'One Soldier's War in Chechnya' by Arkady Babchenko

One Soldier’s War in Chechnya, Arkady Babchenko (2)

While the subject of this book is important, I found it very difficult to read. War told from a first-person perspective is always painful, but the writing (or translation) here was confusing such that I struggled to follow the narrative. At times I wasn’t sure where in the timeline we were. The barrage of beatings, starvation and lack of basic needs read worse than a prisoner-of-war tale. The author did mention that he merged some events and people, but overall it was unbelievable at times to think this was happeng. One take-away was that the Soviet army was horribly mis-managed from a military perspective. When beatings and starvations happen to soldiers from their own regiment, one can never imagine a winning scenario.