How are modern wars fought? The New Total War by Bob Seely explores this question through harrowing stories of Ukraine’s resistance and the dark evolution of Russia’s tactics. Here, Seely offers a glimpse into his book, where frontline heroism meets digital deception and where the battle for freedom is being fought on every front.
Tell us the story behind the book’s cover image.
The remarkable woman on the front cover is a sniper, call sign Panoushka (I refer to almost all soldiers by their call signs).
Panoushka is a former Latin teacher from Lviv. As a sniper, Panoushka’s role is exceptionally demanding. Yet her most difficult task in this war has been to bury her fiancé, who was also her commanding officer. He was killed in a missile strike. ‘For that moment, I had to be a warrior – not just a woman who had lost the love of her life but also a soldier who had lost my brother in arms,’ she told me.
You met some remarkable people in Ukraine – was there one story that stayed with you the most?
So many were worthy of respect, but the stories of two teenagers, Ksenia and Rostyslav, and how they returned to Ukraine after being taken into Russia and Russian-controlled Crimea were very powerful, because both were so young and yet fought so hard to return.
The theft and indoctrination of children is one of the most extraordinary elements of the war. Their stories, Ksenia told me, were different but united by one common theme: ‘We were kidnapped by Russia.’
What sets the conflict in Ukraine apart from ‘traditional’ war?
Russia’s new way of war is an updated form of total war.
So, it’s a conflict fought with cutting-edge drones, but it’s also one where algorithms and bots peddle disinformation. It mixes assassinations, blackmail and bribery with First World War-style trenches. It has been a war in which special forces, spies and organised crime work together to stage coups and steal children.
This new way of war is the ‘integration of everything’ in the service of Russian state power.
What should the government be doing to prepare the UK for the kind of hybrid and total war you describe in the book?
The twenty-first century will witness a battle for the future of humanity, between open and closed societies and the visions of humanity that they represent.
Ukraine is, for now, the front line in that coming global battle. For the West to survive, it must arm itself, psychologically and physically, to win.
What first motivated you to start researching Russia’s hybrid tactics?
As a young reporter, I feared these events decades ago. I first wrote about Russia’s determination to control its neighbours in 1995. I witnessed at first hand Russia’s ‘managed conflicts’ in Georgia and Moldova. I’ve long been fascinated by the fusion of different forms of conflict, trying to understand them from informational, military and political angles, having been a foreign correspondent, a reservist soldier on permanent service for a decade and then a Member of Parliament. In addition, I devoted a decade of academic study to Russian warfare for my PhD from King’s College London.
Before the 2022 invasion, I argued that Putin would, in his remaining years in power, attempt three things. First, to destroy Ukrainian independence; second, to rebuild and reshape Russia as a virulently anti-Western nation and a core leader of the global anti-Western alliance; and third, to break NATO and with it, Western power. I didn’t pretend to know when these would happen or how, but as the military build-up around Ukraine continued in 2021, I suggested that common sense shows that dictators don’t like to back down.
Putin has tried to crush Ukraine. He has created a brutal, militarised Russia. He has not yet tried to take on NATO. However, unless we relearn the art of deterrence, I fear it will only be a matter of time.
If you could give your book to three people involved in the Ukraine War, who would they be and why?
Trump and his team, because Putin is not a man to admire.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his team, because they need to understand modern warfare and they don’t.
Finally, to a group, the volunteers of Ukraine, so that they can better see and understand the overt and covert wars being waged against them to destroy their identity, their language and their nation. I thank them for letting me tell their stories. Their blood, toil, tears and sweat have saved their nation three times since the turn of the century. They may yet be called to save it once more. Their forebears would have been proud of them. Their descendants will be.
What do you hope Western readers take away from your book, especially those outside the military or policy world?
I want them to be moved by the stories of the people I met.
I want them to understand how fascism comes about – it is happening in Russia before our very eyes.
I want them to understand that this form of total warfare is likely to be a template for conflict in this century.
The New Total War: From Child Abduction to Cyber Attacks and Drones to Disinformation – Russia’s Conflict with Ukraine and the West by Bob Seely is out 10 July.
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