The Russian Way of War

Force Structure, Tactics, and Modernization of the Russian Ground Forces

By: Department of the Army, Dr. Lester W. Grau, Charles K. Bartles

Narrated by: Luis Ayala

Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, activity in Eastern Ukraine, saberrattling regarding the Baltics, deployment to Syria, and more assertive behavior along its borders have peeked interest in the Russian Armed Forces. This increased interest has caused much speculation about their structure, capabilities, and future development.

Interestingly, this speculation has created many different, and often contradictory narratives about these issues. At any given time, assessments of the Russian Armed Forces vary between the idea of an incompetent and corrupt conscript army manning decrepit Soviet equipment and relying solely on brute force, to the idea of an elite military filled with Special Operations Forces who were the “polite people” or “little greenmen” seen on the streets in Crimea.

This audiobook will attempt to split the difference betweenthese radically different ideas by shedding some light on what exactly the Russian Ground Forces consist of, how they are structured, how they fight, and how they are modernizing.

Public Domain (P)2021 Luis Ayala

A basic understanding of Russian Military doctrine

If you want to have a better understanding of what we are seeing coming out of the ukraine, this book is where you should start.

Phenomenal book, terrible narrator!

The book was a phenomenal reference from a technical and tactical standpoint. I will be ordering this in hardcopy version to add to my library. The narrator however was terrible. He sped read the story not even taking time for adequate transistions between sections of a chapter. This made it nearly impossible to follow the story. I quite honestly could finish the audio version and have ordered this in hardcopy. I would not recommend purchasing this as an audio book unless it is narrated by a different narrator.

pdfs would have been nice

would be 5 stars if we had a pdf of all the charts that were referenced through out the book

Literally the worst narrator I've ever heard.

Lester Grau is a magnificent scholar and a very good, if excessively economic, writer.

The narrator doesn't pause at the end of thoughts or sentences. He reads the section headings with the same inflection, stress, and even the same breath as the body of the text. His microphone settings change within sentences. He is unable to pronounce Russian names - which is normally not a character flaw, but is more than unfortunate in a BOOK ABOUT THE RUSSIAN WAY OF WAR.

Love Lester Grau, and will buy the paper version. The production of this audio book was criminally bad. Returned.