Military Model Scene

Title: Russia's Five-Day War
Author: Mark Galeotti
Publisher: Osprey
ISBN: 978-1-4728-5099-7

A recent addition to the Elite series from Osprey, number 250. The story of the Russian invasion of Georgia in August 2008, a 64-page soft-cover book in the standard style for these books, with plenty of archive images and artwork.
An Introduction sets the scene and then details of the changes taking place within the Georgian armed forces, as following the independence of the state they began to move towards NATO standard training and equipment. All this was unwelcome for Russia and they put plans in place, using the provinces of Abkhazia in the North West of the Georgian state and South Ossetia in the East. Under pressure thanks to Russia, Georgian forces made a military move which was countered by Russian forces in 'support' of the two provinces. The book goes on to describe the events of the 5-days of war before a peace deal was arranged, with the intervention of France. The Russians got the result they wanted and did withdraw their forces, though there were still security forces on the borders, close to the remaining Georgian territory.
At the end of the book there is some interesting analysis for what had happened, and the good and bad conclusions that can be made from both sides. The Russian armed forces, despite their success, had a lot of lessons to take from it, some of which can since be clearly seen to have happened again in the more recent war in Ukraine. Their attempt at a quick win in Ukraine have so obviously failed to replicate the success of this invasion of Georgia back in 2008. An interesting read and a conflict I for one knew little about. For the modellers among us, 8-pages of colour artwork illustrating a wide range of uniforms and equipment from units on both sides offer some super references.
Thanks to Osprey for the review copy.

Robin