Fallout of War: Ukraine Year One

By H Peter Alesso

A U.S. Navy submarine officer. A diplomatic post in Kyiv. And five months to prepare for the largest European war since 1945.

In the tradition of Herman Wouk's sweeping wartime sagas, Fallout of War is a military thriller set during the opening year of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, following Lieutenant Commander James Fairbanks from his September 2021 arrival as naval attach at the American embassy in Kyiv through the first twelve months of full-scale war.

Fairbanks arrives with his wife Lucy, a State Department analyst, and finds a country bracing for something most of the world refuses to believe. Through encounters with Ukrainian special forces training in the haunting ruins of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, intelligence briefings that grow darker by the week, and an extraordinary personal audience with President Zelensky, Fairbanks becomes one of the few American officers who truly understands what is coming.

When Washington selects him to deliver a presidential warning directly to Vladimir Putin, Fairbanks confronts the Russian leader in a tense Kremlin meeting and is offered an unprecedented tour of the invasion forces massed along Ukraine's borders. His classified report to Washington becomes the most prescient and controversial intelligence assessment of the conflict's first year.

After the February 2022 invasion, Fairbanks remains in the combat zone, embedded with Ukrainian special forces and the engineers building Ukraine's revolutionary naval drone program. Drawing on his submarine warfare expertise, he helps develop wolf-pack tactics that sink Russian warships, culminating in strikes against the Black Sea Fleet flagship Moskva. Meanwhile, a heartbreaking parallel story follows a Ukrainian mother's desperate flight from Bucha with her four-year-old daughter, framing the invasion through the eyes of those who cannot escape.

From embassy corridors to the Pentagon briefing room, from Chernobyl's radioactive forests to a nighttime commando raid on a Russian pontoon bridge, Fallout of War combines the geopolitical sweep of a Tom Clancy thriller with the intimate human cost of a Herman Wouk epic.

"An examination of warfare that doesn't lose sight of the people involved." - Kirkus Reviews

Starred Review from BlueInk: "Readers looking for a compelling war story with characters beating the odds will find Fallout of War utterly engrossing."

For readers who love military fiction by Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, Daniel Silva, and Mark Greaney.

For fans of historical war novels by Herman Wouk, Ken Follett, and Jeff Shaara.

Perfect for readers interested in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, modern drone warfare, U.S. Navy fiction, and military espionage thrillers.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GX91WPVY
• ISBN13: 9798233689703
• Release Date: October 2025
• Publisher: H. Peter Alesso
• Length: 162 Pages
• Weight: 0.39 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.3" x 5.3"