In many ways yesterday’s fourth anniversary of the current hot phase of the Russia-Ukraine war was a less portentous milestone than the one due to fall on June 11th. On that date, should the conflict still be ongoing (and you’d be mad to bet against it) the current conflict will reach its 1,569th day, and officially exceed World War One in duration.
The parallells do not end there. We are of course in Ireland mostly familiar with the western front of the great war, where British, French, Irish, Canadian and German troops slaughtered each other for almost half a decade while the front lines barely budged. But actually, in the east, the war was much more dynamic: Almost 100,000 square miles of territory changed hands between the Germans, the Russians, the Austrians, and the Romanians over the course of four years, ultimately ending in German victory (though that victory was swiftly undone by their defeat in the west).
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