Despite the increasingly futile, bloody struggles for territory that had characterised the Eastern Front the previous year, the German and Austro-Hungarian commands held high hopes for 1916. After the success of the 1915 Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive, which had driven Russia out of Galicia and Poland, Germany was free to renew its efforts in the west. Austria-Hungary, meanwhile, turned its attention to defeating Italy. In an attempt to relieve pressure on their British and French allies at the Somme and Verdun, Russia launched one of the bloodiest campaigns in the history of warfare. General Brusilov's June advance was quickly characterised by innovative tactics, including the use of shock troops – a tactic that German armies would later adapt to great effect. The momentum continued with Romania's entry into the war and the declaration by the Central Powers of a Kingdom of Poland – two events which would radically transform the borders of post-war Europe. Drawing on first-hand accounts and archival research, internationally renowned historian Prit Buttar presents a dramatic account of an explosive year on the Eastern Front, one that gave Russia its greatest success on the battlefield but plunged the nation into revolution at home.

Despite the increasingly futile, bloody struggles for territory that had characterised the Eastern Front the previous year, the German and Austro-Hungarian commands held high hopes for 1916. After the success of the 1915 Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive, which had driven Russia out of Galicia and Poland, Germany was free to renew its efforts in the west. Austria-Hungary, meanwhile, turned its attention to defeating Italy. In an attempt to relieve pressure on their British and French allies at the Somme and Verdun, Russia launched one of the bloodiest campaigns in the history of warfare. General Brusilov's June advance was quickly characterised by innovative tactics, including the use of shock troops – a tactic that German armies would later adapt to great effect. The momentum continued with Romania's entry into the war and the declaration by the Central Powers of a Kingdom of Poland – two events which would radically transform the borders of post-war Europe. Drawing on first-hand accounts and archival research, internationally renowned historian Prit Buttar presents a dramatic account of an explosive year on the Eastern Front, one that gave Russia its greatest success on the battlefield but plunged the nation into revolution at home.

Collision of Empires is the first major historical work on the Eastern Front during World War I since the 1970s. One of the primary triggers of the outbreak of World War I was undoubtedly the myriad alliances and suspicions that existed between the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian empires in the early 20th century. Yet much of the actual fighting between these nations has been largely forgotten in the West. Driven by first-hand accounts and detailed archival research, Collision of Empires seeks to correct this imbalance. The first in a four-book series on the Eastern Front in World War I, Prit Buttar's dynamic retelling examines the tumultuous events of the first year of the war and reveals the chaos and destruction that reigned when three powerful empires collided. A war that was initially seen by all three powers as a welcome opportunity to address both internal and external issues would ultimately bring about the downfall of them all.

Published in readiness for the centenaries of the battles detailed in this book, Prit Buttar expertly describes the collapse of the three great empires that fought on the Eastern Front: Russia, Germany, Austria, and Hungary, in the face of defeat on the battlefield and revolution at home. This concludes his best-selling series on the Eastern Front in World War I.

A detailed and absorbing narrative of the campaigns fought on the 'forgotten' Eastern Front of the Great War, vividly illustrating that these campaigns were no less costly, tragic and important than the catastrophes of the Somme, Verdun and Passchendaele. The massive offensives on the Eastern Front during 1915 are too often overshadowed by the events in Western Europe, but the scale and ferocity of the clashes between Imperial Germany, Habsburg Austria-Hungary and Tsarist Russia were greater than anything seen on the Western Front and ultimately as important to the final outcome of the war. With the Russians hamstrung by weak supply lines and the Austro-Hungarian leadership committed to a strategy of offensive drives despite diminishing manpower and adverse terrain, the fighting in early 1915 was a costly and futile exercise. By the summer, the Central Powers, increasingly dominated by Germany, had begun to gain the advantage, but even the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive of 1915 – which ultimately resulted in the retreat of Russian forces from Poland – failed to bring the conflict to a conclusion. Now with the work of internationally renowned Eastern Front expert Prit Buttar, this fascinating story is finally being told. From the bitter fighting in the Carpathian Mountains, to the sweeping advances through Serbia and the almost medieval battle for the fortress of Przemysl, this is a staggeringly ambitious history of some of the most important moments of the First World War.

Following his explosive New York Times bestseller Red Notice, Bill Browder returns with another “explosive and compulsive” (Stephen Fry) thriller chronicling how he became Vladimir Putin’s number one enemy by exposing Putin’s campaign to steal and launder hundreds of millions of dollars and kill anyone who stands in his way. When Bill Browder’s young Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was beaten to death in a Moscow jail, Browder made it his life’s mission to go after his killers and make sure they faced justice. The first step was to uncover who was behind the $230 million tax refund scheme that Magnitsky was killed over. As Browder and his team tracked the money as it flowed out of Russia through the Baltics and Cyprus and on to Western Europe and the Americas, they were shocked to discover that Vladimir Putin himself was a beneficiary of the crime. As law enforcement agencies began freezing the money, Putin retaliated. He and his cronies set up honey traps, hired process servers to chase Browder through cities, murdered more of his Russian allies, and enlisted some of America’s top lawyers and politicians to bring him down. Putin will stop at nothing to protect his money. As Freezing Order reveals, Browder’s campaign to expose Putin’s corruption was a factor behind Russia’s intervention in the 2016 US presidential election. At once a financial caper, an international adventure, and a passionate plea for justice, Freezing Order is “mandatory reading for anyone who wants to understand the tactics of modern autocracy,” (Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Twilight of Democracy). It is a stirring morality tale about how one man can take on one the world’s most ruthless villains—and win.

Billington describes the contentious discussion occurring all over Russia and across the political spectrum. He finds conflicts raging among individuals as much as between organized groups and finds a deep underlying tension between the Russians' attempts to legitimize their new, nominally democratic identity, and their efforts to craft a new version of their old authoritarian tradition. After showing how the problem of Russian identity was framed in the past, Billington asks whether Russians will now look more to the West for a place in the common European home, or to the East for a new, Eurasian identity.