Luke Harding, an award-winning foreign correspondent with The Guardian, will talk about his new book Betrayal: Trump, Putin and the New Age of Conquest with political journalist Masha Karp.

Betrayal charts the dramatic collapse of the post-1945 international system. The agreement that nations do not change borders by force is under attack, not just from Russia but America, too. Russia’s war in Ukraine and the campaign to redraw Europe’s map continues. Trump has endorsed Putin's land-grab, painted Europe as an enemy, kidnapped Venezuela's president and bombed Iran. Meanwhile, an anti-Western alliance has taken shape featuring China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. How did this new era of Great Power politics come about, and what do the geopolitical games mean for those on the frontlines?

"On top of all the astute political analysis, Betrayal is full of people’s voices [...] Luke Harding started reporting from Ukraine a couple of months ahead of the war, in December 2021. He was in the country when the full-scale invasion started and for the next four and a half years has been going to the war zone regularly, at considerable risk to his own life. He had numerous conversations with ordinary people whom he met at the frontline, at the cemeteries with fresh graves, in tiny villages, in provincial towns and in big cities, like Odesa, Kharkiv and Kyiv [...] The book seems to increase in relevance with every day that passes."

From Masha Karp’s review of Betrayal 

This is a Pushkin Club event and all are welcome.

Luke Harding is a journalist, #1 New York Times bestselling author, and senior international correspondent with The Guardian. He has reported from Delhi, Berlin and Moscow, covered wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, and since February 2022 he has spent a significant time reporting from Ukraine. Between 2007 and 2011 he was The Guardian’s Moscow bureau chief, and in February 2011 the Kremlin deported him from the country in the first case of its kind since the Cold War. Harding has written a number of books about the political system under Putin, including Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem and Russia's Remaking of the West (2020), and Invasion: Russia’s Bloody War and Ukraine’s Fight for Survival (2023). Betrayal, published in August 2026 also with Guardian Faber, is his tenth book. 

Masha Karp is a political journalist, a literary critic and a scholar of the work of George Orwell. Her articles have been published by The Independent, Standpoint, The Spectator, Open Democracy, and Common Review. Masha was Russian Features editor (1997–2009) and previously a producer (1991–1997) with the BBC Russian Service. She also produced, presented and participated in Radio 4 and the BBC World Service radio programmes in English. She is the author of two books about Orwell: his biography in Russian (Vita Nova, 2017) and George Orwell and Russia, in English Bloomsbury, 2023) and is a Trustee of The Orwell Society and the Editor of its Journal. She is a member of the St Petersburg Writers' Union and the Literary Translators Guild in Russia.

5a Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2TA