Book launch announcement: ‘War Diaries, Volume 2: The Russia-Ukraine War, 2024’

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Gilbert Doctorow

Apr 10, 2026

I take pleasure in announcing that Volume 2, 2024 has just been placed on sale by Amazon throughout its worldwide websites.

Within a week or so an e-book version will be added.

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Volume 2 differs notably from Volume 1 by its inclusion of summaries, extracts from transcripts and several full transcripts of my nearly weekly interviews in 2024 on leading youtube channels, particularly ‘Judging Freedom,’ that regularly attracted the attention of tens of thousands of viewers. Thus, readers can follow closely what U.S. and other Western audiences found newsworthy at the time, and what they sought expert commentary about as the Russia-Ukraine war evolved in 2024.

I remind readers that these War Diaries are primary sources. They are history recorded in time present while looking to the still unknowable future. Errors of judgement at the time of writing are left intact. The purpose is to show what my expectations were based on what was known within a day or two of the events described.

I imagine that each reader will seek in this volume answers to his or her own questions about the war in general and 2024 in particular. Both questions and the evaluation of answers found here will change over the years to come, which is natural to all historical writings. Nonetheless, in the Foreword and Introduction, I share with the reader an overarching view of what I found remarkable in the ‘diaries’ when I prepared this book for publication in January 2026.

Note: Volume 2 is set in larger, 12-point typeface and is thus easier to read in paperback format than Volume1.

The image of the book cover above dramatizes two important elements of the war that emerged in 2024. The front cover shows the destroyed interior of the Crocus entertainment center in a Moscow suburb where on 22 March 2024 a Ukrainian financed and directed attack killed 149 civilians. This terrorist act enraged Russian society and was a key factor raising pressure on President Putin to harden the language and severity of Russia’s pursuit of the war. The back cover shows a double-amputee Ukrainian soldier in hospital being visited by German Chancellor Scholz. It is meant to direct attention to the human as opposed to material losses in this war. It is widely believed that Ukraine has now lost more than two million soldiers to death and permanent incapacitation as a result of Zelensky’s persisting in a war that they have lost as measured in traditional military terms.

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Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.

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