Understanding the War in Ukraine

In Wartime: Stories from Ukraine by Tim Judah

Journalist, Tim Judah captured the stories of Ukrainians from politicians to poets, pensioners, and historians following the 2014 revolution and the Russian annexation of Crimea.

With In Wartime, Tim Judah lays bare the events that have turned neighbors against one another and mired Europe's second-largest country in a conflict seemingly without end. In Lviv, Ukraine's western cultural capital, mothers tend the graves of sons killed on the other side of the country. On the Maidan, the square where the protests that deposed President Yanukovych began, pamphleteers, recruiters, buskers, and mascots compete for attention. In Donetsk, civilians who cheered Russia's President Putin find their hopes crushed as they realize they have been trapped in the twilight zone of a frozen conflict.

I Will Die In A Foreign Land by Kalani Pickhart

Sometimes fiction can help us to understand a place and a people in a way that is not accessible in nonfiction. Set in November 2013, I Will Die In A Foreign Land, follows the course of events that led to the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution that Russia used as a pretext to annex Crimea.

I Will Die In A Foreign Land follows four individuals over the course of a volatile Ukrainian winter, as their lives are forever changed by the Euromaidan protests. Katya is an Ukrainian-American doctor stationed at a makeshift medical clinic in St. Michael's Monastery; Misha is an engineer originally from Pripyat, who has lived in Kyiv since his wife's death; Slava is a fiery young activist whose past hardships steel her determination in the face of persecution; and Aleksandr Ivanovich, a former KGB agent, who climbs atop a burned-out police bus at Independence Square and plays the piano.

On Our Way Home From the Revolution: Reflections on Ukraine by Sonya Bilocerkowycz

In 2014 Sonya Bilocerkowycz is a tourist at a deadly revolution. At first she is enamored with the Ukrainians' idealism, which reminds her of her own patriotic family. But when the romantic revolution melts into a war with Russia, she becomes disillusioned, prompting a return home to the US and the diaspora community that raised her. As the daughter of a man who studies Ukrainian dissidents for a living, the granddaughter of war refugees, and the great-granddaughter of a gulag victim, Bilocerkowycz has inherited a legacy of political oppression.

In these linked essays, Bilocerkowycz invites readers to meet a swirling cast of post-Soviet characters, including a Russian intelligence officer who finds Osama bin Laden a few weeks after 9/11; a Ukrainian poet whose nose gets broken by Russian separatists; and a long-lost relative who drives a bus into the heart of Chernobyl. On Our Way Home from the Revolution muddles our easy distinctions between innocence and culpability, agency and fate.

Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham

Recently attacks by Russian forces on the Chernobyl power plant made headlines. Midnight in Chernobyl is journalist Adam Higginbotham's definitive, years-in-the-making account of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster—and a powerful investigation into how propaganda, secrecy, and myth have obscured the true story of one of the twentieth century's greatest disasters.

Midnight in Chernobyl is an indelible portrait of one of the great disasters of the twentieth century, of human resilience and ingenuity, and the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will—lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats, remain not just vital but necessary.

How To Lose The Information War by Nina Jankowitz

At the beginning of the Ukraine crisis there was a lot of news about Russia using false information about genocide to justify an invasion of Ukraine. As the crisis has continued to develop there has been a persistent issue with identifying misinformation online especially on social media.

In How To Lose The Information War, Nina Jankowitz explores the threat of online warfare and the attacks from Russia, who flood social media with disinformation, and circulate false and misleading information to fuel fake narratives and make the case for illegal warfare. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it?

The Big Green Tent by Ludmila Ulitskaya

Not everyone in Russia supports the invasion of Ukraine, and according to a recent news report from the BBC thousands of protestors have been detained in Russia. This novel by Ludmila Ulitskaya talks about the Soviet dissident experience in Russia in the 1950's under Stalin.

With epic breadth and intimate detail, Ludmila Ulitskaya's remarkable work tells the story of three school friends who meet in Moscow in the 1950s and go on to embody the heroism, folly, compromise, and hope of the Soviet dissident experience. These three boys—an orphaned poet; a gifted, fragile pianist; and a budding photographer with a talent for collecting secrets—struggle to reach adulthood in a society where their heroes have been censored and exiled. 

Red Notice by Bill Browder

This is a story about an accidental activist. Bill Browder started out his adult life as the Wall Street maverick whose instincts led him to Russia just after the breakup of the Soviet Union, where he made his fortune.

Along the way he exposed corruption, and when he did, he barely escaped with his life. His Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky wasn't so lucky: he ended up in jail, where he was tortured to death. That changed Browder forever. He saw the murderous heart of the Putin regime and has spent the last half decade on a campaign to expose it.

Blowout by Rachel Maddow

The recent decision by the United States to ban the importation of Russian oil has sent gas prices soaring. In Blowout, Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe, revealing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas along the way, and drawing a surprising conclusion about why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. She deftly shows how Russia's rich reserves of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Vladimir Putin to maintain his power by spreading Russia's rot into its rivals, its neighbors, the West's most important alliances, and the United States. Chevron, BP, and a host of other industry players get their star turn, most notably ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson. 

The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen

The winner of the 2017 National Book Award for Nonfiction. The essential journalist and bestselling biographer of Vladimir Putin reveals how, in the space of a generation, Russia surrendered to a more virulent and invincible new strain of autocracy. 

Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own—as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. 

Between Two Fires by Joshua Yaffa

From a Moscow correspondent for The New Yorker, a groundbreaking portrait of modern Russia and the inner struggles of the people who sustain Vladimir Putin's rule. In this rich and novelistic tour of contemporary Russia, Joshua Yaffa introduces readers to some of the country's most remarkable figures—from politicians and entrepreneurs to artists and historians—who have built their careers and constructed their identities in the shadow of the Putin system.

Between Two Fires chronicles the lives of a number of strivers who understand that their dreams are best—or only—realized through varying degrees of cooperation with the Russian government. With sensitivity and depth, Yaffa profiles the director of the country's main television channel, an Orthodox priest at war with the church hierarchy, a Chechen humanitarian who turns a blind eye to persecutions, and many others. 

A Short History of Russia by Mark Galeotti

Russia's epic and dramatic history told in an accessible, lively and short form, only 224 pages, from Ivan the Terrible to Vladimir Putin via Catherine the Great, the Russian Revolution and the fall of the USSR. Russia is a country with no natural borders, no single ethnic group, no true central identity. At the crossroads of Europe and Asia, it has been subject to invasion by outsiders, from Vikings to Mongols, from Napoleon's French to Hitler's Germans. In order to forge an identity, it has mythologized its past to unite its people and to signal strength to outsiders.

Red Famine by Anne Applebaum

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is not a new conflict. In Red Famine, Anne Applebaum explores the history of Stalin's war on Ukraine beginning in 1929.  Applebaum argues that more than three million of the dead in the war were Ukrainians who perished not because they were accidental victims of a bad policy but because the state deliberately set out to kill them. Devastating and definitive, Red Famine captures the horror of ordinary people struggling to survive extraordinary evil.

The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin by Steven Lee Myers

The New Tsar is the book to read if you want to understand how Vladimir Putin sees the world and why he has become one of the gravest threats to American security. This book is the epic tale of the rise to power of Russia's current president—the only complete biography in English—that fully captures his emergence from shrouded obscurity and deprivation to become one of the most consequential and complicated leaders in modern history, by the former New York Times Moscow bureau chief.

From Russia with Blood by Heidi Blake

The untold story of how Russia refined the art and science of targeted assassination abroad: "A compelling rendering of Putin's frightening extensions of power into Europe and the United States" (Associated Press). 

They thought they had found a safe haven in the green hills of England. They were wrong. One by one, the Russian oligarchs, dissidents, and gangsters who fled to Britain after Vladimir Putin came to power dropped dead in strange or suspicious circumstances. One by one, their British lawyers and fixers met similarly grisly ends. Yet, one by one, the British authorities shut down every investigation—and carried on courting the Kremlin.

Unflinchingly documenting the growing web of death on British and American soil, Heidi Blake bravely exposes the Kremlin's assassination campaign as part of Putin's ruthless pursuit of global dominance—and reveals why Western governments have failed to stop the bloodshed. The unforgettable story that emerges whisks us from London's high-end night clubs to Miami's million-dollar hideouts ultimately renders a bone-chilling portrait of money, betrayal, and murder, written with the pace and propulsive power of a thriller.

The Putin Interviews by Oliver Stone

From Oscar-winner Oliver Stone comes a first-hand look at one of the most important, powerful, and controversial leaders in the world: Vladimir Putin of Russia. The companion read to the news-breaking television series, this edition has substantial material not included in the documentary.

Oliver Stone was able to secure what journalists, news organizations, and even other world leaders have long coveted: extended, unprecedented access to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Putin Interviews are culled from more than a dozen interviews with Putin over a two-year span—never before has the Russian leader spoken in such depth or at such length with a Western interviewer. No topics are off limits in the interviews, which first occurred during Stone's trips to meet with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in Moscow and most recently after the election of President Donald Trump.

Putin's People by Catherine Belton

Interference in American elections. The sponsorship of extremist politics in Europe. War in Ukraine. In recent years, Vladimir Putin's Russia has waged a concerted campaign to expand its influence and undermine Western institutions. But how and why did all this come about, and who has orchestrated it?

In Putin's People, the investigative journalist and former Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and the small group of KGB men surrounding him rose to power and looted their country. Delving deep into the workings of Putin's Kremlin, Belton accesses key inside players to reveal how Putin replaced the freewheeling tycoons of the Yeltsin era with a new generation of loyal oligarchs, who in turn subverted Russia's economy and legal system and extended the Kremlin's reach into the United States and Europe.