Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/December 2020/Book reviews




 * By Nick-D

Armies of Russia's War in Ukraine is in many ways a companion book to Mark Galeotti's work on the modern Russian Army I reviewed last month. As with that book, it draws on Galeotti's expertise in transnational crime and Russian security affairs and seeks to cover a large and complex topic within the 64 pages allotted by Osprey Publishing to its 'Elite' series.

I found this to be a less successful book than that on the Russian Army. This is largely because I am unfamiliar with the War in Donbass, so struggled to understand the course of the events the book covers and the startlingly large numbers of factions involved, despite Galeotti making a good stab at trying to explain them. The most successful element of his narrative is tracing how the war evolved from being mainly fought between militia bands into a frequently conventional war between well-equipped and trained Russian and Ukrainian units. However, 64 pages simply isn't enough space to explain the role and performance of the many regular, semi-regular and decidedly irregular forces involved, especially given some stark differences between these players which means they can't be lumped together.

Overall, this is an interesting book, but it's not really successful as a starting point on this very complex conflict.

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