Iain Hawkes’s Reviews > Intent to Destroy: Russia’s Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine > Status Update

...children to be "Russiafied." The idea of there being one global Russian people that must all answer to the Kremlin is eerily similar to the CCP's claims of loyalty over the Chinese diaspora, only here, it's manifested in far more lethal consequences.

...and I can't fault its conclusions. Also, reading things, there's a few moments I snickered because of the gallows humour, but overall, it's heartbreaking. Not just the war in of itself, but Russia's attempts to destroy any sense of Ukrainian national identity. I'm not talking about collatoral damage, the book documents clear incidents of cultural destruction and theft, not to mention the abduction of Ukrainian...

Writing is absolutely excellent. To borrow a quote, "if a family [Ukraine] is having a dispute, it does not give their neighbor [Russia] the right to seize their appartment." Last batch of reading I've covered has gone from the 90s to Russia's invasion in 2022 (yes, the invasion technically began in 2014, and yes, the book covers that). Far be it from me to be an authority, but the geopolitical analysis is sound and-

Well this makes for depressing reading. :(

Solid so far. No way I'm going to remember all this (more familiar with western than eastern European history for obvious reasons), but writing is good and in-depth.