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Putin's War on Ukraine: Russia's Campaign for Global Counter-Revolution
Eight years after annexing Crimea, Russia embarked on a full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022. For Vladimir Putin, this was a legacy-defining mission--to restore Russia's sphere of influence and undo Ukraine's surprisingly resilient democratic experiment. Yet Putin's aspirations were swiftly eviscerated, as the conflict degenerated into a bloody war of attrition and the Russian economy faced crippling sanctions. How can we make sense of his decision to invade?
This book argues that Putin's policy of global counter-revolution is driven not by systemic factors, such as preventing NATO expansion, but domestic the desire to unite Russians around common principles and consolidate his personal brand of authoritarianism. This objective has inspired military interventions in Crimea, Donbas and Syria, and now all-out war against Kyiv.
Samuel Ramani explores why Putin opted for regime change in Ukraine, rather than a smaller-scale intervention in Donbas, and considers the impact on his own regime's legitimacy. How has Russia's long-term political and foreign policy trajectory shifted? And how will the international response reshape the world order?
This book argues that Putin's policy of global counter-revolution is driven not by systemic factors, such as preventing NATO expansion, but domestic the desire to unite Russians around common principles and consolidate his personal brand of authoritarianism. This objective has inspired military interventions in Crimea, Donbas and Syria, and now all-out war against Kyiv.
Samuel Ramani explores why Putin opted for regime change in Ukraine, rather than a smaller-scale intervention in Donbas, and considers the impact on his own regime's legitimacy. How has Russia's long-term political and foreign policy trajectory shifted? And how will the international response reshape the world order?
592 pages, Hardcover
First published April 13, 2023
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July 23, 2023When you buy - in 2023 - a book about the ongoing Russian agression against Ukraine, you kind of know what to expect - or at least, what not to expect: thorough, definitive analysis, because time, and continuing developments, make it a very difficult task (and as we know, most predictions, even by the most informed scholars, tend to fail).
The book was published in early 2023, and it has no mention of the Prigozhin rebellion (to give a chronological marker.
That said, the version i got was hard cover but at a very convenient price. Esthetically, the cover sleeve is interesting, with a big red Z, and the hardcover is black. The book is divided in chapters, some of them setting the chronology of the events, other dealing with more thematic questions, such as Russia's relations and standing in the world after the agression.
The tone is somehow restrained, even though one can observe a slight penchant against Russia, especially against its disinformation (but then again, that's a must).
In my opinion, the positive aspects of the book are that most of the information comes from Russian media and Russian telegram channels, which gives an insight on the mental state of Russian journalists and politicians.
The book is informative, and as i said in the beginning of this review, that's what to expect from it. As an informative book, it plays its role, giving the reader a detailed account of the war.
On the other hand, in the last chapters, the author seems to want to prove a hypothesis, which is the isolation of Russia and its eroding international power, yet the information laid down argues for the contrary position, since it seems whether in Russia's surroundings, or in Asia, including the Arabic world, or Africa, or South America, Russia still has friends, or making new ones, or at least managed the neutrality of the others. Which gives a very bleak image of the world's situation today: in order to piss off America - perceived as an imperialistic power, many countries are willing to take a sympathetic stance toward Russia's barbarous imperialistic actions in Ukraine.
Finally, in the rush to publish the book, the editors obviously forgot note number 50 in the Conclusion (check page 530). The reader can easily discover many typos; the book does not have an abbreviation list which is very needed; many personalities are mentioned without any information about who they are (and there is nothing more difficult than to keep track of dozens of Russian and Ukranian surnames); and most of all, the book has no maps - maps are crucial when you are explaining battles.
The book was published in early 2023, and it has no mention of the Prigozhin rebellion (to give a chronological marker.
That said, the version i got was hard cover but at a very convenient price. Esthetically, the cover sleeve is interesting, with a big red Z, and the hardcover is black. The book is divided in chapters, some of them setting the chronology of the events, other dealing with more thematic questions, such as Russia's relations and standing in the world after the agression.
The tone is somehow restrained, even though one can observe a slight penchant against Russia, especially against its disinformation (but then again, that's a must).
In my opinion, the positive aspects of the book are that most of the information comes from Russian media and Russian telegram channels, which gives an insight on the mental state of Russian journalists and politicians.
The book is informative, and as i said in the beginning of this review, that's what to expect from it. As an informative book, it plays its role, giving the reader a detailed account of the war.
On the other hand, in the last chapters, the author seems to want to prove a hypothesis, which is the isolation of Russia and its eroding international power, yet the information laid down argues for the contrary position, since it seems whether in Russia's surroundings, or in Asia, including the Arabic world, or Africa, or South America, Russia still has friends, or making new ones, or at least managed the neutrality of the others. Which gives a very bleak image of the world's situation today: in order to piss off America - perceived as an imperialistic power, many countries are willing to take a sympathetic stance toward Russia's barbarous imperialistic actions in Ukraine.
Finally, in the rush to publish the book, the editors obviously forgot note number 50 in the Conclusion (check page 530). The reader can easily discover many typos; the book does not have an abbreviation list which is very needed; many personalities are mentioned without any information about who they are (and there is nothing more difficult than to keep track of dozens of Russian and Ukranian surnames); and most of all, the book has no maps - maps are crucial when you are explaining battles.
January 7, 2024
(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)
Агент зимы поджёг листву
Весь мир горит, и я живу
Без запасных аэродромов
Вдыхаю дым минувших дней
Смотрю на блеск ночных огней
Они мне больше не знакомы
Увлёкшись книгами про Украину, особенно военным конфликтом между Россией и Украиной, я всё чаще натыкаюсь на книги, в которых данный конфликт используется либо в качестве фона, на фоне которого автор пишет о чём-то своём, что имеет очень отдалённое отношение к украино-российскому конфликту либо, что чаще, автор просто пересказывает события предшествующие данному конфликту, т.е. такая книга представляет из себя хронологию событий. Как я понимаю, такие книги адресованы тем читателям, которые ничего о военном конфликте между Россией и Украиной не знают, никогда не читали о нём и даже не следили за тем, что об этом конфликте писали центральные европейские и американские СМИ. В этой книге автор пересказывает новостные события, в хронологическом порядке, как незадолго до начала полномасштабного военного конфликта начавшегося 24 февраля 2022 года так и сам этот военный конфликт. Проблема этой книги в том, что автор включил в неё всё, что только можно было включить, т.е. в книге даются непрерывные ссылки как на сообщение со стороны России и подконтрольных ей сепаратистов Донбасса, включая многочисленные высказывания Гиркина так и со стороны украинской стороны. В чём же тут проблема, если автор попытался написать непредвзятую книгу? Проблема в том, что из предложенного текста невозможно понять, где - правда, а где - военная пропаганда.
Действительно, автор постарался дать слово как одной, так и другой стороне, но как определить какая сторона говорит правду, а самое главное, в каких случаях? Если послушать обе стороны конфликта, то окажется что у них все ракеты всегда попадали исключительно по военным объектам. Автор пытается быть объективным и даже пишет (точнее упоминает) довольно редко встречаемые у зарубежных авторов утверждения касаемо современной России и Путина.
In his 2021 book Weak Strongman, Columbia University Professor Timothy Frye contends that Putin’s regime has structural weaknesses, as Putin needs to pursue conflicting goals to assuage his inner circle and retain his popularity. The outbreak of mass protests in Belarus over president Alexander Lukashenko’s alleged perpetration of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential elections and unrest in Kazakhstan in January 2022 heightened Putin’s sensitivity to these weaknesses. As COVID-19 and sluggish economic growth prevented Putin from delivering on the domestic promises that undergirded his re-election to a fourth term in 2018, the Ukraine War could be regarded as a gambit to rally Russians around the flag. The surge in approval ratings that Putin experienced from the Crimea annexation to the 2018 pension reform protests provided a precedent for this contention.
В этой цитате из другой книги можно увидеть, что вся история с Украиной была затеяна Путиным ради только одной цели – продолжать оставаться у власти. У Путина не получилось построить благополучную и финансово успешную страну, благодаря чему он мог бы постоянно переизбираться, значит, Путину нужна была другая причина для оправдания оставаться у власти в России. Именно с этой целью была организована военная кампания сначала в Грузии в 2008, потом в Украине в 2014, потом с Сирии и после очень неудачной политики в отношении COVID-19, было решено повторить успех крымского сценария. Но опять же, эта цитата взята автором из другой книги.
Касаемо Минских договорённостей, получается, что ни одна сторона не была заинтересована в их применении. С одной стороны:
Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine presented a starkly different picture from Moscow’s official support for Minsk II. In May 2017, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission revealed that Russia had instigated 945 explosions compared to 145 initiated by Ukraine, and Russia had blocked access to OSCE personnel 82 times compared to the 54 times they had been obstructed by Ukraine.
Although Russia was the primary violator of Minsk II, it created an alternative reality around the accords that blamed Ukraine for ongoing hostilities in Donbas.
Но с другой стороны:
Dmytro Kuleba, who served as Ukraine’s Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe, called for an alternative framework to Minsk II, as elections in Donbas were an intractable sticking point. Mustafa Nayyem opposed any mention of Minsk II into Ukrainian law, as it had been signed by “terrorists.” Although Poroshenko continued to officially support Minsk II, his actions suggested that he was appealing to the agreement’s critics. In February 2018, he signed a reintegration law that labelled Russia as an aggressor and Donbas as an illegally occupied territory. Andriy Parubiy, the chairman of Ukraine’s Rada, subsequently pushed for a “de-occupation law,” which fuelled speculation that Ukraine could be creating a legal groundwork to forcefully recapture Donbas.
<…>
Kravchuk argued that Ukraine’s dialogue with Russia should focus on recapturing Donbas even if this approach meant accepting the Crimea annexation. This perspective was strenuously rebutted by Poroshenko’s political allies. Svitlana Zalishchuk, who served on the Ukrainian Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee, believed that durable diplomacy with an authoritarian Russia was impossible.
<…>
In December 2014, the Rada voted by a 303–8 margin to suspend Ukraine’s non-bloc status.
Но лично я думаю, что украинским властям Минские соглашения были более невыгодны, чем России. Причиной является их блокирующая возможность, хотя бы теоретически, Украине стать членом ЕС и НАТО. России же нужна была информационная победа либо, помимо победы, возможность создания внешней угрозы, против которой можно было бы консолидировать страну. Учитывая историю с Грузией в 2008, Минские договорённости должны были играть роль большого PR проекта, большой геополитической победы и причины, почему Путин должен продолжать править Россией. Но это лично моё видение ситуации, а что касается автора, то он старается не делать каких-либо выводов, перекладывая эту задачу на плечи читателей. Но в целом, обрисованная автором ситуация вокруг Минских договорённостей, кажется мне более-менее верной.
Далее в книге будет очень подробное пересказываться хронология событий 2022 года. Настолько подробно, что я в какой-то момент просто устал всё это читать. Учитывая, что я с 2022 года пристально слежу за этим военным конфликтом, читать одно и то же по сто раз, мне уже порядком надоело, ведь как я сказал выше, эта книга является пересказом всего того, что публиковалось в западных СМИ в те дни.
Последнее что я отмечу, это такую вот цитату.
Russia’s occupation of Enerhodar caused the fortunes of local residents to plunge, as ZNPP workers were regularly beaten and threatened with abduction and torture to keep the plant operational.
Исходя из цитаты, получается, что российские власти пытали сотрудников Запорожской атомной электростанции, чтобы те продолжали работать и поддерживали оную в рабочем состоянии, как будто в России нет специалистов, которые могли бы заменить ключевых сотрудников ZNPP. Автор никак не объясняет, зачем нужно было пытать сотрудников атомной электростанции. Ради чего? Ведь людей пытают, чтобы они под пытками выдали какую-то информацию, а что знают сотрудники Запорожской атомной электростанции? Что хотели заполучить российские власти? В этом смысле книга может содержать огромное количество военной пропаганды обеих сторон этого конфликта. Конечно (и я хочу подчеркнуть это), это может быть правдой и в будущем кто-то напишет об этом более подробно, где объяснит и действия украинцев на этой станции и действия россиян. Сегодня же я не понимаю, что там случилось и зачем это делалось. Если эта станция взорвётся, то пострадает не только Украина, но и Россия и Беларусь, а Москва попадёт в эпицентр ядерного заражения. Поэтому отсутствие проблем на этой станции заинтересованы все стороны конфликта.
Подводя итог можно сказать, что книга писалась с целью срубить бабла, на что указывает ещё и выбор обложки. Обложка провокационно красивая, но книга не объясняет ни мотивы России, ни мотивы Украины, ни мотивы Западных стран во главе с США. Она просто пересказывает хронологию событий.
Being interested in books about Ukraine, especially the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, I more and more often come across books in which this conflict is used either as a background against which the author writes about something of his own, which has a very distant relation to the Ukrainian-Russian conflict or, more often, the author simply retells the events preceding this conflict, i.e., such a book is a chronology of events. As I understand it, such books are addressed to those readers who know nothing about the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, have never read about it, and have not even followed what the central European and American media wrote about this conflict. In this book, the author recounts news events in chronological order both shortly before the full-scale military conflict that began on February 24, 2022, and the military conflict itself. The problem with this book is that the author included everything that could be included, i.e., the book makes endless links both to the information from Russia and the Donbas separatists under its control, including numerous statements by Girkin, and from the Ukrainian side. What is the problem here, if the author tried to write an unbiased book? The problem is that from the proposed text, it is impossible to understand where is the truth and where is military propaganda.
Indeed, the author tried to give the floor to both sides, but how to determine which side is telling the truth, and most importantly, in what cases? If you listen to both sides of the conflict, it will turn out that all their missiles always hit only military targets. The author tries to be objective and even writes (mentions) statements about modern Russia and Putin that are quite rare in foreign authors.
In his 2021 book Weak Strongman, Columbia University Professor Timothy Frye contends that Putin’s regime has structural weaknesses, as Putin needs to pursue conflicting goals to assuage his inner circle and retain his popularity. The outbreak of mass protests in Belarus over president Alexander Lukashenko’s alleged perpetration of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential elections and unrest in Kazakhstan in January 2022 heightened Putin’s sensitivity to these weaknesses. As COVID-19 and sluggish economic growth prevented Putin from delivering on the domestic promises that undergirded his re-election to a fourth term in 2018, the Ukraine War could be regarded as a gambit to rally Russians around the flag. The surge in approval ratings that Putin experienced from the Crimea annexation to the 2018 pension reform protests provided a precedent for this contention.
In this quote from another book, you can see that the whole Ukraine thing was Putin's plan for one purpose only - to stay in power. Putin failed to build a prosperous and financially successful country that would allow him to be re-elected permanently, so Putin needed another reason to justify staying in power in Russia. It was for this purpose that the military campaign was organized first in Georgia in 2008, then in Ukraine in 2014, then in Syria, and after a very unsuccessful COVID-19 policy, it was decided to repeat the success of the Crimean scenario. But again, this quote is taken by the author from another book.
Regarding the Minsk agreements, it turns out that neither side was interested in their application. On the one hand:
Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine presented a starkly different picture from Moscow’s official support for Minsk II. In May 2017, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission revealed that Russia had instigated 945 explosions compared to 145 initiated by Ukraine, and Russia had blocked access to OSCE personnel 82 times compared to the 54 times they had been obstructed by Ukraine.
Although Russia was the primary violator of Minsk II, it created an alternative reality around the accords that blamed Ukraine for ongoing hostilities in Donbas.
But, on the other hand:
Dmytro Kuleba, who served as Ukraine’s Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe, called for an alternative framework to Minsk II, as elections in Donbas were an intractable sticking point. Mustafa Nayyem opposed any mention of Minsk II into Ukrainian law, as it had been signed by “terrorists.” Although Poroshenko continued to officially support Minsk II, his actions suggested that he was appealing to the agreement’s critics. In February 2018, he signed a reintegration law that labelled Russia as an aggressor and Donbas as an illegally occupied territory. Andriy Parubiy, the chairman of Ukraine’s Rada, subsequently pushed for a “de-occupation law,” which fuelled speculation that Ukraine could be creating a legal groundwork to forcefully recapture Donbas.
<…>
Kravchuk argued that Ukraine’s dialogue with Russia should focus on recapturing Donbas even if this approach meant accepting the Crimea annexation. This perspective was strenuously rebutted by Poroshenko’s political allies. Svitlana Zalishchuk, who served on the Ukrainian Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee, believed that durable diplomacy with an authoritarian Russia was impossible.
<…>
In December 2014, the Rada voted by a 303–8 margin to suspend Ukraine’s non-bloc status.
Personally, I think that the Minsk agreements were more disadvantageous to the Ukrainian authorities than to Russia. The reason is their blocking ability for Ukraine to become a member of the EU and NATO. Russia needed an informational victory or, in addition to a victory, the possibility of creating an external threat against which the country could be consolidated. Given the history with Georgia in 2008, the Minsk Agreements were supposed to be a big PR project, a big geopolitical victory, and a reason why Putin should continue to rule Russia. But this is my personal vision of the situation, and as for the author, he tries not to make any conclusions, shifting this task to the shoulders of the readers. But in general, the situation around the Minsk agreements outlined by the author seems to me more or less correct.
What follows in the book is a very detailed retelling of the chronology of the events of 2022. So detailed that, at some point, I just got tired of reading it all. Taking into account that I have been following this military conflict closely since 2022, I am already tired of reading the same thing a hundred times because, as I said above, this book is a retelling of everything that was published in the Western media in those days.
The last thing I will mention is this interesting quote.
Russia’s occupation of Enerhodar caused the fortunes of local residents to plunge, as ZNPP workers were regularly beaten and threatened with abduction and torture to keep the plant operational.
Based on the quote, it appears that Russian authorities tortured Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant employees to keep them working and maintain the plant as if there were no specialists in Russia who could replace key ZNPP employees. The author does not explain why it was necessary to torture the employees of the nuclear power plant. What for? After all, people are tortured to give out some information under torture, but what do the employees of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant know? What did the Russian authorities want to get? In this sense, the book may contain a huge amount of military propaganda from both sides of this conflict. Of course (and I want to emphasize this), this may be true, and in the future, someone will write about it in more detail, explaining both the actions of the Ukrainians at this station and the actions of the Russians. Today I don't understand what happened there and why it was done. If this station explodes, not only Ukraine but also Russia and Belarus will suffer, and Moscow will fall into the epicenter of nuclear contamination. Therefore, the absence of problems at this plant is in the interest of all parties to the conflict.
To summarize, the book was written to make money, as indicated by the choice of the cover. The cover is provocatively beautiful, but the book explains neither Russia's motives, nor Ukraine's motives, nor the motives of the Western countries led by the United States. It simply retells the chronology of events.
Агент зимы поджёг листву
Весь мир горит, и я живу
Без запасных аэродромов
Вдыхаю дым минувших дней
Смотрю на блеск ночных огней
Они мне больше не знакомы
Увлёкшись книгами про Украину, особенно военным конфликтом между Россией и Украиной, я всё чаще натыкаюсь на книги, в которых данный конфликт используется либо в качестве фона, на фоне которого автор пишет о чём-то своём, что имеет очень отдалённое отношение к украино-российскому конфликту либо, что чаще, автор просто пересказывает события предшествующие данному конфликту, т.е. такая книга представляет из себя хронологию событий. Как я понимаю, такие книги адресованы тем читателям, которые ничего о военном конфликте между Россией и Украиной не знают, никогда не читали о нём и даже не следили за тем, что об этом конфликте писали центральные европейские и американские СМИ. В этой книге автор пересказывает новостные события, в хронологическом порядке, как незадолго до начала полномасштабного военного конфликта начавшегося 24 февраля 2022 года так и сам этот военный конфликт. Проблема этой книги в том, что автор включил в неё всё, что только можно было включить, т.е. в книге даются непрерывные ссылки как на сообщение со стороны России и подконтрольных ей сепаратистов Донбасса, включая многочисленные высказывания Гиркина так и со стороны украинской стороны. В чём же тут проблема, если автор попытался написать непредвзятую книгу? Проблема в том, что из предложенного текста невозможно понять, где - правда, а где - военная пропаганда.
Действительно, автор постарался дать слово как одной, так и другой стороне, но как определить какая сторона говорит правду, а самое главное, в каких случаях? Если послушать обе стороны конфликта, то окажется что у них все ракеты всегда попадали исключительно по военным объектам. Автор пытается быть объективным и даже пишет (точнее упоминает) довольно редко встречаемые у зарубежных авторов утверждения касаемо современной России и Путина.
In his 2021 book Weak Strongman, Columbia University Professor Timothy Frye contends that Putin’s regime has structural weaknesses, as Putin needs to pursue conflicting goals to assuage his inner circle and retain his popularity. The outbreak of mass protests in Belarus over president Alexander Lukashenko’s alleged perpetration of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential elections and unrest in Kazakhstan in January 2022 heightened Putin’s sensitivity to these weaknesses. As COVID-19 and sluggish economic growth prevented Putin from delivering on the domestic promises that undergirded his re-election to a fourth term in 2018, the Ukraine War could be regarded as a gambit to rally Russians around the flag. The surge in approval ratings that Putin experienced from the Crimea annexation to the 2018 pension reform protests provided a precedent for this contention.
В этой цитате из другой книги можно увидеть, что вся история с Украиной была затеяна Путиным ради только одной цели – продолжать оставаться у власти. У Путина не получилось построить благополучную и финансово успешную страну, благодаря чему он мог бы постоянно переизбираться, значит, Путину нужна была другая причина для оправдания оставаться у власти в России. Именно с этой целью была организована военная кампания сначала в Грузии в 2008, потом в Украине в 2014, потом с Сирии и после очень неудачной политики в отношении COVID-19, было решено повторить успех крымского сценария. Но опять же, эта цитата взята автором из другой книги.
Касаемо Минских договорённостей, получается, что ни одна сторона не была заинтересована в их применении. С одной стороны:
Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine presented a starkly different picture from Moscow’s official support for Minsk II. In May 2017, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission revealed that Russia had instigated 945 explosions compared to 145 initiated by Ukraine, and Russia had blocked access to OSCE personnel 82 times compared to the 54 times they had been obstructed by Ukraine.
Although Russia was the primary violator of Minsk II, it created an alternative reality around the accords that blamed Ukraine for ongoing hostilities in Donbas.
Но с другой стороны:
Dmytro Kuleba, who served as Ukraine’s Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe, called for an alternative framework to Minsk II, as elections in Donbas were an intractable sticking point. Mustafa Nayyem opposed any mention of Minsk II into Ukrainian law, as it had been signed by “terrorists.” Although Poroshenko continued to officially support Minsk II, his actions suggested that he was appealing to the agreement’s critics. In February 2018, he signed a reintegration law that labelled Russia as an aggressor and Donbas as an illegally occupied territory. Andriy Parubiy, the chairman of Ukraine’s Rada, subsequently pushed for a “de-occupation law,” which fuelled speculation that Ukraine could be creating a legal groundwork to forcefully recapture Donbas.
<…>
Kravchuk argued that Ukraine’s dialogue with Russia should focus on recapturing Donbas even if this approach meant accepting the Crimea annexation. This perspective was strenuously rebutted by Poroshenko’s political allies. Svitlana Zalishchuk, who served on the Ukrainian Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee, believed that durable diplomacy with an authoritarian Russia was impossible.
<…>
In December 2014, the Rada voted by a 303–8 margin to suspend Ukraine’s non-bloc status.
Но лично я думаю, что украинским властям Минские соглашения были более невыгодны, чем России. Причиной является их блокирующая возможность, хотя бы теоретически, Украине стать членом ЕС и НАТО. России же нужна была информационная победа либо, помимо победы, возможность создания внешней угрозы, против которой можно было бы консолидировать страну. Учитывая историю с Грузией в 2008, Минские договорённости должны были играть роль большого PR проекта, большой геополитической победы и причины, почему Путин должен продолжать править Россией. Но это лично моё видение ситуации, а что касается автора, то он старается не делать каких-либо выводов, перекладывая эту задачу на плечи читателей. Но в целом, обрисованная автором ситуация вокруг Минских договорённостей, кажется мне более-менее верной.
Далее в книге будет очень подробное пересказываться хронология событий 2022 года. Настолько подробно, что я в какой-то момент просто устал всё это читать. Учитывая, что я с 2022 года пристально слежу за этим военным конфликтом, читать одно и то же по сто раз, мне уже порядком надоело, ведь как я сказал выше, эта книга является пересказом всего того, что публиковалось в западных СМИ в те дни.
Последнее что я отмечу, это такую вот цитату.
Russia’s occupation of Enerhodar caused the fortunes of local residents to plunge, as ZNPP workers were regularly beaten and threatened with abduction and torture to keep the plant operational.
Исходя из цитаты, получается, что российские власти пытали сотрудников Запорожской атомной электростанции, чтобы те продолжали работать и поддерживали оную в рабочем состоянии, как будто в России нет специалистов, которые могли бы заменить ключевых сотрудников ZNPP. Автор никак не объясняет, зачем нужно было пытать сотрудников атомной электростанции. Ради чего? Ведь людей пытают, чтобы они под пытками выдали какую-то информацию, а что знают сотрудники Запорожской атомной электростанции? Что хотели заполучить российские власти? В этом смысле книга может содержать огромное количество военной пропаганды обеих сторон этого конфликта. Конечно (и я хочу подчеркнуть это), это может быть правдой и в будущем кто-то напишет об этом более подробно, где объяснит и действия украинцев на этой станции и действия россиян. Сегодня же я не понимаю, что там случилось и зачем это делалось. Если эта станция взорвётся, то пострадает не только Украина, но и Россия и Беларусь, а Москва попадёт в эпицентр ядерного заражения. Поэтому отсутствие проблем на этой станции заинтересованы все стороны конфликта.
Подводя итог можно сказать, что книга писалась с целью срубить бабла, на что указывает ещё и выбор обложки. Обложка провокационно красивая, но книга не объясняет ни мотивы России, ни мотивы Украины, ни мотивы Западных стран во главе с США. Она просто пересказывает хронологию событий.
Being interested in books about Ukraine, especially the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, I more and more often come across books in which this conflict is used either as a background against which the author writes about something of his own, which has a very distant relation to the Ukrainian-Russian conflict or, more often, the author simply retells the events preceding this conflict, i.e., such a book is a chronology of events. As I understand it, such books are addressed to those readers who know nothing about the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, have never read about it, and have not even followed what the central European and American media wrote about this conflict. In this book, the author recounts news events in chronological order both shortly before the full-scale military conflict that began on February 24, 2022, and the military conflict itself. The problem with this book is that the author included everything that could be included, i.e., the book makes endless links both to the information from Russia and the Donbas separatists under its control, including numerous statements by Girkin, and from the Ukrainian side. What is the problem here, if the author tried to write an unbiased book? The problem is that from the proposed text, it is impossible to understand where is the truth and where is military propaganda.
Indeed, the author tried to give the floor to both sides, but how to determine which side is telling the truth, and most importantly, in what cases? If you listen to both sides of the conflict, it will turn out that all their missiles always hit only military targets. The author tries to be objective and even writes (mentions) statements about modern Russia and Putin that are quite rare in foreign authors.
In his 2021 book Weak Strongman, Columbia University Professor Timothy Frye contends that Putin’s regime has structural weaknesses, as Putin needs to pursue conflicting goals to assuage his inner circle and retain his popularity. The outbreak of mass protests in Belarus over president Alexander Lukashenko’s alleged perpetration of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential elections and unrest in Kazakhstan in January 2022 heightened Putin’s sensitivity to these weaknesses. As COVID-19 and sluggish economic growth prevented Putin from delivering on the domestic promises that undergirded his re-election to a fourth term in 2018, the Ukraine War could be regarded as a gambit to rally Russians around the flag. The surge in approval ratings that Putin experienced from the Crimea annexation to the 2018 pension reform protests provided a precedent for this contention.
In this quote from another book, you can see that the whole Ukraine thing was Putin's plan for one purpose only - to stay in power. Putin failed to build a prosperous and financially successful country that would allow him to be re-elected permanently, so Putin needed another reason to justify staying in power in Russia. It was for this purpose that the military campaign was organized first in Georgia in 2008, then in Ukraine in 2014, then in Syria, and after a very unsuccessful COVID-19 policy, it was decided to repeat the success of the Crimean scenario. But again, this quote is taken by the author from another book.
Regarding the Minsk agreements, it turns out that neither side was interested in their application. On the one hand:
Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine presented a starkly different picture from Moscow’s official support for Minsk II. In May 2017, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission revealed that Russia had instigated 945 explosions compared to 145 initiated by Ukraine, and Russia had blocked access to OSCE personnel 82 times compared to the 54 times they had been obstructed by Ukraine.
Although Russia was the primary violator of Minsk II, it created an alternative reality around the accords that blamed Ukraine for ongoing hostilities in Donbas.
But, on the other hand:
Dmytro Kuleba, who served as Ukraine’s Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe, called for an alternative framework to Minsk II, as elections in Donbas were an intractable sticking point. Mustafa Nayyem opposed any mention of Minsk II into Ukrainian law, as it had been signed by “terrorists.” Although Poroshenko continued to officially support Minsk II, his actions suggested that he was appealing to the agreement’s critics. In February 2018, he signed a reintegration law that labelled Russia as an aggressor and Donbas as an illegally occupied territory. Andriy Parubiy, the chairman of Ukraine’s Rada, subsequently pushed for a “de-occupation law,” which fuelled speculation that Ukraine could be creating a legal groundwork to forcefully recapture Donbas.
<…>
Kravchuk argued that Ukraine’s dialogue with Russia should focus on recapturing Donbas even if this approach meant accepting the Crimea annexation. This perspective was strenuously rebutted by Poroshenko’s political allies. Svitlana Zalishchuk, who served on the Ukrainian Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee, believed that durable diplomacy with an authoritarian Russia was impossible.
<…>
In December 2014, the Rada voted by a 303–8 margin to suspend Ukraine’s non-bloc status.
Personally, I think that the Minsk agreements were more disadvantageous to the Ukrainian authorities than to Russia. The reason is their blocking ability for Ukraine to become a member of the EU and NATO. Russia needed an informational victory or, in addition to a victory, the possibility of creating an external threat against which the country could be consolidated. Given the history with Georgia in 2008, the Minsk Agreements were supposed to be a big PR project, a big geopolitical victory, and a reason why Putin should continue to rule Russia. But this is my personal vision of the situation, and as for the author, he tries not to make any conclusions, shifting this task to the shoulders of the readers. But in general, the situation around the Minsk agreements outlined by the author seems to me more or less correct.
What follows in the book is a very detailed retelling of the chronology of the events of 2022. So detailed that, at some point, I just got tired of reading it all. Taking into account that I have been following this military conflict closely since 2022, I am already tired of reading the same thing a hundred times because, as I said above, this book is a retelling of everything that was published in the Western media in those days.
The last thing I will mention is this interesting quote.
Russia’s occupation of Enerhodar caused the fortunes of local residents to plunge, as ZNPP workers were regularly beaten and threatened with abduction and torture to keep the plant operational.
Based on the quote, it appears that Russian authorities tortured Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant employees to keep them working and maintain the plant as if there were no specialists in Russia who could replace key ZNPP employees. The author does not explain why it was necessary to torture the employees of the nuclear power plant. What for? After all, people are tortured to give out some information under torture, but what do the employees of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant know? What did the Russian authorities want to get? In this sense, the book may contain a huge amount of military propaganda from both sides of this conflict. Of course (and I want to emphasize this), this may be true, and in the future, someone will write about it in more detail, explaining both the actions of the Ukrainians at this station and the actions of the Russians. Today I don't understand what happened there and why it was done. If this station explodes, not only Ukraine but also Russia and Belarus will suffer, and Moscow will fall into the epicenter of nuclear contamination. Therefore, the absence of problems at this plant is in the interest of all parties to the conflict.
To summarize, the book was written to make money, as indicated by the choice of the cover. The cover is provocatively beautiful, but the book explains neither Russia's motives, nor Ukraine's motives, nor the motives of the Western countries led by the United States. It simply retells the chronology of events.
June 28, 2023
A rather plodding account of the war in Ukraine lacking original analysis.
While the book is heavily referenced there are a number of factual errors, which stand out without having to do a thorough check of the references. 'Krasnodar in Siberia' on page 256 being one of my favourites, but with some more serious examples to be found elsewhere in the book. In some of these cases if the author had probably engaged with the original source material these mistakes could have been avoided.
Additionally, there are a number of points in the book where the author misses what would be valuable context for the reader. It's not clear to me whether the author is actually aware of the context or simply didn't see it as important.
I have a feeling that this is a book that was rushed out to capitalise on the timeliness of the ungoing conflict. As such the book is more a timeline of events heavily reliant on newspaper and Telegram sources, with little to no deep analysis of the events themselves to be found.
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who has actively followed the conflict, with it not being clear which audience this book actually addresses.
While the book is heavily referenced there are a number of factual errors, which stand out without having to do a thorough check of the references. 'Krasnodar in Siberia' on page 256 being one of my favourites, but with some more serious examples to be found elsewhere in the book. In some of these cases if the author had probably engaged with the original source material these mistakes could have been avoided.
Additionally, there are a number of points in the book where the author misses what would be valuable context for the reader. It's not clear to me whether the author is actually aware of the context or simply didn't see it as important.
I have a feeling that this is a book that was rushed out to capitalise on the timeliness of the ungoing conflict. As such the book is more a timeline of events heavily reliant on newspaper and Telegram sources, with little to no deep analysis of the events themselves to be found.
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who has actively followed the conflict, with it not being clear which audience this book actually addresses.
October 13, 2025
This was a tough one to get through but worth plowing through if you want to understand the machinations of the horrific war instigated by Putin in an attempt to rekindle his goal of returning Russia into a nouveau Soviet Union at the expense of Europe.
It shows the genesis of the vile little dictator and his determination to conquer territories at the expense of the Russian people potentially bankrupting their economy.
A worthwhile if not difficult read.
It shows the genesis of the vile little dictator and his determination to conquer territories at the expense of the Russian people potentially bankrupting their economy.
A worthwhile if not difficult read.
March 2, 2024
Rather interesting. I have seen this author speak as a commentator on many new shows, and was curious about his book. It’s a good first draft of the first year of the war in Ukraine. And I found his analysis of the reaction of the “global south” (if such a thing exists) to the war interesting.
December 23, 2023
Readable and quite eye-opening for those who have not been following war in daily bases.
January 6, 2026
not a great overview of the war in Ukraine. You must be very familiar with a lot of people and equipment ans places to get much value out of this book
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