* 2023 Golden Tripod Award (Best Editor) The 2022 war in Ukraine that shocked the international community also mirrors tense post-Cold War relations. A team from The Reporter, Taiwan’s most authoritative independent media outlet, based this book on their frontline reporting. Applying an Asian-Pacific perspective, they break down for readers how a totalitarian state conducts warfare.

The Crimean crisis of 2014 had barely ended when the largest military conflict since World War II broke out in Europe – the war between Russia and Ukraine. The ensuing wave of refugees, fake news, and populist politicians taking advantage of the situation have all played on the sensitivities of the world’s citizens, but it is Taiwan – which The Economist called “the most dangerous place on Earth” – that understands Ukraine’s situation best.

Compiled from five months of reporting at the Ukrainian front by a team from The Reporter, Taiwan’s most authoritative independent media outlet, the book outlines each of the key factors in the war, starting with the tense hundred days after the war began and then examining events according to geographical location and in chronological order. Each of Ukraine’s big cities, for example, was faced with a different wartime situation due to historical differences and political affiliations; Poland, which has been both enemy and friend to Ukraine for thousands of years, has now offered Ukraine a helping hand, their motivation the shared threat posed by their authoritarian neighbor; and in interviews, German lawmakers’ analyses have shown how Germany’s longstanding energy policy of relying on Russian imports led to its loss of strategic power in the war. Finally, the book examines how Taiwan and other nations threatened by totalitarian states should take a long look at themselves at war’s end to reconsider the importance of strategic planning and fact-checking.

In addition to The Reporter team’s interviews and reports from the front line, this book also includes experts’ in-depth commentary on a variety of topics that will help readers to understand contemporary warfare, as well as to reconstruct the faces and choices of every individual in the war.