Boiling Point

How America Brought War to Ukraine

By: Stephen Kinzer

From bestselling author Stephen Kinzer, the untold story of the secret 75-year American campaign that set the stage for war in Ukraine

Until the Russian invasion in 2022, few Americans could find Ukraine on a map. Once the fighting began, however, support for its cause surged. The reason was clear: Russia was the aggressor, Ukraine its victim.

Yet this war did not explode out of nowhere. For seventy-five years, Moscow and Washington have fought over Ukraine. It is the most sustained covert conflict in modern history. Both sides sought to keep this story secret. They succeeded—until now.

In his groundbreaking new book, Stephen Kinzer tells this long-hidden story. Beginning in the refugee camps of postwar Europe, where CIA officers recruited their first Ukrainian agents, it follows generations of rebels, exiles, traitors, and covert operatives through decades of clandestine missions. Although nearly all of the guerrilla warriors that the CIA sent into Ukraine were captured or killed, it never gave up. From the late 1940s through the end of the Cold War, American leaders saw Ukrainians as their most effective weapon against Moscow. They continued to press that strategy after Ukraine’s independence and the eastward expansion of the US-dominated NATO alliance.

Richly detailed and plot-driven, Boiling Point shows how the United States made Ukraine its most important European project of the twenty-first century, culminating in the escalation that led to war. From battlefields in the Carpathians to smoke-filled offices in New York to the Olympic Games, it is full of the wild stories and improbable characters that made All the Shah’s Men a classic. This is the last great untold spy-versus-spy story of our time.

Critic reviews

"A brilliant, thoroughly researched study that demonstrates how the United States failed to take advantage of the end of the Cold War to create a more peaceful world. Should be read by every American concerned with the rising violence in the world and the heightened danger of a nuclear conflict."
—Jack F. Matlock, Jr., former US Ambassador to the USSR