Putin expected a short-lived conflict, but the war has already lasted longer than the one that reshaped Europe a century ago. And there are some parallels. “We are back in the 19th century world, not the world of 1914.”
On February 24, 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine and started the current war, he expected that his “” on Ukrainian territory would be quick.
And, in fact, at the beginning of the war, Russian troops advanced quickly, reaching the vicinity of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. But they soon encountered Ukrainian resistance, and the initial plan to take the capital and overthrow the Ukrainian Government had to be abandoned at the end of March. With the Russian withdrawal, the conflict began to focus on the Donbass region, in eastern Ukraine, and territorial advances became slow and limited.
Last Thursday, June 11, the war that should have been quick concluded 1569 diasthus making it longer than the First World War — with which it is often compared.
War of attrition: what is it?
With the Russian withdrawal from Kiev and other Ukrainian regions in the first weeks of the war, the conflict turned into what experts call a war of attrition — also known as a war of positions or a war of attrition.
Unlike the war of movement, the war of attrition takes place in a relatively fixed zone, where the front remains practically unchanged for a long time, while seeking to impose heavy losses on the enemy in material and personnel, until exhaustion and consequent collapse.
Many analysts have already observed that this dynamic recalls what happened in the First World War, between 1914 and 1918. But, in the war in Ukraine, this situation of an almost immobile front, with enemy soldiers at a short distance from each other, has a fundamental difference: the use of drones.
Drones began to be used on a large scale by both sides from the summer of 2023. A Ukrainian soldier told DW that, during the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the first year of the war, he was just a kilometer and a half from the Russian positions, armed with an American-made heavy machine gun.
The soldier also said that he traveled long distances in open terrain and provided logistics from an armored vehicle. He transported ammunition and supplies, rotated personnel and removed the wounded. Today, none of that is possible.
The use of this new technology, however, evokes another similarity with the First World War, in which planes and tanks also began to be used.
Drones gave rise to the “killzone”
The use of drones has radically changed the war in Ukraine. As a consequence, units on the front line had to adapt, digging trenches, camouflaging them and protecting them from drones. High-tech weapons have had to be moved away from the front line, and infantry soldiers have to hide underground. Direct combat between soldiers or the use of tanks became rare.
What emerged was the so-called “killzone”, or death zone: an area that separates the two sides and where no one can survive due to the constant surveillance of drones. At some points, this strip is between 20 and 25 kilometers wide.
Not everything is similar
If there are similarities with what happened more than a hundred years ago, the military contingents involved are much smaller, and the losses, although high on both sides, do not even come close to the nine million soldiers killed in the First World War — this is without counting an equivalent number of civilians.
In 2022, in an interview with DW, Australian historian Christopher Clark, author of The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, called for caution in comparisons. He recalled that, in 1914, the conflict did not begin with a frontal attack from one country to another, but with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
For Clark, Putin’s motivations leading to the war in Ukraine have parallels with the 19th centuryor with the way in which Tsar Nicholas I justified, in 1848, his intention to invade and occupy Wallachia, in present-day Romania.
“I think Vladimir Putin sees Ukraine as a territory [da Rússia]”, he noted. “We are back in the world of the 19th century, not the world of 1914.”
Consequences
It is clear that the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine go far beyond the borders of the two countries.
“Putin is at war with us. He sees Ukraine as a proxy war between the West and Russia,” analyst Markus Kaim of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs told NTV broadcaster.
Just like the conflict more than a hundred years ago, the war in Ukraine could have a geopolitical impact across Europe, something that can already be seen in the accession of new countries to NATO and the increase in defense spending.
And, with peace talks at a standstill, there are no signs that the war is anywhere near an end.
