Frontline Ukraine

Frontline Ukraine, by Richard Sakwa was a surprise for me. I am not in any way, shape or form a political scientist, historian, etc, though I was a US Army Soldier for 25 years and served on the the frontlines of the Cold War. This made me interested in this book and the publisher graciously gave me a digital copy in exchange for this review. I am not certain of the author is born and raised British or if he is from "east of the Iron Curtain" originally but he did take the post Cold War NATO expansion to task for causing many problems in Eastern Europe. Russia and its few close allies are surrounded, often right on their borders. Having visited Ukraine post Cold War, I am heartbroken that many of their people probably feel dejected that the Obama administration seemed to do nothing when Russian invaded. Many Ukrainians however were probably ecstatic that politics was maybe going back to the old ways, during the Cold War. If you are interested in Eastern Europe nowadays, I recommend this book to you. This author seems to write many books about Russia and Putin, so examine his portfolio and see what else you may be interested in.

Fascinating insight into the Russian mind set behind the current Ukrainian crisis.

I’ve never read Richard Sakwa before but he does come across as being a Putin apologist, however he has put together an interesting book helping us to comprehend the Russian psyche behind the crisis in Ukraine.

He argues convincingly that the immediate post cold war lack of engagement with Russia as an equal are at the root of the current conflict and that recent US and EU arrogance in telling Russia how to conduct its affairs has further exacerbated the crisis. Evidence of direct US interference has also surfaced via the Snowden revelations.

The author provides background to the concept of Ukraine as a nation state and details how Ukraine’s borders are as a result of administrative convenience during the soviet period creating a powder keg of ethnic groups with similar histories, but vastly different agendas.

This has resulted in the western portion being mainly made up those wanting greater ties with the west whilst the eastern portion, who in the majority were happy to be part of Ukraine, wanted their language, history and connections with Russia to be recognised. Sakwa describes “memory wars” where each group interpret their thousand years of shared histories in vastly different ways.

This is particularly highlighted by the support of some Ukrainian Nationalists for Stepan Bandera (1909 – 1959) a controversial figure both in Ukraine and internationally for his alliance with Nazi Germany and ethnic cleansing of Poles in Galicia at the end of World War 2.

Sakwa states that hard-core Ukrainian nationalists won’t countenance a pluralist state and have specifically created laws replacing Russian with Ukrainian as a recognised national language and denied those people any form of determination which was not fundamentally of a purely Ukrainian slant.

Sakwa sees the parallels with Hitler in the late 1930s as incorrect with Russia having no capability to invade Poland or the Baltic states, however he is not alone in seeing alarming parallels with 1914.

In summary the author sees the Ukrainian crisis as a defensive action by Russia with the annexation of the Crimea as Russia seeing the opportunity of dealing with the Soviet aberration of placing it in the Ukraine SSR in the 1960s, Russian fears of ethnic cleansing but Ukrainian extremists as well as putting a clear marker down to the west that this is Russia’s back yard.

As I said earlier Sakwa does come across as being a Putin apologist but I feel the book does give some fascinating insight into the Russian state of mind. Some of the language is a bit too scholarly for my liking, but his detail around Russia's fears of being surrounded by NATO and their long memories of the German-Soviet War (1941-45) and even the Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War (1917-1922) are notable.

If, like me, you find the current Ukraine crisis pretty confusing, this is the book you need. The author goes into the history and origins of the crisis, how it developed and how it is likely to play out. If I still find it all somewhat incomprehensible then no doubt that is my fault not the author’s. A timely and well-researched study of the conflict.