War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Even award-winning Zygar (All the Kremlin’s Men), the founding editor in chief of Russia’s only independent news TV channel, Dozhd, did not foresee the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. He expertly distills decades of Russian, Ukrainian, and Eastern European history and finds some of the roots of the conflict in the constant Russian and West European border shifts. He writes in present tense, which results in an invigorating narrative, as he argues that Russkiy mir (the Russian world) was an 18th-century literary invention, a way to group Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus together despite distinct cultural differences. The 1945 Yalta Conference granting the then–Soviet Union three seats on the United Nations Council reaffirmed this idea, giving future leader Putin hope. Putin’s maniacal pursuit of this fallacy is grounded in past mythology, Zygar writes; in reality, the battle started more than 300 years ago. Readers are shown the myths, legends, and military actions leading to the present conflict, and the imperative for all nations to trade archaic notions of hubris for peace is emphasized. Zygar’s extensive research through October 2022, including personal interviews, is admirable.