A Ukrainian rescue worker looks on at a burning electrical substation hit by a Russian bomb in the Dnipropetrovsk region in eastern Ukraine on Sept. 2.
Evgeniy Maloletka/AP
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Evgeniy Maloletka/AP
Shortly after Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, Ukrainian war correspondent Andriy Tsaplienko was live on TV. The anchor asked him how long the fighting might last.
“I said it could take a couple of years to calm down the situation,” Tsaplienko recalled. “When the anchor heard it, he was really terrified on a live broadcast.”
In the 10 years since then, Tsaplienko has been detained and beaten by Russian troops. He’s also suffered shrapnel wounds that left him with a limp. He’s covered every twist and turn in the fighting — and still doesn’t know when the war will end.
“I don’t want to say forever, but for a long time, maybe another next decade,” he said in an interview in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv.
The Ukraine-Russia war, and the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, are both part of feuds with long histories. Ukraine declared independence from Russia in 1918, then lost a war in the years that followed. Ukraine didn’t gain independence from Moscow until the 1991 Soviet Union breakup. Meanwhile, the Israel-Hamas battle is part of the larger Israeli-Palestinian dispute that also stretches back a century.
In both current wars, a common question is, “When will the fighting end?” But given the tortured history, it might be better to ask, “Will it ever end?”
Palestinians look at the destruction caused by an Israeli airstrike on a crowded tent camp housing displaced Palestinians in Muwasi, Gaza Strip, on Sept. 10. The current round of Israeli-Hamas fighting has been ongoing for nearly a year. The larger Israeli-Palestinian conflict dates back generations.
Abdel Kareem Hana/AP
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Abdel Kareem Hana/AP
“Both of these conflicts have very, very, high stakes that are relatively indivisible,” said Gideon Rose, who’s with the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of How Wars End.
“Russia is trying to conquer Ukraine. Ukraine is trying to fight for its life. The Israelis are trying to suppress all attacks from Gaza and the Palestinians are trying to avoid being completely subjugated,” said Rose, adding that this doesn’t leave a lot of room for compromise.
These conflicts also reflect a harsh reality of many moderns wars. They can grind on inconclusively — even when the fighting reaches the point where neither side can score a complete battlefield victory.
“Sometimes there is no solution for a decade or two,” said Paul Salem, who’s based in Beirut with the Middle East Institute. “You’ve got to manage the problem. You got to contain it. You got to make sure we don’t go into World War III.”
More than 100 Russian troops captured by Ukraine are held inside a shelter in Russia’s western region of Kursk, on Aug. 14.
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AP/Ukrainian Security Service Press Office via AP
Weapons flow freely
These current battlefield scenarios aren’t new. In the past, some wars endured for many years, or even decades. But several factors contribute to making modern wars last a long time, and these two in particular.
First, weapons and technology have never flowed so freely. This means a smaller military can get its hands on more and better weapons than previously. Ukraine uses cheap drones to counter Russia’s much larger traditional army.
“Drones are just a toy turned into a weapon,” Andriy Tsaplienko. “One drone can cost maybe up to $1,000, and you can attack a bigger target like a tank, and destroy the tank, which costs $3 million.”
In the Middle East, Israel receives the vast majority of its advanced weapons from the U.S. Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon used to fire short-range rockets that only threatened communities just across the border in southern and northern Israel.
But with help from Iran, those two groups have been firing thousands of rockets into Israel, and can now strike throughout much of the country.
Israeli Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan Zangauker is being held by Hamas in Gaza, takes part in a protest calling for the return of Israeli hostages outside the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Aug. 30.
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Ohad Zwigenberg/AP
Failed efforts at a political solution
A second key factor in both conflicts is how they have repeatedly defied lasting political solutions.
“It’s not enough to have a military strategy,” said Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security advisor in Israel. “You have to have a political one as well. And Israel hasn’t had one for years and years, to my thinking, on the Palestinian issue.”
The Israelis and Palestinians were close to a political settlement way back in the year 2000. Today, a full-fledged peace deal appears more distant than ever.
Paul Salem notes that Israel used to fight traditional state-versus-state wars against neighboring Arab countries — like Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Now Israel is trying to maintain long-term control over Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
“You can win a war, but it’s hard to win an occupation,” said Salem. “Beating a state and getting the state to say, ‘OK, I lose,’ or ‘I’m going to stop,’ is different than maintaining an occupation, which the Israelis have not managed to do sustainably.”
Meanwhile, Russian leader Vladimir Putin meddled in Ukraine’s politics for years, seeking to place or keep a Kremlin-friendly leader in power in Kyiv. When that failed, Russia invaded, initially in 2014, and then again, on a much larger scale in 2022.
Ukrainian historian Yuri Savchuk, the head of Ukraine’s World War II history museum, carries a road sign on Aug. 16 in western Russia’s Kursk region, an area captured by Ukrainian troops. The sign reads ‘Ukraine’ to the left, and ‘Russia’ to the right.
Efrem Lukatsky/AP
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Efrem Lukatsky/AP
Leaders often have an incentive to keep fighting
Ultimately, most wars do end with negotiations, though the two sides tend to make a deal only after one or both have reached the point of exhaustion.
“We assume war is so terrible, therefore it must be the incentive of people to stop it,” said Gideon Rose. “That’s not necessarily the case.”
He notes that leaders waging the wars often make very different calculations than soldiers and civilians bearing the brunt of the conflict.
“Somebody who initiates a war usually has a strong incentive to keep fighting, because unless he can get a real victory when it ends, he’s kind of in trouble,” said Rose.
Leaders who lose wars tend to be tossed out of power, and the potential consequences can be even more serious.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague has issued an arrest warrant for Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and prosecutors are seeking warrants for Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
And in times of war, leaders often pursue goals that may be beyond their reach. Israel’s Netanyahu calls for “total victory” over Hamas. He wants to end the group’s rule over Gaza, and its threat to Israel, once and for all.
Yet Chuck Freilich said Hamas and its allies, Iran and Hezbollah, see mere survival as a victory, and are pursuing their own long-term plans.
“This is a multi-decade war in which there will be round-after-round. And they [Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran] are fully cognizant of that,” he said.
Freilich also added this sobering note.
“I would say that Iran is an enemy which is too big, too far away, too powerful and maybe too sophisticated in its thinking for Israel to be able to defeat it,” he said. “Now, I believe Israel can defend itself against Iran, but I’m not sure that we can defeat it as we did to the Arab countries.”
Displaced Palestinians take shelter at a school in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip on Sept. 4.
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Abdel Kareem Hana/AP
In the Russia-Ukraine war, Putin describes Ukraine as not being a real country, a place that should be part of Russia.
Andriy Tsaplienko, the Ukrainian war correspondent, says this is exactly why Ukraine keeps fighting.
“We realize this war is crucially important for Ukrainians,” he said. “This is the existential war. We will live or we won’t live. That’s it. I mean, as a nation in general. So that’s why we will fight to the end.”
A fight that still has no end in sight.