Invasion

December 5, 2022
Guardian foreign correspondent Harding (Shadow State) delivers a comprehensive and riveting account of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Opening the story at a cosmopolitan dinner party in Kyiv on the night before the invasion, he notes that many world leaders and even well-informed Ukrainians thought Putin’s threats were a bluff. Harding also explains the historical inconsistencies in Putin’s argument that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people,” descended from the medieval princedom of Kyivan Rus, and shows how the Russian military’s actions—including the bombing of a theater in Mariupol, which killed 600 civilians, and the “prolific pattern of murder and predation” carried out in the cities of Bucha and Hostomel—belie Putin’s stated goals. Familiar episodes, including Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s rise to power and the story of Ukrainian border guards telling a Russian warship to “go fuck yourself”—are given new depth. Elsewhere, Harding’s interview subjects pinpoint the absurdity and cruelty of the conflict: “It’s Kyivan Rus,” says one soldier. “Kyiv is the mother of cities, not Moscow.” Enriched by Harding’s deep knowledge of the region and impressive access, this is a valuable report on an ongoing geopolitical crisis.

December 15, 2022
British journalist Harding offers a frontline view of the Russian-Ukrainian War. Although previously bound up with the likes of Edward Snowden, now living in Russia, and Julian Assange, Harding himself is no friend of the Putin regime. Expelled from Russia a decade ago, he now lands on the opposing line, covering the events in Ukraine for the Guardian. Along his meandering course through the embattled country, the author examines rumor and fact. An example of the former was a supposed consultation between Putin and a Siberian shaman in support of his invasion; of the latter, the undeniable tensions that a Westward-turning Ukraine created in a theater of realpolitik that seems increasingly committed to Central Asian autocracy. The current war, Harding writes, is incontestably one of Putin's choice, though he faults Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for discounting intelligence that suggested that Russia would actually invade: "It caused panic, depressed the economy, spooked foreign investors, and ran down the country's currency and gold reserves. Why...should Ukraine suffer and its 'cynical' neighbor be rewarded?" Even so, Zelenskyy recovered, and one of his "soft-power" tools was to insist on transparency and decentralization even as a secretive, top-heavy Russia tried to make further inroads. Harding, a knowledgeable student of history, is particularly good when he considers Russian errors in the field as near mirror-image re-creations of those errors during World War II, when Stalin's Russia relied on sacrificing thousands of soldiers to overwhelm a less populous enemy. Indeed, Russia's wartime state has been "moving even further in the direction of the 1930s, using mechanisms of coercion and intimidation"--even as Ukraine is comparatively free and is able to exercise a secret weapon that's no secret at all: Russian command is vertical, "always looking feudally upward," while Ukraine's is horizontal, with a citizen army bent on remaining democratic. On-the-ground reporting meets with strategic analysis to form a nuanced portrait of an ongoing conflict.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.