The war in Ukraine is often compared to World War I because of its brutal infantry attacks and heavy casualties. Yet the idea that it could somehow outlast a conflict so long and bloody that French soldiers hoped it would be “the last of the last” once seemed unthinkable, writes The New York Times, quoted by Focus.
That is exactly what happened on Thursday. The war in Ukraine – which has reached 1,569 days, or more than four years and three months – has already lasted longer than World War I.
When Russian President Vladimir V. Putin sent his troops into Ukraine in February 2022, he believed the country would fall within days. After Ukraine pushed back the Russians and the conflict became a grueling war, even many of the combatants could not have imagined it would last so long.
The publication notes that the parallels between the two conflicts are numerous: from the brutal infantry assaults and huge casualties to the way new technologies have changed the nature of warfare.
The war in Ukraine, like World War I, will likely go down in history as one of the most significant conflicts in modern European history. Both wars reshaped the geopolitics of Europe, forming new military alliances and sparking a massive arms race. Both conflicts are changing the nature of warfare thanks to the introduction of new technologies: planes and tanks a century ago, and drones today. In both cases, technological advances make the clashes even more brutal for people.
In World War I, between 9 and 11 million soldiers died. In the war in Ukraine, the losses are estimated to be about half a million people to date.
"However, military analysts and officials, including Admiral Pierre Vandie (Supreme Commander of NATO's Unified Command for Transformation), argue that thanks to drones, the level of lethality on the Ukrainian battlefield has reached indicators comparable to those of World War I“, the publication writes.
The NYT believes that peace talks have reached a dead end and there are no signs of an imminent end to the conflict. As polls show, about half of Ukrainians believe it won't end before next year. That would bring the war closer to another threshold: the duration of World War II, which lasted six years.