his bathroom, an apparent suicide. Their suspicions aroused, MI5 opens an investigation- but Prime Minister David Cameron orders the case closed. Alarmed at the renewal of Russian Cold War tricks and Moscow's increasingly close ties to London, the CIA dispatches Malko Linge to investigate Berezovsky's death and the British cover-up. With help from an alluring former CIA handler, Malko dives into the search for hard evidence of the Kremlin's involvement in the affair'putting himself directly in the crosshairs of the world's most efficient assassins.

In examining the re-emergence of Russia's White Movement, Memory Politics and the Russian Civil War gets to the heart of the rich 20th-century memory debates going on in Putin's Russia today. The Kremlin has been giving preference to a Soviet-lite nostalgia that denounces the 1917 Bolshevik revolution but celebrates the birth of a powerful Soviet Union able to bring the country to the forefront of the international scene after the victory in World War II. Yet in parallel, another historical narrative has gradually consolidated on the Russian public scene, one that favours the opposite camp, namely the White movement and the pro-tsarist groups defeated in the early 1920s. This book offers the first comprehensive exploration of this 'White Revenge', looking at the different actors who promote a White and pro-Romanov rehabilitation agenda in the political, ideological and cultural arenas and what this historical agenda might mean for Russia, both today and tomorrow.

A Library Journal Best Book of 2015 A NPR Great Read of 2015 The Internet in Russia is either the most efficient totalitarian tool or the device by which totalitarianism will be overthrown. Perhaps both. On the eighth floor of an ordinary-looking building in an otherwise residential district of southwest Moscow, in a room occupied by the Federal Security Service (FSB), is a box the size of a VHS player marked SORM. The Russian government's front line in the battle for the future of the Internet, SORM is the world's most intrusive listening device, monitoring e-mails, Internet usage, Skype, and all social networks. But for every hacker subcontracted by the FSB to interfere with Russia's antagonists abroad -- such as those who, in a massive denial-of-service attack, overwhelmed the entire Internet in neighboring Estonia -- there is a radical or an opportunist who is using the web to chip away at the power of the state at home. Drawing from scores of interviews personally conducted with numerous prominent officials in the Ministry of Communications and web-savvy activists challenging the state, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan peel back the history of advanced surveillance systems in Russia. From research laboratories in Soviet-era labor camps, to the legalization of government monitoring of all telephone and Internet communications in the 1990s, to the present day, their incisive and alarming investigation into the Kremlin's massive online-surveillance state exposes just how easily a free global exchange can be coerced into becoming a tool of repression and geopolitical warfare. Dissidents, oligarchs, and some of the world's most dangerous hackers collide in the uniquely Russian virtual world of The Red Web.

THE MADMEN OF BENGHAZI, available for the first time in the U.S., is a gripping, racy, ripped-from-the-headlines espionage thriller set in volatile post-Qaddafi Libya. Gérard de Villiers (1929–2013) spent his five-decade career cultivating connections in the world of international intelligence, which allowed him to anticipate geopolitical events before they occurred—and to masterfully blend fiction with an insider’s knowledge of international affairs. Published from 1964 until his death in 2013, his bestselling SAS series of 200 spy novels, starring Malko Linge, was long considered France’s answer to Ian Fleming, with Malko as his James Bond. Its hero, Malko Linge, an Austrian aristocrat, spends his time freelancing for the CIA in order to support his playboy lifestyle. When terrorists try to shoot down a plane carrying Libyan prince Ibrahim al-Senussi, it is clear that someone wants him dead. But the CIA has its own plot for the prince: Now that Qaddafi has been overthrown, al-Senussi is their best bet to set up a constitutional monarchy and stem the Islamist tide in Libya. The CIA, which needs Malko as much as he needs them, sends the Austrian aristocrat to Cairo to learn more about al-Senussi’s plans by seducing his companion, a ravishing British model. This mission is enormously appealing, but also proves enormously dangerous, as the same madman of God who is trying to kill al-Senussi also takes aim at Malko.