War in Ukraine Volume 12: The Battle of Kharkiv and the Slobozhanska Counteroffensive, February-December 2022

In the opening stages of their offensive against Ukraine in February 2022, Russian forces attempted to encircle and capture Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city. By October of that year, Ukrainian forces had conducted a massive counteroffensive to drive back the Russians. Volume 12 of War in Ukraine provides an in-depth analysis of this phase of the Russian-Ukrainian War in 2022.

While Ukrainian forces found it relatively easy to curb the early and overenthusiastic Russian attempts to drive into the city – where the Russians had expected to be welcomed as liberators – it then took months to drive the enemy beyond artillery range of the second biggest city in Ukraine. Indeed, this aim was only achieved during the Slobozhanska Offensive in south-eastern Kharkiv Oblast in September–October 2022, when the Ukrainian Armed Forces liberated huge swathes of their homeland.

Volume 12 of War in Ukraine is the first published history examining this battle in detail, from the dramatic attempt by Russian special forces to drive into the city in the first days of the war, to the near-encirclement and mauling of the biggest concentration of Russian mechanised forces in this conflict, in September–October 2022.

Drawing upon a synthesis of newly available Ukrainian and Russian accounts and open-source intelligence gathering, Volume 12 builds upon the work conducted in earlier volumes of this sub-series to provide a richer and more comprehensive picture of the Russian axes of advance on Kharkiv and their eventual near-collapse.

War in Ukraine Volume 12: The Battle of Kharkiv and the Slobozhanska Counteroffensive, February–December 2022 is extensively illustrated with full colour photography, maps, and original artworks of the soldiers, vehicles, and aircraft involved. This book is an indispensable source of reference for professionals and enthusiasts alike.