The Russian Mafia may get all the attention, but as this vivid and lively account of a businessman who finds himself trapped in its coils, its Ukrainian counterpart was and is no less violent and entrepreneurial. One can only marvel that, having been caught between the gangsters and the SBU (Ukraine's Security Service), he lived to tell this tale, but he did, and it is very well worth reading.

Mark Galeotti, PhD, historian and author, A Short History of Russia, We Need to Talk about Putin, and The Vory: Russia's Super Mafia

Deadly Bonds is one of the first books to chronicle the rise of organized crime in Ukraine. It brings the reader into the atmosphere which pervaded Ukraine and other former Soviet republics in the 1990s in the aftermath of the disintegration of the USSR, when organized crime controlled the economy, penetrated law enforcement, mingled with oligarchs, and corrupted politicians. Sergey Maidukov provides us with the background to the rise of the biggest and most powerful organized crime in the Donetsk region who captured Ukraine from the mid-2000s, precipitating a decade later in the Euromaidan popular uprising and war with Russia.

Taras Kuzio, National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy