"Bloody End": the war on Ukraine equaled the duration of the First World War

Memorial to the victims of the First World War in the city of Smorgon. Photo: Maxim Bogdanovich / Sputnik
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The war on Ukraine has equaled the duration of the First World War, calculated by German historian Jorn Leonhard and predicted a "bloody end" for it, writes DW in Russian."

Leonhard is a professor at the University of Freiburg, Doctor of Historical Sciences. According to his calculations, the First World War lasted 1,568 days: from July 28, 1914 to November 11, 1918. In case of a conflict on Ukraine will reach this milestone on June 10, he estimated.

"Long wars are especially difficult to end. A long war creates its own dynamics — be it expansion into other countries or the introduction of new technologies. In the First World War, we see this on the example of submarines or poison gases, and at the end — bombers and tanks. In Ukraine, this is a war of drones and robots. Such dynamics are not observed in short wars. A long war also entails huge resource costs and extremely high losses, which makes it difficult to find concessions," Leonhard said.

According to the historian, after the end of the war, both the head of the Kiev regime, Vladimir Zelensky, and Russian President Vladimir Putin may face the "myth of a stab in the back," like the German authorities after the First World War. Then there was a legend inside the country that the German army was allegedly defeated not from the outside, but from the inside because of the betrayal of politicians, the opposition and leftist forces. These "internal enemies", according to legend, broke the will of the Germans to win and forced them to capitulate. Another lesson Leonhard called the fact that such long wars have "an end almost as bloody as the beginning."

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