With the war in Ukraine already within its tenth year, since the first annexation of Crimea and insurrection in the Donbas region, there is opportunity to reflect on the deeper roots of the conflict, as well as what history can teach us about where it might lead. Serhii Plokhy is professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University, and has multiple books published on the history of the region. His critically acclaimed history of the conflict, The Russo-Ukrainian War, was written during the first year of the war and is now out in paperback. This latest addition details some of the critical events that transpired since the first publication of the book in early 2023. Here, Plokhy discusses the history of the conflict, its parallels with history and what lessons past wars might lend for its future resolution.
The Second World War looms large in the wider history of this modern conflict, and a lot of parallels get drawn, some inaccurately and many for propaganda purposes. Are there any useful historical comparisons that can be made in understanding and learning from the conflict over 80 years ago?
First of all, in my opinion it is an extremely good thing that there is so much attention being paid to World War II. And I’m saying that not just as an historian, but also in a sense that it means that for a long period of time we didn’t have World War III…
Looking at the parallels between the conflicts started to pop up in the first months of the war, with phrases like ‘this is the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since WWII’. Then we realised that this is the biggest industrial war since World War II. Maybe in terms of the number of troops on the ground, it is behind the Korean War because the Chinese participated in it. But in terms of the length of the front lines, in terms of the casualties, in terms of the amount of the shells being fired… in some cases this war dwarfs World War II, especially when it comes to shells.
So saying that this is the largest war in Europe since World War II and probably the largest in the world is not just rhetoric. Behind that realisation should also come the realisation of the
