Luke Harding
AUTHOR

Luke Harding

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After ten books, two Hollywood movies, and a #1 New York Times bestseller, I'm sometimes asked: "Why not write thrillers?"

My answer goes something like this: the world is so dark, preposterous and improbable—crazy, really, when you think about it - why make stuff up? In the age of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Vladimir Putin, there is little need for embellishment or invention. Reality is disturbing enough.

I’ve always believed the best stories are true ones. So for me the genre must be non-fiction. Of course, I borrow techniques from good novel writing, such as pace and a sense of place. But the quotes are true - said to me and others - as are my observations and conclusions.

This method has led to books on Edward Snowden, the poisoned Moscow dissident Alexander Litvinenko, and Russia’s transformation into a KGB-run shadow state. I was in Kyiv in February 2022 when Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine—a fascist project of recolonisation, dressed up in the language of pseudo-history. My book Invasion was published the same year. I continue to report from the frontline.

My latest book Betrayal: Trump, Putin and the New Age of Conquest is my most ambitious to date. The idea came to me after two big events. One was the return of Trump and his imperial second presidency, featuring threats to annex Greenland, Canada, and other chunks of the globe. The other was the decision by North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un to send thousands of his elite soldiers to join Russia in its war against Ukraine.

The idea that North Korean troops could take part in the biggest conflict in Europe since 1945 seems astonishing. It as if colourful pieces from the board game Risk, representing infantry, have been chucked randomly across a map. It was, I thought, a sign of world turned upside down. The old international rules - that nations don’t invade each other or take territory by force - appear broken.

Our post-1945 international system is under challenge, not only from an alliance of dictator-run states including China and Iran but from the current US administration too. In Betrayal I try and make sense of our precarious times. I visit villages in eastern Ukraine under Russian bombardment, talk to Greenlanders about a US takeover, tour the divided Korean peninsula and sit down with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

I also try and answer the biggest mystery in international politics: why does Trump defer to Putin, behaving with uncharacteristic meekness whenever they meet? There are several theories. One is strongman envy. Another is ideological: many in MAGA admire Russia, seeing it as a conservative, Christian and "anti-woke" society. The third is kompromat, the KGB term for compromising material, collected by Moscow's shadowy operatives.

We know from archives in Prague that communist east European intelligence agencies began spying on Trump 50 years ago, when he married a woman from behind the Iron Curtain. In 1987 Trump visited Moscow at the invitation of the Soviet ambassador. Later he made business trips to Russia. We don't know what may have happened there. But Trump knows that Putin knows. Since returning to the White House Trump has cut direct US military aid to Ukraine, repeated Kremlin talking points and thrown Zelenskyy out of the White House. If he were a Russian asset, what exactly would he do differently?

In Betrayal I explore Russia’s undercover campaign of sabotage in Britain, the Baltic Sea and beyond. And I tell the story of Nathan Gill, a Welsh UKIP member of the European Parliament, who accepted thousands of pounds of under the table Russia-connected payments. I have known the pro-Kremlin Ukrainian former diplomat who bribed Gill, Oleg Voloshyn, for nearly two decades. Voloshyn, of course, denies wrongdoing.

Betrayal is published by Faber & Faber in London. It will appear soon in translations in Denmark, Finland, Italy and Ukraine, with other international editions to follow. Early reviewers have been kind - “more gripping than a thriller”, (Andrey Kurkov), “dark and compelling” (Bill Browder) and “war reporting at its finest” (Serhii Plokhy). It is, I hope, an essential guide to our uncertain age, and to the return of Great Power politics.

I hope you enjoy reading it.

Luke Harding
September 2026
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    • Invasion

    • The Inside Story of Russia's Bloody War and Ukraine's Fight for Survival
    • By: Luke Harding
    • Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
    • Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
    • Release date: 29-11-2022
    • Language: English
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    $21.28 or free with 30-day trial

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  • Collusion cover art
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    • Collusion

    • Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win
    • By: Luke Harding
    • Narrated by: Ralph Lister
    • Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
    • Release date: 16-11-2017
    • Language: English
    • Not rated yet

    $21.28 or free with 30-day trial

  • The Snowden Files cover art
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    $23.94 or free with 30-day trial