Gabriel Gavin delivers searing, human reportage from the collapse of Nagorno-Karabakh – once a shared home of Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Through the voices of ordinary people forced to flee, he traces the descent into war, the loss of homeland and the decisions by distant powers that turned villages into empty streets and graves left untended...
“Baltic: The Future of Europe” shows how Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and their neighbours around the Baltic Sea are shaping the continent’s future. Oliver Moody blends history, politics and reportage to reveal resilient societies reinventing themselves through technology, ecological projects and social innovation, standing as a beacon for Europe....
“Bread and War” offers a vivid, deeply human chronicle of wartime Ukraine – focusing on the bakers, chefs, army cooks, volunteers, farmers, small producers and cafe owners who have been fighting to keep people fed and hopeful in the midst of the loss, fear and violence of the Russian invasion. Spector shows how food can become resistance and ide...
On the first day of Russia’s 2022 invasion, armoured vehicles seized Chernobyl, holding staff hostage and forcing them to work under extreme pressure. Serhii Plokhy reveals the full story of this reckless gamble, showing how close the world came to a second nuclear disaster and the human courage that endured under terrifying conditions.
On 24 Fe...
In “Dark Shadows”, Joanna Lillis unveils the hidden heart of Kazakhstan – a vast, oil-rich nation caught between Russia and China. With over a decade of on‑the‑ground journalistic experience, she traces a landscape of corruption, power and exile, revealing how one man’s ruthless rule reshaped a fragile post‑Soviet society into a modern monocrac...
Mark Galeotti and Anna Arutunyan's “Downfall” traces Yevgeny Prigozhin's rise and his rivalry with Putin, revealing how private armies and shadow power upset Russia’s elite. This timely, forensic account shows how personal ambition, violence and fractured loyalties threatened to reshape the country's future, and the stability of the wider world....
In “Everyday Politics in Russia: From Resentment to Resistance”, Jeremy Morris dives into post‑February 2022 Russia through fieldwork in Moscow, regional towns, and rural areas. He reveals how ordinary Russians – from factory workers to security officers and citizen journalists – live their lives, and shows how politics shapes their everyday liv...
Sarah Rainsford came to Russia with hope and stayed to witness its unraveling. Expelled from Moscow as a “security threat”, she chronicles the country she once called home – its slide from post-Soviet possibility into iron-fisted repression, and the war that shattered her illusions. A vivid, personal reckoning from the ruins of liberty and war.
...
Winner of the Pushkin House Book Prize 2024. “I Love Russia” by Elena Kostyuchenko is a fearless, personal exploration of a nation on the edge. Through vivid undercover reporting and memoir, she gives voice to those erased by power – from impoverished provincial Russians to marginalised queer people – and captures the reality of Putin’s Russia.
...
Stephanie Baker’s “Punishing Putin” exposes the West’s unprecedented economic war against Putin, from seizing superyachts and freezing central bank reserves to targeting oligarchs and elites. She reveals how these measures, enormous in scale and scope, are reshaping global alliances and testing the limits of economic statecraft in the modern era...
Shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize 2025. On Russia’s neglected European edge, Amos follows the lives of ordinary people in Pskov – from orphanage carers and hospital patients to a museum curator fighting to preserve local heritage. He paints a lyrical, human portrait of a frontier marked by decay, history’s erasure and quiet defiance....
“Silk Mirage” by Joanna Lillis journeys into the heart of Uzbekistan – a jewel of the Silk Road and now a battleground between reformers and reactionaries. One of the only Western journalists with access to Uzbekistan, Lillis chronicles the legacy of dictatorship and the hope of the “Uzbek Spring,” through the lives of ordinary people.
Silk Mira...
Zygar peels back the myth of the USSR’s fall in “The Dark Side of the Earth: How the Soviet Union Collapsed but Remained”, arguing that the Cold War never ended and the Soviet empire still haunts Russia. With 100s of interviews – from Gorbachev to rock stars – he reveals a resurgence of imperialism and warns that Russia’s past may be its future....
“Tigers Between Empires” tells the astonishing true story of Amur tigers on the brink of extinction, from the fall of the Soviet Union to the present day. Jonathan C. Slaght follows the daring scientists – Russian and American – who risked everything to found the Siberian Tiger Project, forging a fragile alliance to rescue these majestic cats.
D...
In “Who Will Defend Europe?”, Keir Giles warns that decades of outsourcing security to the United States have left the continent dangerously exposed. As Russia re‑arms and tensions rise, Europe must urgently rebuild its defences, strengthen alliances, and confront hard truths—or risk devastating consequences for its future security and stability...
Charles Hecker’s “Zero Sum” chronicles three decades of Western business in post‑Soviet Russia, from the gold‑rush boom of the 1990s market to the retreat triggered by Putin’s 2022 invasion. He reveals how ambition, greed and political maneuvering collided, showing a high‑stakes world of profit, power and risk where there were no true winners.
...