I found this interesting if uneven, which is probably to be expected. It is a first draft of history.Plokhy’s work dovetails nicely with [b:The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America|36217163|The Road to Unfreedom Russia, Europe, America|Timothy Snyder|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1519831741l/36217163._SY75_.jpg|57852601] and I found some tangents intriguing, especially the attention given to Boris Yeltsin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Plokhy is interested in events and precedents, not ideas. I think this would have benefitted from more of the latter. His notion that the war had thwarted Putin's cherished goal of a multipolar matrix was rather arresting. Putin’s actions solidified the idea of G2.