By skyforbes 
War Diaries is a collection of writer and analyst Gilbert Doctorow’s regular essays on the Russia — Ukraine war covering the first two years of 2022–2023. He has been a specialist on Russia for many years and readers of this blog will be familiar with him as I have cross-posted him plenty of times and reviewed other books by him.
To summarize his background and expertise on Russia and the former Soviet Union, he was born and raised in the U.S., but his grandparents were Russian emigres. His family background fostered a curiosity about Russia and he studied the country and its history at both Harvard and Columbia, including taking courses under the notorious Richard Pipes. He then traveled through Western and Eastern Europe on a fellowship, and received another fellowship that enabled him to study for a year at the state archives in Leningrad and Moscow from 1971–72. It was during this time that he met a young Russian writer who would become his wife. He earned his living doing consultancy work for U.S. companies with major industrial projects at the time in the Soviet Union. Thus began a career that would span through the 1990’s working in management and consultancy positions for companies, mostly in the food processing, liquor and agribusiness industries, throughout Europe and Russia. Through his work, he acquired a deep knowledge of the language and culture of Russia. Though his home base is in Brussels, he lives part-time in St. Petersburg and has provided regular updates over the years on what the Russian situation is like socially and economically in response to sanctions and varying degrees of war. Some of those dispatches from 2022 and 2023 are included in his anthology.
The bulk, however, involve essays describing and analyzing the lead-up to and first two years of what is known in Russia as the “special military operation (SMO).” In much of the western mainstream media it is referred to as “Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.” His essays also regularly provide a summary of what the domestic Russian media are saying — something that much of western media and punditry largely ignore, which is negligent if one’s purpose is to actually inform an audience or readership about Russia and its policies.
The book is over 700 pages long, so I have provided a review and thoughts on points throughout the essays that I found particularly interesting.*
Doctorow starts the book off with essays from one year prior to the SMO to provide context, with particular attention to how the Covid pandemic had already paved the way for the severance of economic and travel connections between Russia and the West. This is something that had become obscured to me over time and his mentioning it was an interesting reminder that the West was continuing its gradual mission since 2003 of finding a multitude of reasons to distance itself from and vilify Russia.
A recurring theme in Doctorow’s writing is the West’s refusal to understand, much less take seriously, Russia’s concerns and how its perceptions of relations directly inform what actions it will take:
“My overriding concern has been that the U.S. and foreign policy communities are ‘flying blind’ as they conduct their war on Russia since they do not take into account anything being said on the other side of the barricades. That can be fatal. We simply will not know how and why we are under missile attack should it come. Our leaders insist that Vladimir Putin’s actions are unknowable when nothing could be further from the truth.” (page xiv)
It would be difficult to disagree with Doctorow on this since Putin first clearly delineated Russia’s concerns with the West’s treatment of Russia and its legitimate interests in the very public forum of the Munich Security Conference in 2007. He has reiterated those points to varying degrees in subsequent speeches and interviews over the years as well as making concrete proposals to negotiate a more equitable security architecture in the Euro-Atlantic region at least twice since 2007 to avoid escalation. It was the West, led by Washington, that constantly dismissed Russia’s concerns and attempts at meaningful diplomacy.
Part of the answer to why Washington doesn’t seem able to display any strategic empathy and doesn’t know how to negotiate is provided by Doctorow himself in the following observation:
“U.S. policy is based on scenarios written by political scientists with the intellectual capacity and life experience of college sophomores; Victoria Nuland is an outstanding example.” (page 6)
Expounding on this theme later, he states:
“The problem in Washington is that no one on Capitol Hill or in the foreign policy community wants to acknowledge the obvious facts about Russia today. Everyone is happy with the version of a slovenly, chaotic Russia led by a merciless dictator, whose regime is fragile and just needs a little push, like Nicholas II’s autocracy, to tilt over and collapse. This is rubbish and if it remains the foundation of U.S. policy towards Russia under Biden then we can expect nothing much to happen to reduce the dangers of nuclear war or move towards calmer waters in international relations.” (page 25)
As I’ve written before, the people in Washington who serve as advisors and staff the executive branch are largely of poor quality. They are pampered ideologues who are too arrogant to understand their own ignorance at worst (e.g. Michael McFaul) or career-climbing opportunists who know better than to stray much from the establishment narrative no matter how dangerously distorted it may be (e.g. Fiona Hill). In any event, Doctorow was very accurate in recognizing that the Biden administration’s attitude did not bode well.
Refreshingly, the author acknowledges that he was wrong in some of his analysis or predictions leading up to the SMO and in the early days of the fighting. For example, he (along with many others) predicted that the war would be relatively short. He admits that he did not initially take into consideration the following: 1) the US-led West’s view that this was a war to weaken Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy, and its willingness to increasingly escalate its provision of weapons and assistance to Ukraine that simply delays Ukraine’s inevitable defeat rather than facilitating victory, and 2) Russia’s approach to fighting the war has given consideration to the fact that Ukrainians are an historically fraternal people and therefore they wanted to forego a “shock and awe” style war of overwhelming destruction and mass civilian casualties. Ukraine does not look like Fallujah in 2003 or Gaza in 2025.
“Moscow wished to avoid civilian casualties in Ukraine to prevent revanchism after the fighting was over. This necessarily slowed the progress on the battlefield versus what we onlookers in the West expected. And when the acts of terror committed against Russian civilians put an end to Moscow’s indulgence for Ukrainians, the political calculations of the Kremlin to avoid casualties among its own troops that might kindle political disturbances within Russia nonetheless required avoidance of heroic mass offensives and storming of cities. This also slowed the Russian advance versus the forecast of outside observers.” (p. xv)
Regarding the actual invasion or start of the SMO, Doctorow says it was a response to the major increase in attacks by Kiev on the Donbas in the days prior and to prevent what Moscow believed to be a major imminent attack by Kiev on the rebel oblasts:
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine was timed to forestall what Moscow perceived to be an imminent and massive campaign by Kiev to storm the rebellious provinces of the Donbas. [A major uptick in attacks by Kiev on the Donbas was recorded by the OSCE in the days prior to the start of the SMO]. In that respect, defense of compatriots and of the Russian World was a motivating factor. However, there was also a wholly different and less often publicly stated motivation at the level of strategic defense of the Russian Federation.
After all, Russia was deeply concerned over the advancing NATO presence in Ukraine during the time since 2014 when American and European advisors supervised the rebuilding of the Ukrainian armed forces and prepared the country for accession into NATO, an ambition that they had been promoting since 2008. Intelligence reports indicated that the British in particular were busy preparing to set up naval installations in one or another Ukrainian Black Sea port, and other NATO infrastructure was being introduced inland. The Russians expected the placement of US missiles in Ukraine, all of which would pose threats to Russian security with or without NATO membership.” (page xvii)
Doctorow also admits that he did not see the real significance at the time of the draft peace agreement of April 2022 scuttled by the West in the person of Boris Johnson who advised Ukrainian president Zelensky to keep the conflict going with the West insisting it would help Ukraine fight Russia for as long as it takes. As those who have been following the war closely will know, the draft agreement would have left Ukraine with a much better deal than it will ever get now or in the future and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men would still be living their lives rather than moldering in the ground. The terms provided that Ukraine could join the EU [whether the EU will ever actually accept them as a full member is another matter], and Kherson and Zaporozhe and the Donbas would be independent in exchange for Crimea being recognized as de facto Russian, Ukraine being formally neutral and foreign military personnel and installations being prohibited on Ukrainian territory.
With respect to the initial sanctions imposed by the West after the start of the SMO, Doctorow points out how these were an extension of previous punitive measures against Russia including the Magnitsky Act for alleged human rights violations and sanctions in response to the Crimea annexation (or reintegration depending on your point of view). Russia’s response in the form of import substitution and strengthening economic ties with the non-West had been developing and has continued to keep Russia’s economy going, rendering western predictions of a dramatic economic collapse foolhardy.
It will be interesting to read Volume II when it comes out. I’m sure it will provide interesting commentary on what will no doubt be a continuing refusal on the part of the US-led West, due to its incompetence and hubris, to deal with reality when it comes to Russia.
*Doctorow’s books are always hefty and therefore tend to look a bit intimidating. Potential readers can peruse the Foreword, Introduction, and Table of Contents so they can pick and choose what will be most interesting and valuable to them.