One of the Harshest Wars in Modern History: A Grim Milestone for the War in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine has officially become longer than World War I. Ukraine's deadly weapon is shaking Russia, and in recent months the war has experienced a surprising shift in momentum.

The war in Ukraine reached a particularly grim milestone today, Thursday, as it hit 1,569 days, more than four years and three months, surpassing the 1,568 days of World War I. When Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the assumption in Moscow and among many around the world was that the country would collapse within days. Even after the Ukrainian army managed to stop the initial assault and push Russian forces back from many areas, few believed the conflict would last this long.

One Ukrainian soldier, who identified himself only by his call sign, “France,” told The New York Times that at the beginning he estimated the war would last no more than two or three years, until the political leaders found some way to reach an agreement. In practice, more than four years after it began, the fighting is still continuing with no clear sign of an end. Vladimir Putin | Photo: Reuters

Polls in Ukraine indicate that about half of citizens believe the war will not end before next year. If that forecast comes true, it will approach another historic milestone, the duration of World War II, which lasted six years. Although there are major differences in the global impact of the two wars, like World War I, the war in Ukraine is also reshaping Europe’s geopolitical system, affecting military alliances and accelerating rearmament across the continent on a scale not seen for decades.

There are also striking similarities on the battlefield. As in 1914, when Germany tried to achieve a rapid breakthrough by advancing toward Paris, Russia also tried to seize Kyiv quickly at the start of the invasion. In both cases, the attacking forces came close to their objective but were ultimately stopped and pushed back. Advertisement

The war then turned into one of attrition along relatively frozen front lines. Today, as then, soldiers on both sides are entrenched in trenches and bunkers, and the images from eastern Ukraine often resemble the battlefields of northern France more than a century ago. But as the war progressed, a factor emerged that changed the rules of the game, drones. As a result, soldiers have had to adapt to a new reality. Instead of large trench networks, they now hide in small, deep bunkers that house only a limited number of fighters. At times, a lone soldier digs a tiny position, little more than an individual trench, in an effort to reduce the chance of being spotted from the air.

A Ukrainian attack on the oil refinery in Tuapse, Russia | Photo: Reuters

The Ukrainian commander known as “Sauer,” who serves in Ukraine’s International Legion, said his men had to storm a heavily fortified Russian bunker four times before the soldier inside surrendered. According to him, the structure was designed to absorb shock waves from explosions using reinforced corners made of metal plates. Today, fighters on the ground say, the better you dig, the longer you survive. Advertisement

Drone dominance has also created wide “kill zones” around the front lines. Any movement in the area can be exposed and become an almost immediate target. Mass assaults by hundreds of soldiers, which were common in World War I, have become nearly impossible. Instead, attacks are sometimes carried out by just one or two fighters.

Ukrainian soldiers under a protective net against drones and UAVs | Photo: Reuters

Despite the technological changes, the scale of destruction in many cases still resembles images from World War I. Drone footage from the front shows burned forests, destroyed villages and fields covered with shell craters. The prevailing assessment today is that the lethality on the Ukrainian battlefield is similar to that which characterized World War I. Russia’s pace of advance in some sectors has also remained especially slow, and at times even lower than in some of the fiercest battles of that war.

The weapon shaking Russia

Alongside the fighting on the front, Ukraine is trying to increase pressure on Russia through deep strikes against military and economic infrastructure. In this framework, the recent use of FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles stands out in particular. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced yesterday that several Flamingo missiles flew more than 1,000 kilometers into Russian territory and hit the Progress plant in the city of Cheboksary, the capital of the Chuvash Republic. Advertisement

The plant manufactures Kometa antennas, key components integrated into Russian drones and missiles. According to Ukraine, these antennas help Russian aircraft deal with Kyiv’s air defense and electronic warfare systems. The Flamingo missile has a warhead capacity of one ton of explosives and a reported range of up to 3,000 kilometers. According to Zelensky, the strike was directed against a factory supplying the Russian army with components for drones and missiles.

In Ukraine, the attack on the plant is considered especially important, particularly because the upgraded version of the Kometa antennas, which entered use in early 2025, made Ukrainian electronic defense systems more difficult to operate against. Ukrainian engineers spent months trying to understand the technology and develop ways to counter it, so hitting the production chain itself is seen as a significant achievement.

Ukraine’s Flamingo missiles | Photo: AP

The strike in Cheboksary is part of a broader effort by Kyiv to raise the cost Russia pays for the war. Alongside the strike on the military plant, Ukraine also reported attacks on other targets, including the Russian-controlled port of Mariupol, an oil refinery in the Samara region, and an oil tanker in the Black Sea. Today is the second consecutive day that Russia has reported shooting down more than 300 Ukrainian UAVs.

More than four years since the war began, which has taken the lives of more than half a million people, it is clear that Russia is only moving further away from the goals for which it went to war. Beyond the tectonic shifts in the global geopolitical arena, which clearly do not favor Russia, the war itself has also seen a surprising trend in recent months, with a shift in the battlefield picture. Ukraine is gradually moving from defense to offense, while the Russian army is barely managing to advance. In the final analysis, in recent months the Ukrainian army has managed to liberate more territory than the Russian army has captured, and Putin’s military and political distress is growing.