The war in Ukraine has often been compared to World War I for its brutal infantry assaults and heavy casualties. Yet the idea that it could, by any measure, surpass a conflict so long and bloody that French soldiers hoped it would be “the last of the last” once seemed unthinkable.

乌克兰战争常被拿来与第一次世界大战相提并论，两者都有残酷的步兵冲锋和惨重的人员伤亡。然而，人们曾一度认为，无论从哪个角度衡量，这场战争都不可能超过第一次世界大战——那场冲突如此漫长而血腥，以至于法国士兵曾希望它会成为“最后一场战争中的最后一场”。

That is just what happened on Thursday. The war in Ukraine — which reached 1,569 days, or more than four years and three months — has now outlasted World War I.

但就在周四，这成为了现实。截至当天，乌克兰战争已持续1569天，即四年零三个多月，其时长已超过第一次世界大战。

When President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia sent his troops into Ukraine in February 2022, he believed the country would fall within days. After Ukraine pushed the Russians back and the conflict settled into a war of attrition, even many of those fighting could not imagine it would last this long.

2022年2月，俄罗斯总统普京下令出兵乌克兰，以为数日之内便可将其拿下。乌克兰将俄军击退、冲突演变为消耗战之后，即使是许多参战者也无法想象战争会持续这么久。

“I thought maybe two or three years, and then politicians will find some kind of consensus,” said a Ukrainian soldier who, for security reasons, gave only his call sign, France, a nod to his time in the French Foreign Legion.

“我以为也许两三年，政客们就会找到某种共识，”一名乌克兰士兵说——出于安全考量，他只透露了自己的呼号“法兰西”，这个名字源于他曾在法国外籍军团服役的经历。

But the war has raged on, and, with peace talks stalled, it shows no sign of ending soon. Polls suggest that about half of Ukrainians believe it will not end before next year, which would push it closer to another threshold: the duration of World War II, which lasted six years. And there are many Ukrainians who would argue that the current war really began in 2014 when Russian troops seized Crimea.

然而战火持续燃烧，和谈陷入僵局，丝毫没有即将结束的迹象。民调显示，约半数乌克兰民众认为战争在明年之前不会结束，这将使其时长逼近另一个门槛：历时六年的第二次世界大战。而许多乌克兰人会说，这场战争实际上早在2014年俄军占领克里米亚时便已开始。

2022年2月25日，乌克兰战争爆发后第二天，哈尔科夫的乌克兰士兵。

Historians caution that drawing parallels with the two world wars has limits. The global scale of those conflicts, involving many theaters and armies, makes comparisons about casualties and firepower difficult. Ukraine did not exist as a country during World War I.

历史学家提醒说，将乌克兰战争与两次世界大战进行比较存在局限性。那两场战争横跨多个战场、席卷众多国家，在伤亡规模和火力对比上难以直接比较。而且第一次世界大战期间，乌克兰尚不是一个独立国家。

Still, the war in Ukraine, like World War I, is likely to rank among the most consequential conflicts in modern European history, said Yaroslav Hrytsak, a Ukrainian historian. Both wars transformed Europe’s geopolitics by reshaping military alliances and driving a defense buildup not seen in decades.

尽管如此，乌克兰历史学家雅罗斯拉夫·赫里察克认为，乌克兰战争与第一次世界大战一样，很可能跻身现代欧洲史上影响最为深远的冲突之列。两场战争都通过重塑军事联盟、推动数十年来罕见的大规模军备扩张，从根本上改变了欧洲的地缘政治格局。

Military analysts also note that both conflicts reshaped the nature of warfare through the introduction of new technologies — planes and tanks a century ago; drones across the air, sea and land today. In both cases, the advances made war only more brutal for humans.

军事分析人士还指出，两场冲突都借助新技术的引入重塑了战争形态——一个世纪前是飞机和坦克，如今则是穿梭于海陆空的无人机。而在这两种情形下，技术进步都让战争对人类而言变得更加残酷。

“In many respects, this war in Ukraine is the one that most closely resembles World War I,” said Michel Goya, a former French colonel and a military historian.

“从许多方面来看，乌克兰这场战争与第一次世界大战最为相似，”法国前上校、军事史专家米歇尔·戈亚说。

1918年，百日攻势期间的英国坦克。坦克是第一次世界大战中的重大技术突破之一。

The comparison begins with the opening phase of both wars. In 1914, the Germans launched a rapid offensive toward Paris in the hope of securing a swift victory. Russian forces had the same objective when they raced toward Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, in 2022. In both cases, the attackers came close to their target but were ultimately driven back.

这种比较首先体现在两场战争的开局阶段。1914年，德国向巴黎发动闪电战，希望速战速决。2022年，俄军如出一辙，同样以迅雷之势直扑乌克兰首都基辅。在这两种情况下，进攻方都一度逼近目标，但最终被击退。

Eventually, both wars settled into mostly static fighting along a largely frozen front. When soldiers on the Ukrainian battlefield hunkered down in trenches and bunkers in late 2022, historians described it as a return to World War I-style trench warfare.

此后，两场战争都演变为沿着基本没有变化的战线展开的阵地战。2022年底，当乌克兰战场上的士兵蜷缩在战壕和掩体中时，历史学家将其描述为第一次世界大战式堑壕战的重现。

Scenes from the trenches of eastern Ukraine closely echoed those in northern France a century earlier. Ukrainian and Russian troops were often separated by just a few hundred yards, sometimes close enough to see one another. Assaults began with artillery barrages to pin down the opponent, followed by the storming of enemy trenches by infantry squads.

乌克兰东部战壕里的场景与一个世纪前法国北部的场景如出一辙。乌军与俄军士兵常常只相隔几百米，有时近到能看见对方。进攻以炮火压制开始，随后步兵小分队冲击敌方战壕。

“In general, when the front freezes, you’re back to World War I,” Mr. Goya said.

“总体而言，战线一旦坚持不动，你就回到了第一次世界大战，”戈亚说。

2024年，俄占城市顿涅茨克郊区缓冲区内一座被摧毁的村庄。

In both wars, he added, it was the intensity of firepower, mainly artillery, that forced armies to turn to trenches. “You bury yourself to protect yourself,” he said.

他补充道，在两场战争中，迫使军队钻进战壕的原因都是火力强度，尤其是炮兵火力。“你把自己埋起来是为了保护自己，”他说。

That calculus later changed in Ukraine with the introduction of a new class of weapon: drones. Networks of open trenches were rendered unsafe as drones monitored the battlefield around the clock and struck with greater precision than artillery shells.

然而在乌克兰，随着一类新式武器——无人机——的登场，这种战场逻辑发生了改变。开放式战壕网络变得极不安全，因为无人机能够全天候监视战场，打击精度远超炮弹。

Now, Ukrainian soldiers say, survival depends on going smaller and deeper. Instead of sprawling trench systems, troops shelter in dugouts housing no more than a handful of soldiers. Such bunkers are small enough to be difficult to spot from the sky and deep enough to withstand strikes. A soldier operating on his own will often dig a position barely larger than a foxhole.

乌克兰士兵现在说，要想生存就必须把掩体建得更小、更深。与其修建绵延的大型战壕系统，士兵们更倾向于躲藏在只能容纳几个人的小型地下掩体中。这些掩体足够小，难以从空中发现；同时又足够深，可以承受打击。单兵作战时，往往只挖一个略大于散兵坑的藏身之处。

2024年，乌克兰托列茨克附近，一名乌克兰士兵正在为一架武装无人机做准备。无人机改变了战争形态，迫使士兵转入地下深处，并限制了前线周边数英里范围内的行动。

In a recent interview near Ukraine’s southern front, a Ukrainian commander, who also only gave his call sign, Sour, for security reasons, recalled how his troops had to storm a well-fortified Russian dugout four times before forcing the soldier inside to surrender. The dugout had right-angled corners reinforced with metal sheets designed to absorb an explosive shock wave, he said.

近期在乌克兰南部战线附近的一次采访中，一名乌克兰指挥官（同样出于安全原因只透露了呼号“酸”）回忆起他的部队四度强攻一处工事坚固的俄军掩体，才逼得里面的士兵投降。他说，那处掩体设有直角转折结构，并以金属板加固，专门用于吸收爆炸冲击波。

The commander, who leads the 5th Center of the International Legion, part of Ukraine’s military intelligence forces, said he took the captured Russian soldier to his unit’s training ground and asked him to dig a similar position so he could study how it was built.

这名隶属于乌克兰军事情报部队国际军团第五中心的指挥官表示，他将被俘的俄罗斯士兵带到训练场，让其挖掘一处同样的掩体，以便研究构造。

“In this environment, the people who dig survive longer and stay safer,” France, the Ukrainian soldier, said.

“在这种环境下，会挖掩体的人活得更久，也更安全，”那名呼号为“法兰西”的乌克兰士兵说。

As drones have come to dominate the battlefield, World War I-style opposing trench networks, separated by a narrow buffer zone, have given way to a miles-wide contested combat area scattered with dugouts. In this “kill zone,” any movement is quickly targeted by drones.

随着无人机主宰战场，一战时期那种由狭窄缓冲区隔开的两军对垒战壕网络已让位于纵深数英里、遍布分散掩体的争夺区域。在这片“死亡地带”，任何移动都会迅速遭到无人机锁定。

Large-scale troop assaults of the kind seen a century ago have become all but impossible under the constant gaze of drones. Such assaults have been replaced with attacks by just one or two soldiers.

在无人机的持续监视下，一个世纪前那种大规模步兵冲锋几乎已成历史，取而代之的是一两名士兵组成的小规模袭击行动。

1916年，索姆河战役期间，法国博蒙阿梅尔附近的英国士兵。

Tanks, first introduced in 1916, were still a feared weapon in the first years of the war in Ukraine. They are rarely used now because their size makes them easy targets for drones, though some tanks have been retrofitted with protective metal cages that turn them into “Mad Max”-style vehicles.

1916年首次亮相的坦克在乌克兰战争初期仍是令人胆寒的武器，如今却鲜少使用——庞大的体积使其极易成为无人机的靶子，尽管部分坦克已加装金属防护笼，摇身变为“疯狂麦克斯”式的战车。

While the battlefield today bears less and less resemblance to that of a century ago, the scale of the destruction looks remarkably similar.

虽然今天的战场与一个世纪前的相似之处越来越少，但破坏的规模却惊人地相似。

In Ukrainian command posts near the front, live footage from reconnaissance drones shows scenes reminiscent of World War I battlefields: splintered trees, ruined houses and fields pockmarked by shell craters.

在靠近前线的乌克兰指挥所内，侦察无人机传回的实时画面呈现出与第一次世界大战战场如出一辙的景象：东倒西歪的树桩、毁坏的房屋，以及布满弹坑的田野。

Casualties are difficult to compare, given the difference in scale between the two wars. A century ago, millions of soldiers were sent into battle across multiple fronts in Europe. Today, the forces involved number in the hundreds of thousands. Roughly nine million to 11 million soldiers died in World War I, compared with about half a million in Ukraine so far.

鉴于两场战争的规模不同，伤亡数字难以直接比较。一个世纪前，数百万士兵被派往欧洲多个战场作战。今天，参战兵力在数十万左右。一战中约有900万至1100万士兵死亡，而到目前为止，乌克兰战争约有50万人死亡。

Still, military analysts and officials, including Adm. Pierre Vandier, who holds the post of Supreme Allied Commander Transformation in NATO, say drones have made the Ukrainian battlefield lethal at levels comparable to World War I. Admiral Vandier made the comparison after a study trip to Ukraine this spring.

尽管如此，包括北约盟军转型最高司令部司令皮埃尔·旺迪耶上将在内的军事分析人士和官员认为，无人机已经让乌克兰战场的致命程度达到与第一次世界大战相当的水平。旺迪耶上将在今春赴乌克兰实地考察后作出了这一评价。

去年，在乌克兰东部，医护人员正在救治一名被俄军无人机炸伤的乌克兰士兵。

So grinding is the fighting in Ukraine that Russian advances have at times been slower than those in some of World War I’s most deadlocked battles.

乌克兰的战事如此胶着，以至于俄军的推进速度有时甚至慢于第一次世界大战中若干最为僵持的战役。

Russia’s offensive on Pokrovsk, an eastern Ukrainian city it recently fully captured, progressed at an average pace of about 75 yards per day, slower than in the bloody Battle of the Somme during World War I, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

根据位于华盛顿的战略与国际研究中心的分析，俄罗斯最近完全占领乌克兰东部城市波克罗夫斯克的攻势，平均推进速度约为每天70米，比“一战”中血腥惨烈的索姆河战役还要慢。

The question now is whether either side can break the deadlock.

眼下的问题是，哪一方能够打破僵局。

In World War I, the Allies prevailed by combining economic pressure on Germany through a tight naval blockade with military pressure through relentless offensives.

在第一次世界大战中，协约国凭借严密的海上封锁对德国施加经济压力，同时以不间断的军事攻势形成双重挤压，最终赢得胜利。

Ukraine’s strategy to end the war carries some echoes of that approach.

乌克兰当前结束战争的战略也带有这种思路的影子。

Drone strikes on Russia’s oil assets, the backbone of its economy, are designed to curb Moscow’s ability to finance its war effort. Kyiv lacks the manpower to replicate the offensives of World War I, but it has flooded the battlefield with small attack drones in the hope of inflicting unsustainable losses on the Russian Army.

通过无人机打击俄罗斯经济的支柱——石油资产，乌克兰旨在削弱莫斯科为其战争机器提供资金的能力。基辅缺乏复制一战中那种攻势的人力，但它在战场上大量投放小型攻击无人机，希望以此给俄军造成难以承受的持续损耗。

“This is World War I, but with drones,” Mr. Hrytsak, the historian, said.

“这就是第一次世界大战，只不过加上了无人机，”历史学家赫里察克说。

2024年，托列茨克附近的前线。