After three months of combat, Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive, undertaken without the advantage of air supremacy, has made meager gains on its eastern and southern fronts, reinforcing the notion that neither side in this 18-month-long war is capable of a decisive breakthrough.
The war of attrition has come at an appalling cost: an estimated 500,000 dead and wounded on both sides. Yet neither Ukraine nor Russia appears ready to negotiate in earnest to bring about a cease-fire, let alone a lasting peace. The situation is raising comparisons to World War I, which dragged on for more than four years until the weight of allied manpower and superior resources on the Western Front finally exhausted Germany.
In this episode of History As It Happens, Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft discusses the state of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which side has the advantage in a war of attrition, and what the world can learn about “modern” warfare from the brutal slog across minefields and trenches that characterizes the current war in Eastern Europe.
“It certainly does look like the battles of the First World War. The latest Ukrainian claim of success is really rather like the Russian claim of success at Bakhmut. It’s a really small gain at what appears to be enormous cost,” said Mr. Lieven, referring to Ukraine’s taking of the village of Robotyne.
As for comparisons to the Great War of 1914-18, Mr. Lieven said with the benefit of hindsight that it would have been wiser for the combatants to reach some kind of negotiated settlement in, say, 1916 or 1917 rather than fight to the bitter end. Likewise, historians a century from now might look back on today’s war and wonder why, when it appeared neither side could achieve its objectives, they refused to put down their guns. Instead, Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to salvage something from what is already an intractable strategic defeat for the Kremlin.
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