Luke Harding talks to Oliver Bullough (EXTRA EVENT)

The first book of reportage from the front line of the Ukraine war, Invasion is a powerful and moving work by the Guardian journalist and New York Times best-selling author of Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money and How Russia helped Trump Win, and Shadow State, about the Salisbury poisonings.

For months, the omens had pointed in one scarcely believable direction: Russia was about to invade Ukraine. And yet, the world was stunned by the epochal scale of the assault that began in February 2022, an attempt by one nation to devour another. The Kremlin wanted nothing less than a new world order.

Reporting on the ground during the build-up to the conflict, the initial months of shock and heartbreak and grim reality of this ongoing war, Harding shares unheard human stories behind the headlines. He analyses two very different leaders: as Ukraine’s actor-turned-president Volodymyr Zelenskiy rallied support on a global stage, Vladimir Putin appeared to dwell in a strange and unreachable realm.

Delving into the ideological, religious and personal reasons driving Putin’s strategy for war, the author confronts a crucial question: what will be the endgame of this invasion?

In conversation with investigative reporter and writer Oliver Bullough, author of Butler to the World and Moneyland.