Midnight in Moscow: A Memoir From the Front Lines of Russia’s War Against the West

Sullivan served as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2020 to 2022, working under both the Trump and Biden administrations and handling the fallout of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. His memoir is candid, confirming the dysfunctions of Donald Trump’s presidency and, to a lesser extent, Joe Biden’s. He vividly describes the difficulties of trying to run a vital embassy in a hostile country, with staff being harassed, access to top Russian officials limited, and Russian interlocutors lying to his face. The most important sections of the book follow with extraordinary detail the buildup to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the efforts made to prevent it. In retrospect, much of Russia’s diplomacy at that time was performative, designed to blame the United States for the coming war by casting it as unwilling to make necessary concessions. Sullivan’s depiction of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s paranoid worldview and the passivity of a pliant Russian elite is both compelling and grim.