The ambitious aim of this richly illustrated and well referenced book is to draw lessons from the first three years of the Russia-Ukraine War by applying sociological approaches to risk management to ‘critique Ukraine’s doctrine and tactics’ (p. 17). Already at the Preface, the reader finds a comparison of Ukraine’s August 2024 incursion into the Kursk region with the June 1944 allied landing in Normandy (p. xxvi). This parallel is carried too far, but such jumps between very different features is a typical for the analysis, which can hardly be called ‘sociological’. Some of the lessons offered by the author are rather pedestrian, like the criticism of the deep cuts in European military structures, which now demand costly efforts at rearmament, even if calling that broadly supported policy a ‘decades-long orgy of self-congratulation’ (p. 150) may appear emotional. Other propositions, like the argument that the slowness of the Ukrainian command in reforming the nationalistic profile of the Azov brigade (described as a ‘wayward formation’, p. 65) constitutes a failure of strategic empathy because Putin’s impressions should have been taken into account, are more dubious. The author is appalled with the prospects of changes in the US policy shaped by the re-election of Trump – a ‘vandal, wrecker, or worse’ (p. 143). His point that a ‘consensus is forming that a new axis between the Unites States and Russia will emerge’ (p. 148) is supported by a long list of Trump’s pro-Putin quotes in Appendix 1 but is still unlikely to come true. The concluding warning that ‘Putin is positioned to succeed’ where Hitler failed – in subjugating Europe (p. 141) is obviously well-intended but still is overdone and under-researched.