You may not be interested in Russia. But Russia is interested in you.
Russia's 2022 attack on Ukraine saw confrontation between Moscow and the West spill over into open conflict once again. But Russia has also been waging a clandestine war against the West for decades. Hostile acts abroad, from poisoning dissidents to shooting down airliners, interfering in elections, spying, hacking and murdering, have long seemed to be the Kremlin's daily business. But what is it all for? Why does Russia consistently behave like this? And what does it achieve?
In this book, Keir Giles explains how and why Russia pushes for more power and influence wherever it can reach, far beyond Ukraine - and what it means not just for governments, but for ordinary people. Bringing together stories from the military, politics, diplomacy, espionage, cyber power, organised crime and more, Giles describes how Moscow conducts its campaigns across the globe, and how nobody is too unimportant to be caught up in them. By lifting the lid on the daily struggle going on behind the scenes to protect governments, businesses, societies and people from Russian hostile activity, Russia's War On Everybody shows how Moscow's hostile intentions for the rest of the world are far broader and more ambitious, and the ways it tries to achieve them far more pervasive and damaging, than we realise.
This is a highly detailed and readable book. Referenced to a high standard, the reader can really dig into the sources of information, and it is academic in its framing and development of arguments without compromising its readability. Taking a completely different approach to most books, it really digs into why Russia acts as it does, and what it hopes to achieve. This is an important distinction and adds significant value compared to a lot of more recent narrative assessments of wider Russian malign activity.