Covering Ukraine

The Scott Ritter Interviews Through the Eyes of Ania K

After years of struggling to produce a book on the Russian-Ukraine conflict, I am pleased to announce the release of my latest book.

I am pleased to announce, together with my collaborator and co-author, the publication on our new book, Covering Ukraine: The Scott Ritter Interviews Through the Eyes of Ania K, published by Clarity Press. This book is the byproduct of a collaboration dating back more than two years, to the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine in February 2022. It was then, shortly after the conflict began, that I received an email from Ania, requesting that I appear as a guest on her podcast, Through the Eyes of Ania K, to discuss the Russian actions and what they meant for the people of not only Russia and Ukraine, but all of Europe. I was, at the time, in high demand as a guest on podcasts that specialized in geopolitical analysis, making me busier than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest. My inclination was to politely turn down the request, as I had done all-too-frequently at that hectic time. But something in the way Ania framed her request caused me to change my mind, and I agreed to do what I thought would be a “one-off” experience.

Fortunately, I was wrong, and here we are, nearly two and a half years later, continuing our interview-based dialogue on a regular basis.

My editor at Clarity Press, Diana Collier, had been pressuring me for some time to write a book about NATO, and more specifically what the future of NATO would be considering the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. I had originally committed to do such a book, with a delivery date of August 2022, but quickly reconsidered when confronted with the reality of NATO’s massive support to Ukraine became clear. I withdrew from the project in August, warning Diana that whatever book we published would quickly be overcome by events, making it outdated before it even left the printing press. Sure enough, in September 2022 Ukraine launched a major offensive, Russia mobilized, a referendum was held in the so-called “new territories” resulting in their being absorbed by Russia, and the nature of the conflict was fundamentally changed.

Scott will discuss the book and answer audience questions on Ep. 169 of Ask the Inspector.

Pulling the book was the right decision.

As the war in Ukraine reaches its climactic conclusion, the NATO book remains very much a viable project. However, it is one which realistically won’t reach fruition until the Spring/Summer of 2025. Ever the practical editor, Diana kept pressuring me for an interim project, noting (correctly) that there was a big appetite for books on the Ukraine conflict. By this time, however, the calendar had advanced to the summer of 2023, and I was heavily engaged in my Waging Peace project involving extensive travel to Russia. Time, as they say, was at a premium, made even more so by my notoriously poor time management skills, which had me burning the candle at both ends week in and week out.

There simply was no time for me to write a book.

I came up with an alternative approach—rather than me write the book, what if I simply sat down for an extended interview and used the transcript produced by that effort as the basis of a manuscript suitable for publication? This wasn’t exactly a new idea—in 2002, William Rivers Pitt, an American journalist, interviewed me over the course of several days, providing material which he then shaped into War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You To Know, which was published in the summer of 2002 by Context Books. The book did quite well, with domestic sales being driven by the fervent anti-war demonstrations being organized in opposition to the pending US-led invasion of Iraq. The book was also published in several languages, leading to book tours in Japan, France, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

Based upon this experience, I convinced my skeptical editor that this approach could work well regarding the Ukraine conflict. The next question, of course, was who would serve as the “new” William Rivers Pitt, who had tragically died of a heart attack at the age of 51 in September 2022. While I wrestled with that question, the issue of time availability again raised its ugly head—even an interview-based book required a significant time commitment, and time was a commodity in short supply. One of the reasons was that I had committed to an intensive schedule of podcasts—my own, and those of other podcasters with whom I had established a rapport over time.

One of these was Ania K.

It was in the middle of one of Ania K’s podcasts, as I struggled to answer her provocative, soul-searching questions, that I had an epiphany: why reinvent the wheel? Ania and I had, over the course of our work, produced hours of material which could be crafted into an interview-based book that was both timely and comprehensive in its coverage of the conflict.

The rest is history.

Ania and I announce the publication of our new book, Covering Ukriane

It is my pleasure to be able, in collaboration with Ania K and Clarity Press, to bring this book to the public. I believe it to be an important and relevant contribution to the literature of the Russian-Ukraine conflict, one which provides unique perspective based upon an innovative approach to telling the story (each chapter is based upon a question Ania K asked during her podcast; at the end of each chapter, there is a QR code which will take the reader to the actual interview itself. This isn’t just a book—it’s a multi-media presentation!)