Aleksei Khomiakov, the gentlest and bravest of Russian philosophers, addressed Russia in the spring of 1854, during the Crimean War, an aggression against the Ottomans as cynical and senseless as the present invasion of Ukraine:

Your courts are black with black injustice
You’re branded with the yoke of slavery
You’re full of godless flattery, rotten lies
And dead, disgraceful idleness
And every kind of turpitude
Though not deserving to be chosen,
You have been chosen. Quickly wash
Yourself in penitential water,
Lest a double punishment
Thunder out above your heads

Like the Crimean War, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has regenerated British journalism and spawned a large number of books, some analytical, some based on reportage. The challenge for writers dealing with events that are still unfolding is to stay on top of developments. Books can be published within days of the author finishing them, then be out of date days later.

What none of the books under review here point out is that Russia losing a war, whether against the Ottomans, British and French in 1856 or against Japan in 1905, has often been the best possible outcome for Russia itself. The defeat of 1856 brought about the abolition of serfdom, that of 1905 the establishment of a parliament. Before the nuclear age, even lovers of Russia – like Khomiakov – could wish it to be defeated. Now, regardless of whether Putin wins or loses, the earth’s northern hemisphere may face apocalypse.

Mark Galeotti’s Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine (Osprey 384pp £25) is aimed at readers fascinated by tanks, artillery and tactics. It is a history of Putin’s wars, from the Second Chechen War to today’s, and of the incompetence and barbarity of the Russian military. Little has changed