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by Joseph Mathers.
Softcover (8.2×11.7 inches). 97 pages. 2025.
Subtitle: Volume 8: The Battle of Kyiv, February-April 2022
The series is up to eight volumes and this volume is quite readable, understandable, and thankfully offers detailed maps to place the obscure villages within Russian offensive and Ukrainian defensive operations.
That said, this often covers operations mentioned in Volume 2. The difference is a couple years of additional information, making it quite valuable in understanding how the Ukrainians blunted and then stopped a pair of Russian pincers before both could get to Kyiv. Then, it explains the Russian retreat before a Ukrainian counter-attack.
Despite massive Western information and warnings, the Russian invasion towards Kyiv from the northwest and northeast came as a surprise. If it wasn’t for a few key units, notably at the airport, and a lot of Ukrainian militia and National Guard determination to defend villages and key terrain along the Russian invasion routes, the Russian invasion might have succeeded.
Add incompetent Russian planning, including a veil of secrecy from their own troops until the day of the invasion, and poor logistical support and you can start to see how small numbers of defending troops inflicted massive casualties on Russian forces.
There’s more to it than that and here’s where insightful analysis punctuates the recaps of small-scale battles and hit-and-run attacks. Pick a village and you can generate a skirmish scenario. The photos linked to the defensive battles will help to lay out terrain, as will the maps.
One typo: “competed the destruction” (p26) should be “completed.”
The book contains 92 color photos, one black and white map, six color maps, and four jet, four helicopter, three uniform, one drone, and 15 vehicle color camouflage illustrations for all the modelers and miniature painters out there.
For a battalion-centric book interspersed with strategic assessments and individual combats, this volume covers that northern invasion with style and substance. Excellent.
Enjoyed it.
— Reviewed by Russ Lockwood
