Book review: The Russian Art of War
This is a book bij Jacques Baud, a Swiss data analyst who specializes on the topics of terrorism, military and of course Russia’s military .
He does appear in a number of youtube interviews, among which The Duran where I first saw him.
The book is not as time sensitive as the book from Glenn Diesen that was reviewed a couple of posts ago. That is, it will offer some insight into the Russian way of war and how this translates into the actions in the Ukraine.
The book is well written, he has a captive writing style that is easy to read. However he does make a few mistakes (that may be due to him being a native French speaker). The one big error around page 165 though is simply a stupid editing mistake that should have been caught by a proof reader. There the text is mixed, probably from 2 sub-sections, and some text seems to be missing.
I liked the book overal, but was a little disappointed that he did not dive deeper into the meta aspects of the Russian Art Of War. To me it seemed as if he was stuck on the surface and repeated many points already heard before (if you follow the Ukraine war in the non-mainstream world).
He shows how this Russian method is implemented by example of the many situations that have arisen in the Ukraine. And he shows how the press and western politicians keep looking at it the wrong way.
To be fair, he does a good job. But.. I already knew much of the stuff. That said, I do not regret reading the book. It is simply to well written for that. And it has some historical value that will remain even after the conflict is over.
A link to amazon: The Russian Art of War