New Total War

Shortlisted for Best Non-Fiction or Fiction by a Parliamentarian at the Westminster Book Awards 2025The war in Ukraine is a war like no other, a new form of total war that combines traditional military force with underhand strategies and all the non-military tools of the Russian state. The 2022 invasion was just the next stage of a conflict that Russia has been fighting since 2005, using all the tactics at its disposal to control Ukraine’s politics and wreak havoc.Combining over a decade of research, astute analysis and powerful stories from the front line, Bob Seely has written the authoritative guide to this new form of conflict. Travelling extensively throughout Ukraine, he meets figures such as Panoushka, the sniper who continues to fight despite the loss of her fiancé, and Ksenia, the teenager who journeyed through Russia searching for her abducted younger brother. Above all, Seely argues understanding this conflict is critical because Putin considers Russia to be at war with the West as well as Ukraine.Complete with a brand-new preface examining the current situation in Ukraine and the revolutionary new methods being used on the front line, this insightful book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the unconventional tactics Russia and other authoritarian states will use – and are using – to challenge the West for global supremacy.