Ukrainians fighting Russia are fending off a third world war a prominent historian has said, likening the third year of full-scale war in Ukraine to the period just ahead of World War II.
Comparing 2024 to 1938, Timothy Snyder, a Yale University history professor specializing in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union said Ukraine was comparable to a Czechoslovakia "that has chosen to fight."
In 1939, Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler entered Czechoslovakia and secured Czech assets for Germany's armed forces. Great Britain and France offered Poland security guarantees but despite this Hitler's forces invaded Poland in September 1939. London and Paris then declared war on Germany, starting World War II.
"If the Ukrainians give up, or if we give up Ukraine, then it's a different Russia making war in the future," Snyder said during a conference in the Estonian capital, Tallinn.
"It's a Russia making war with Ukrainian technology, Ukrainian soldiers, from a different geographical position," he added. "Then we're in 1939. We're in 1938 now. In effect, what the Ukrainians are letting us do is letting us extend 1938. They're helping us to stay out of 1939."
More than two years of full-scale conflict in Ukraine has brought the possibility of a third world war to the fore. However, NATO countries have been clear they are not a party to the war in Ukraine, eager to tamp down on the possibility of the violence spreading beyond the country's borders.
Kyiv has warned that, should Ukraine fall to Russian forces, other nations in Europe will be next on Russia's hit list.
Earlier this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin said "everything is possible" when discussing whether a wider war could break out between Russia and Western countries backing Ukraine.
The globe is "one step away from a full-scale World War III," Putin said in mid-March.
"I think hardly anyone is interested in this," he added during a media session.
The previous month, Belarus' leader Alexander Lukashenko—one of Putin's most steadfast allies—warned that the world "has again come to the brink of the abyss."
"There are grounds for concern" about a third world war, he added.
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