Stalingrad (book) writes that "the colossal scale of Stalingrad, the megalomania, the utter absurdity, the sheer magnitude of the carnage in what many military historians see as the turning point in the war, are marvelously captured". He concludes that "Stalingrad" is "a fantastic and sobering story, and it has been fully and authoritatively told in Mr. Beevor's book." "Stalingrad" won the first Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson History Prize and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature in 1999. The book came out in Russian in two translations: While the first translation was "flawed" according to Beevor, second translation of 2015 got banned in
Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation the crowd and police eventually arrived to defend the flag. The mayor said "This is the territory of Ukraine, Crimea. Here's a flag of Crimea", but was accused of treason and a fight ensued over the flagpole. On 24 February, more rallied outside the Sevastopol city state administration. Pro-Russian demonstrators accompanied by neo-Cossacks demanded the election of a Russian citizen as mayor and hoisted Russian flags around the city administration; they also handed out leaflets to sign up for a self-defence militia, warning that the "Blue-Brown Europlague is knocking." On 25 February, several hundred pro-Russian protesters blocked the Crimean parliament