World War I With Drones

"Four years since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia still occupies roughly 20 percent of the country after gaining almost five thousand square kilometers of territory in 2025." 

"Russia continues to bombard Ukrainian cities, while Ukraine maintains drone attacks on Russian oil infrastructure and military sites."

"Since January 2022, Ukraine has received about $188 billion in aid from the United States and $197 billion from the European Union."

"Fighting and air strikes have inflicted nearly 56,000 civilian casualties, while 3.7 million people are internally displaced, and 5.9 million are registered as refugees. 10.8 million people need humanitarian assistance."

Global Conflict Tracker 

 

"In many respects, this war in Ukraine is the one that most closely resembles World War I."

"[In both wars it was the intensity of firepower that forced armies to turn to trenches]: You bury yourself to protect yourself."
Michel Goya, former French colonel, historian 

People visit the graves of their relatives, who were killed during Russia's attack on Ukraine, as a large-scale light installation illuminates the Lychakiv cemetery in Lviv, Ukraine, on Feb. 23, 2026, marking the fourth anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion. (Roman Baluk/Reuters)

 

The heavy casualty counts and brutal infantry assaults of the ongoing war in Ukraine strikes some war historian as comparable to conflict conditions experienced during World War I. By June 11, the war in Ukraine -- Vladimir Putin's 'special military operation' -- saw a point in time where it has been prolonged for four years and three months, its duration outlasting World War I's epic conflict. 

 

Mr. Putin's expectation that his large operational full-on incursion of February 2022 would swiftly see Ukraine surrendering, his goal accomplished in a mere matter of months if not weeks. The Ukrainian counter offensive which saw Russia effectively opposed and the conflict became a war of attrition, it would have seemed inconceivable to any strategists, much less servicemen fighting for their lives on either side of the hostilities that the war would drag on for so many weeks, months and years. 

 

Yet the war has a life of its own, reflecting the level of determination on both sides; Moscow's to achieve its objective; Kyiv to sustain its sovereign rights and push its aggressor entirely out of its geography, including from Crimea and Donetsk, both of which fell to Russia in 2014. 

 

Ukrainian servicemen of the 33rd separate assault regiment participate in a training at an undisclosed location in Zaporizhzhia region on Jan. 30, 2026, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Tetiana Dzhafarova/AFP via Getty Images

 

Recent polls indicate that almost fifty percent of Ukrainians feel the war will not end before 2027. Among Ukrainians many are prepared to argue that the war's beginning in reality was 2014 when Russian troops with the assistance of Russian-Ukrainian rebels swept Crimea to seize it for Greater Russia, complementing Vladimir Putin's yearning for the days of firm control of eastern Europe during the Soviet Union, and he a modern-day Czar. 

 

According to Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak, the conflict that Russia imposed upon Ukraine will rank in historical accounts as among the most consequential in modern European history. Alluding to both wars, having altered geopolitics in Europe through the reshaping of military alliances, driving a feverish defense buildup through NATO, unseen since the end of the Cold War. 

 

The war in Ukraine has now exceeded the first world war in duration. And while the comparison between these two conflicts is imperfect, it is becoming difficult to ignore.

 

 A century earlier, point out military analysts, it was the new technologies of warplanes and tanks that drove the fighting antagonists, while today advances in unmanned aerial war machines have taken centre stage in an increasingly brutal onslaught against humans more attuned to conventional warfare. As in 1914, so too in 2024, where a frozen front line maintains a status quo and where neither attacker nor defender can claim the upper hand. 

 

Historians see World War I trench warfare repeated in the trenches and bunkers that Ukrainian soldiers have been using where assaults with artillery barrages followed by storming enemy trenches by infantry squads were the elemental formulaic schemes brought to play in the early years of the current war, echoing what had been current a hundred years earlier. 

 

Once drones were brought into play, trench-like networks became outdated as unsafe, where drones monitored the battlefield, striking with precision greater than that of artillery shells. Survival now depends on smaller, more discreet and deeper trenches to outfox the drones; shelters now house a handful of soldiers in dugouts. As for the fearsome tanks of WWI, they have become targets for drones, and have been largely retired. 

 

According to Admiral Pierre Vandier, Supreme Allied Commander Transformation in NATO, the Ukrainian front has been lethalized by drones. And the strategy that Ukraine relies upon to use drones to strike deep into Russia to hit its oil assets, strikes at its very economy which funds Putin's special military operation. The battlefield has been flooded with small attack drones of Ukrainian design and forward technology. "This is World War I, but with drones", said historian Yaroslav Hrytsak.  

 

Ukraine Strikes Again

Moment Ukraine hits bridge linking Crimea to Russia – video

 

"The SBU conducted a new unique special operation and struck the Crimean Bridge for the third time — this time underwater! The operation lasted several months. SBU agents mined the supports of this illegal facility. And today, without any civilian casualties, at 4:44 a.m., the first explosive device was activated!"

"The underwater supports of the piers were severely damaged at the bottom level – 1,100 kg [about 2,425 pounds] of explosives in TNT equivalent contributed to this. In fact, the bridge is in a state of emergency."

Ukraine Secret Service (SBU)

 

"God loves the Trinity, and the SBU always brings what it has conceived to the end and never repeats itself. Previously, we hit the Crimean Bridge twice in 2022 and 2023."

"So today we continued this tradition underwater. No illegal Russian facilities have a place on the territory of our state. Therefore, the Crimean Bridge is an absolutely legitimate target, especially considering that the enemy used it as a logistical artery to supply its troops."

"Crimea is Ukraine, and any manifestations of occupation will receive our tough response."

Lt. Gen. Vasyl Malyuk, SBU commander 

The bridge, pictured here in 2023, has been attacked twice before by Ukraine   Reuters

 

A mere two days after the SBU's spectacular drone attack on airbases within Russia, destroying over a dozen Russian bombers, some of them capable of carrying nuclear warheads, Ukraine's secret service has conducted yet another surprise attack, damaging the foundations of the Kerch Bridge that links Russia and the annexed Crimean -- a vital artery for conveying Russian military supplies during the conflict that Russia has imposed on Ukraine. 

 

According to the SBU 1,100 kilograms of explosives were detonated overnight on the seabed, an operation that was in the planning for months, marking the third such operation by the Ukrainian secret service. The SBU in the wake of the incident assured that "The bridge is now effectively in an emergency condition". No civilians were killed, let alone injured in the operation, the SBU was quick to point out.

 

As a result, traffic was halted for three hours early Tuesday. At 9:00 a.m., it was resumed according to official Russian social media channels. It was reported that there was a second attack, this time of drones targeting the bridge which necessitated a closure at 3:20 p.m. for a second time, before once more reopening following a period of two-and-a-half hours.

 

It is notable, and certainly must be embarrassingly worrying to Russia that active defenses around the bridge had been increased following the previous two attacks. Defenses include helicopter, surface, and bridge patrols as well as enhanced vehicle screening, additional air defences, and finally anti-diver/sabotage interdiction operations. The sense of security that must have prevailed with these additional defense mechanisms, would have suffered a shattering setback with the realization that the SBU managed to place explosives under the bridge, regardless.

 

The SBU success in evading Russian security measures and somehow managing to sabotage prime sites is no small victory. And with those victories and the sense of control they convey, they will continue planning similar such ventures, and should they manage to succeed for example, to completely destroy the bridge it would not only signify a stop to bridge traffic, but access to the Seas of Azov would be accomplished, potentially a major blow to the occupied areas around the critical body of water. 

 

Russia's Investigative Committee accuses Ukraine of causing the collapse of two bridges in Russian border regions over the weekend.  Russian Emergencies Ministry

 

As for the Russian side, a rocket attack targeted Sumy Tuesday, located on Ukraine's northeastern region. Four people died, 25 others were wounded, while President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that the assault on civilian infrastructure, typical of Russian strikes, represented a display of contempt for the possibility of a peace process going forward at the urging of the Trump administration. Moscow, he emphasized, has no intention of putting a stop to the three-year-old war.

 

Direct peace talks in Istanbul have not progressed to negotiations that could be regarded as sincere on Russia's part; it is interested only in prolonging the war, to enable Russian troops to seize ever greater portions of Ukrainian territory, so that in the event at a future date that negotiations resumed in earnest, Moscow could anticipate a settlement that would leave captured Ukrainian territory in Russian possession, in exchange for a withdrawal of its troops from the areas of Ukraine remaining intact in Ukrainian hands. 

"[The attack on Sumy was a] completely deliberate [strike on civilians. That's all you need to know about Russia's 'desire' to end this war."

"Decisive action from the United States, Europe and everyone in the world who holds power [is now needed]."

"Without it Russian President Vladimir Putin] will not agree even to a ceasefire."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 

Over 12,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed during this war entering its fourth year. Tens of thousands of soldiers have died in combat representing both sides along the roughly 1,000 kilometre front line. And while both Zelenskyy and Putin have responded to US. President Donald Trump's urging that the war come to an end, each pledging their commitment to putting an end to hostilities, hoping to avoid potential punitive measures from Washington, while Ukraine has accepted a U.S. ceasefire proposal, the Kremlin has rejected it.

 

Vladimir Putin none too subtly has made it abundantly clear that to achieve any measure of a peace settlement, Ukraine must accept his terms. At the price of sacrificing so many lives, Mr. Putin is determined to be rewarded with his goal of territorial expansion and humiliation of Ukraine, achieving what he set out to do in February of 2022. "The settlement issue is extremely complex and involves a large number of nuances. It would be wrong to expect immediate solutions and breakthroughs", stated Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov.

 

 

 

NATO On Alert

Russia is busy chastising Ukraine for its audacious assertiveness in thinking it could behave as it wished to, without due authorization from the Kremlin. From Moscow, Alexei Miller, head of Gazprom announced that the discount on gas prices granted as part of a financial lifeline offered to former president Viktor Yanukovych a few months back, before Ukraine descended into fascist chaos, was officially rescinded.

Henceforth, Ukraine will pay for its critical gas courtesy of the Kremlin, $385.50 per thousand cubic metres not the discounted $268.50 per thousand cubic metres promised. Of course Ukraine could respond by blowing up the gas pipeline that sends Russian gas through Ukraine to the European Union -- a transfer of assets that nets Russia a huge proportion of its GDP, enabling it to modernize its military, mount a $50-billion Sochi Games extravaganza -- to deliver a mortal economic wound.

But that would discount, willy-nilly, Russia's million military personnel to Ukraine's tenth of that total. Moreover, it would not solve the issue of Moscow claiming that Ukraine owes over $1.7-billion  to Gazprom alone. Of course, there's more presumably, since Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev claimed last month that Russia awaits the total debt of $16-billion that Ukraine, he asserted, owes it.

So the caretaker Ukrainian government, awaiting the May presidential elections is attempting to cope with its inner chaos where anarchy seems to prevail with an assortment of armed paramilitaries, and trying not to go off the deep end of aggravated concern over when the Kremlin will drop the next shoe. In the meanwhile, Ukraine's Parliament ordered law enforcement agencies to disarm unofficial paramilitaries.

The nationalists and assorted vigilante groups whose role in the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych was so central to the coup manoeuvred by the persistent Maidan protests, must now surrender authority to the central government. Otherwise the country risks the impression that Russia is astutely pointing out, that fascists are running the country. So, in response to the "aggravation of the crime situation and systematic provocations on the part of foreigners in southeastern Ukraine and in Kyiv", the Interior Ministry and the Security Service of Ukraine was tasked to disarm the rogues.

Last seen on Tuesday at the crack of dawn, after all-night 'negotiations' with police officers armed with automatic rifles surrounding Right Sector's headquarters, to be leaving, many wearing military fatigues and balaclavas, boarding buses en  route to a "training ground" outside Kyiv.



While Ukraine is being thus afflicted, eyeing the 40,000 Russian troop buildup on its borders, concerned that east Ukraine may very well go the same route as Crimea, and desperately attempting to reassure Ukrainians that matters will improve, the country will somehow find itself on the road to economic recovery, that its friends in the West will ensure that no further ill befalls Ukraine through Russian military diplomacy, its neighbours nervously watch.

Poland has requested of NATO that it station ten thousand troops on its territory as an obvious and very visible deterrent to any Russian expansionist plans resulting from Vladimir Putin's vows to protect the interests of Russians living therein. NATO has, after all, stated its determination to stand in defence of all its member countries.

NATO foreign ministers met in Brussels for that very purpose, for it is not only Poland but the Baltic states as well, who plead for reassurance and the stationing of military on their soil, to ensure that it remains their soil. The pledge has been given; those NATO members feeling threatened by Russia will receive protection, while NATO itself is prepared to suspend "all practical civilian and military co-operation" with Moscow.

Take that to the bank....