"A magnificent book. A tour de force exploration of the rollercoaster story of Western capitalists and their misadventures in post-communist Russia, chronicling the hope, the naivety, the idealism, and the greed, arrogance and folly in glorious, highly readable detail. There has been no more thorough, moving or better-researched study of the epic cycle of the opening of Russia's economy in a blaze of ill-founded optimism in the early 90s to its closing in bitter recrimination and conflict in the wake of Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Tight and acutely observed with an expert reporter's eye, this book explains in forensic detail Russia's path, made of equal parts of hope and venality, from what could have become a prosperous, peaceful European nation to its descent into bandit capitalism and totalitarian kleptocracy." --Owen Matthews, author of Overreach: the Inside Story of Putin's war on Ukraine"Hecker captures all the adventure, greed and profound mismatch of business cultures that first enriched and then burned Western investors in post-Cold War Russia, a "Las Vegas with snow." Zero Sum opens a new window onto how the West's brief love affair with Russia could have gone so wrong, so fast." --andIMarc Champion, international affairs columnist and former editor-in-chief of The Moscow Times"A masterful guide to Russia's 1990s peaks and troughs, its 2000s apex and its contemporary valley between sanctions and Putin's steadily tightening economic grip. Zero Sum lifts the veil on the thinking behind Western investment in Russia, with invaluable lessons for designing future approaches to economic security." --Maximilian Hess, author of Economic War: Ukraine and the Global Conflict between Russia and the West