I am sitting at Roasting Plant Coffee on Connecticut Avenue NW,  just below Dupont Circle, after a Sunday morning walk. I am about to take my first sip of a Sumatra Bold iced coffee. It’s an odd coffee shop in that they offer 10 different grades of coffee and they brew each order (from grinding the beans onward) separately. Each cup is priced about a dollar more than at a normal coffee shop. I have just one thing to say: it isn’t worth it.

My plan this morning was to talk about the new book Midnight in Moscow, the fascinating memoir of John Sullivan, our Ambassador to Russia during the last part of the Trump and early part of the Biden administration.

We saw Ambassador Sullivan at Politics and Prose about ten days ago. He is a charming Irish American with a smile and sense of humor that you would expect to find, say, in a charming Irish American.

Sullivan is a Republican (of the good kind) and a long time partner in the DC office of Mayer Brown, from which he has taken two (at least) lengthy leaves to serve in the government.

During the Trump years, he was appointed Deputy Secretary of State first under Rex Tillerson and then under Mike Pompeo. Although he was circumspect in the book, I think he was happy with both, and sympathized with Tillerson’s inability to get along with the president.

But he grew tired of the job, and when John Huntsman resigned as Ambassador to Russia, suggested himself as the best successor.

His thoughts about President Trump? For one thing, he never once spoke to, or saw, Trump after he was nominated. For another, he told me as he was signing my copy of his book, that Trump made his job very difficult as you never knew what Trump thought or what he was going to say next. It was clearly different under Biden.

His time as ambassador was clearly marred by Covid, when the entire embassy staff was isolated on the embassy compound. It was also marred by a step taken by the Russian government which limited the size of the embassy staff by suddenly deciding that the US could no longer employ third country nationals.

Sullivan did have contact with many high level Russian officials. You could, it seems, divide them into two types: unpleasant officials who were totally uncooperative, and personally delightful officials who were totally uncooperative.

Like many people, Sullivan expresses love for Russia and intense dislike for the Russians he had to deal with. He could never understand the apparently wide belief that the US and its allies were out to destroy Russia, pure and sumple, and that Ukraine was its current tool to do just that. He was ambassador when Russia attacked Ukraine and said that the writing was on the wall before the American government believed it would happen. When it did happen, he, like the others, thought that Kiev would fall in a matter of weeks.

One other point. Someone at P & P asked him what he thought Putin thought about Trump. No hesitation in his answer: “I think he thought he was an easy mark.”

Sitting in a coffee shop without the book next to me,  I am not doing it justice. So let me end with this: This is a very readable book, filled with insight about Russia today and our relationship to it. Highly, highly recommended.