Ukraine 22

'The extraordinary writers in this volume articulate the taste, the terror, and the dialect of war; they command their powers of description to face a shameless empire intent on annihilating them' Ellena Savage A selection of Ukraine's leading writers convey the reality of life within Ukraine during the first year of the invasion On 24 February 2022, the lives of Ukrainians were devastatingly altered. Since that day, many of Ukraine's writers have attempted to fathom what is happening to them and to their country. This anthology brings together writing from inside Ukraine, by Ukrainians, available in English for the first time. Here they document everyday life, ponder the role of culture amid conflict, denounce Russian imperialism and revisit their relations with the world, especially Europe and its ideals, as they try to comprehend the horrors of war. From tearing-downs of Russia's use of culture as justification of the war to moving descriptions of nights spent sheltering in corridors, poignant snatched moments with a husband on his single night away from the army, to descriptions of the eerie weather in the months leading up to the invasion, as if nature was trying to warn Ukraine, these essays reveal the texture, rawness and reality of life in Ukraine under war as never before.

A comprehensive guide to the missiles and rockets used by both Russia and Ukraine along with their effect on both military and civilian targets. In the Russian-Ukrainian war, both sides depended heavily on rockets and missiles. Some of these date from Soviet times and some are very modern, being deployed in warfare for the first time. The outbreak of the civil war in the east of Ukraine in 2014 showed that rockets and missiles, beside the artillery, are among the decisive factors in both regular Ukrainian military, and paramilitary nationalistic formations as well as in the separatists’ bodies. For eight years hardly any day passed without these weapons being fired. On 24 February 2022, Russia unleashed a ‘limited military operation’ (as President Putin defined it) with a barrage of new equipment – cruise missiles and tactical ballistic missiles – pounding Ukrainian targets. The West responded with a pledge to supply modern weapons to the otherwise outdated Ukrainian military to counter the Russian threat, especially armor. Ukraine was turned into a vast depot for NATO ammunition and weapons including short-range air defense systems and antitank rockets. Western stocks gradually shrank while numerous cargo lanes transported these weapons to Poland to be hauled by trucks and railways to the Ukrainians. In the meantime, Russia pounded these locations and large quantities of the Western aid disappeared in flames and explosions – as yet more equipment pourerd into Ukrainian hands. The sheer amount is hard to estimate but large quantities were captured by the Russians and occasionally turned against the former owners. This book is a comprehensive guide to all missiles and rockets used by both sides as well as their effect on both military and civilian targets, including Russian ship-borne weapons and anti-ship missiles used so effectively by Ukraine against the Russian cruiser Moskva. Besides the numerous ex-Soviet, Ukrainian, and Russian anti-armor rockets (RPGs) and missiles, of particular interest are the anti-armor missiles and rockets supplied by NATO which includes Javelin and British NLAW, and Brimstone. The war in Ukraine was a full-scale conventional war between the two largest armies in Europe. But without modern weapons, Ukraine’s ability to hold out for an extended period was limited. Its only hope was help by the West. Yet NATO supplies were precisely tracked and often destroyed immediately after unloading. Nevertheless, the Russian-Ukrainian war allowed manufactures and military experts to assess the true effectiveness of their weapons in the most realistic setting of all – the battlefield. In his examination of the weaponry used in the conflict, the author toured the Ukraine as the conflict unfolded, to photograph and report on the first major war of the twenty-first century.

Foreign Fighters in Ukraine is the first comprehensive academic study taking an in-depth look at foreigners who have chosen to fight in the conflict in Ukraine. While there has been considerable focus in policy, security and academic circles on the threat from returning jihadists – so-called returnee foreign terrorist fighters – the same danger from right-wing, but not essentially terrorist, extremists and others has been largely overlooked. As Westerners rushed to join the nascent Caliphate in Syria/Iraq, others simultaneously traveled to another foreign war on what many would call Europe’s doorstep: the Russo-Ukrainian war. This book unmasks this largely unknown group of fighters as the author dives into the fighters’ ideological and social backgrounds, their motivations for joining the conflict, their travails on the way there and their battle record in Eastern Ukraine. To a large extent based on interviews with the fighters themselves, it is a study on how and why men risk their lives while fighting a foreign war – and attract the attention of security services at home upon their return. Particularly, given the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the growing interest in far-right violence worldwide, the book evaluates whether these returnees constitute another security threat to the West. This volume will be of interest to all those researching small wars, terrorism, peace and conflict studies and right-wing extremism.

2011 Updated Reprint. Updated Annually. Ukraine Intelligence & Security Activities & Operations Handbook

The Ukrainian crisis that dominated headlines in fall 2013 was decades in the making. Two great schisms shaped events: one within Ukraine, its western and southeastern parts divided along cultural and political lines; the other was driven by geopolitical factors. Competition between Russia and the West exacerbated Ukraine's divisions. This study focuses on the historical background and complex causality of the crisis, from the rise of mass demonstrations on Kiev's Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) to the making of the post-revolt regime. In the context of a "new cold war," the author sheds light on the role of radical Ukrainian nationalists and neofascists in the February 2014 snipers' massacre, the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, and Russia's seizure of Crimea and involvement in the civil war in the eastern region of Donbass.

This book provides a systematic analysis of the Russian-Ukraine war, using the concept of resilient fighting power to assess the operational performance of both sides during the first year of the full-scale invasion. The Russian war in Ukraine began in 2014 and continued for eight years, before the full-scale invasion of 24 February 2022. It is not a new war, but the intensity of the warfighting revived many discussions about the conduct of inter-state warfare, which has not been seen in Europe for decades. This book does not aim to offer an exhaustive operational analysis of the war, but rather provides a preliminary systematic analysis across various domains of warfare using the concept of fighting power to assess the operational performance of both sides. First, the book discusses the conceptual component and the post-Cold War adaptations of the Soviet strategic tradition by both the Ukrainian and the Russian Armed Forces. Following that, it gives an evaluation of the various aspects of warfighting in the land, air, maritime and cyber domains. Then, the book examines the role of international allied assistance, sanctions and weapons delivery in strengthening the resilience of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The book concludes with some comments on the role of inter-state warfare in the current strategic environment and future warfare. This book will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, defence studies, foreign policy, Russian studies and international relations.

Debating the War in Ukraine discusses whether the war could have been avoided, and, if so, how? In this dialogical book, the authors discuss nodal points of history in terms of counterfactuals and contrastive explanations, concluding by considering future possibilities. They start in the 1990s where several causal elements of the war originate involving Russia’s economic developments and Europe’s security arrangements. Moving on to the next decade, they focus on the Iraq war, colour revolutions, and NATO’s 2008 announcement that Ukraine and Georgia will become members. Finally, they explore the past decade including the Ukrainian crisis of 2013–2014, the annexation of Crimea, and the consecutive war in east Ukraine. The current war can also be seen as a continuum of that war. The authors agree that NATO’s 2008 announcement on Ukraine’s and Georgia’s NATO membership was an unnecessary provocation, and that the implementation of the Minsk agreement could have prevented the current war, but otherwise their analysis of counterfactual possibilities differs, especially when it comes to the action-possibilities of the West (including diverse actors). These differences are not just dependent on different readings of relevant evidence but, importantly, stem from dissimilar contrast spaces and divergent theoretical understandings of the nature of states and mechanisms of international relations and political economy. This short, highly accessible book will be of great interest to all those studying and working in international relations and its various subfields such as peace and conflict studies and security studies, as well as all those wishing to understand more about the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. The Open Access version of this book was funded by University of Helsinki Library.

In light of the war of extermination that waged against Ukraine, the aggression is a typical scorched-earth policy. Genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced deportation committed in the nineteenth century in Circassia are similar to Russia’s war in Ukraine since February 24, 2022. The book reminds of dozens of peoples and nations eager to restore their confiscated rights since the dissolution of the Soviet Union until now. It is divided into time periods (chapters). It touches on articles, studies, prominent occasions, developments, events, and commemorations that occurred during the mentioned period. What happened in the past and is developing nowadays necessitated the documentation, showing and exposing facts and events, which will set the record straight. Where actions speak louder than words, this confirms an undeniable reality. With peoples deprived of their rights, the Russian state did not care so far for mending fences and reconciling for peace and fairness. That confirms an undeniable fact, which is that the Russian state has not cared so far to carry out the duty entrusted to it in order to correct what the successive Russian regimes have committed against the Circassian nation and other victims of wars, occupation, genocide, deportation, and forced annexation.