How does the Russian public view the invasion of Ukraine?

‘It’s too soon,’ said an anti-war Russian friend about the crop of books which have been emerging since late last year on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Perhaps he is right. Yet, mindful of Lenin’s maxim that ‘there are weeks when decades happen’, many may feel the period since February last year to have been one of the longest of their lives. Amid the fog of war – an endless news cycle in which events pile up, too enigmatic or episodic for the big picture to emerge – one is grateful to any writer who sets out to give the wider narrative.

‘To look at Russia now, as someone who loves the country, is to despair’

One such is Serhii Plokhy, the Zaporizhzhia-born historian and Ukrainian specialist, in The Russo-Ukrainian War. A detailed account of the invasion’s first year, it’s also a canter through his country’s history, reaching back to the emergence of the Cossacks in the 16th century, through the national movements of the 1800s and the repressions of Soviet years and beyond. Readers will be tempted to skip straight to last year’s invasion, but the book is particularly strong on Ukraine’s attempt to chart its own course since 1991, and the ruinous destabilisation Putin has put it through since coming to power.

As for the war itself, all the incidents are here – the bombing of Mariupol’s maternity hospital and regional drama theatre in March last year, the brutal assault on the Azovstal steelworks, the September annexations and so on, along with enjoyable vignettes. Who now remembers the 5,000 helmets offered Ukraine by Germany as other countries donated top weaponry; or how Putin was left squirming on camera for nearly a minute while his fellow despot Erdogan kept him waiting; or the gleeful commemorative postage stamps from Ukrposhta after the sinking of the Moskva?

It’s all here, and pessimists about the war’s outcome – Plokhy doesn’t seem to be one of them – can take heart from his words on what the Ukrainian resistance has already achieved.