Summary of Luke Harding's Shadow State

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The two men who got on that flight from Moscow to London were actually spies working for a foreign power. They were career officers with Russian military intelligence. Their real names were Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin. They had come to London to murder someone.

#2 The GRU, by contrast, was global. It dealt with external threats. Its mandate was everywhere. The organization’s activities ranged from traditional military deployments to coups and invasions. Its officers saw themselves as part of a glorious tradition stretching back to Russia’s battles against Napoleon and Crimea.

#3 The two GRU agents went to visit the man they were sent to kill, Sergei Skripal, in Salisbury, England. They spent a couple of hours there and went back to the hotel.

#4 After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Chekists were out. The elderly KGB plotters who carried out a coup in summer 1991 against Gorbachev found themselves under arrest. Democracy in the shape of Yeltsin seemed ascendant. But Putin had other plans for Russia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822502529

IRB Media

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Insights on Luke Harding's Shadow State

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The two men who got on that flight from Moscow to London were actually spies working for a foreign power. They were career officers with Russian military intelligence. Their real names were Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin. They had come to London to murder someone.

#2

The GRU, by contrast, was global. It dealt with external threats. Its mandate was everywhere. The organization’s activities ranged from traditional military deployments to coups and invasions. Its officers saw themselves as part of a glorious tradition stretching back to Russia’s battles against Napoleon and Crimea.

#3

The two GRU agents went to visit the man they were sent to kill, Sergei Skripal, in Salisbury, England. They spent a couple of hours there and went back to the hotel.

#4

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Chekists were out. The elderly KGB plotters who carried out a coup in summer 1991 against Gorbachev found themselves under arrest. Democracy in the shape of Yeltsin seemed ascendant. But Putin had other plans for Russia.

#5

Putin’s aggression continued after his speech in Munich. In 2008, he invaded Georgia, and in 2014, Ukraine. He supported far-right populist politicians in Europe, who opposed American aggression and wanted to restore Russian pride.

#6

Russia’s ambitions grew international, as they did in the Soviet times. They sought to influence the 2016 vote, and possibly cost Clinton the election. They were using the same trickery and deceit favored by Yuri Andropov, the KGB chairman turned general secretary.

#7

Putin’s government used the machinery of government to wage a political smear campaign against a rival, the former US vice president Joe Biden, and against other perceived enemies.

#8

The Salisbury that Chepiga and Mishkin returned to was not in a state of high alert. Two