Continuation War

Continuation War
Clockwise from top: Air defences intercept drones over Dabrolevo; Ravkan soldiers dismount from their vehicle; Acrean troops throw grenades while assaulting a trench; Ravkan artillery outside of Svaslock; An Acrean bomber flies over the border towards Drazhinskiya; Drahzin infantry during the initial invasion.
Date 6 March 2021 – 12 November 2022 (1 year, 8 months, 6 days) Location Tsernova Drazhinskiya Ravka Result Koszalin Armistice Territorial changes Drazhinskiya occupies the majority of the Tsernova region
Belligerents
Coalition Ravka Acrea Ossoria Auroa Supported by:	Drazhinskiya Supported by: Svinia
Commanders and leaders
Andrij Matviyenko Aleksy Rosiak Dmytro Velychko Kasandra Rajkowska Mateusz Vyhovsky Elena Skjæran Eirik Stordalen Einar Rask Rikke Valla Erich von Rohr Mikael Vernier Erlendur Kawhena	Zdzislava Hryc Chaslaŭ Rasolka Alaksandr Biarizkin Ryhor Taraškievič Valera Konan
Units involved
Coalition Ravkan Armed Forces Acrean Armed Forces Ossorian Armed Forces Auroan Defence Forces	Drazhinskiyan Defense Forces
Strength
Peak Strength 1,800,000 1,200,000 300,000	Peak Strength 2,500,000
Casualties and losses
232,496 killed, 581,240 wounded 80,407 killed, 248,221 wounded 32,649 killed, 94,947 wounded 9,078 killed, 25,234 wounded	409,697 killed ~1 million wounded

The Continuation War (Ravkan: Продовження війни, tr. Prodovzhennya vijny); Drazhinskiyan: Працяг вайны, tr. Pratsyag vajny) was an armed conflict fought between Ravka and Drazhinskiya between March 2021 and November 2022. The war's immediate cause lays in the aftermath of the the Treaty of Nice imposed on Drazhinskiya following the 2015 Midsummer War, during which Ravkan and Acrean forces occupied the majority of the border region of Tsernova; as part of the terms of the treaty, Drazhinskiya ceded most of Tsernova to Ravka. Though both Drazhinskiya and Ravka maintain longstanding claims Tsernova, largely on ethnopolitical grounds in spite of the historical ethnolinguistic diversity of the region, contention over Tsernova is widely regarded as an extension of the wider political and ideological enmity between the two. After its defeat in 2015, Drazhinskiya entered a period of political upheaval which saw the ruling Free Assembly coalition replaced by the popular National Union Conference. Although the NUC rose to power on a wave of support for its revanchist ideology, the possibility of another conflict in the near future was not seriously raised until tensions in the region sharply rose following the passage of the Zastavna Acts by the Ravkan parliament on 21 February, 2020. Also referred to as the "Reclamation Acts" in Drazhinskiya, the laws began the official process of administratively and legally incorporating the Ravkan-occupied territories of Tsernova into Ravka proper. They laws sparked heated reactions in Drazhinskiya, inflaming the unresolved tensions between the two states. Offician Drazhin protests did little to dissuade the Ravkan government. Aggressive rhetoric and military posturing gradually increased as tensions between Drazhinskiya and its eastern neighbours worsened over the following year. The failure of the Ravkan government to respond to Drazhinskiyan concerns, as well as the revanchist undertones the NUC's political ideology was built on, are frequently credited as factors which made the eventual outbreak of conflict inevitable.

Drazhinskiya launched an invasion of Ravkan-occupied Tsernova in March 2021. The attack proper was preceded by several weeks of brief minor skirmishes as the frequency of encounters between Drazhin and Ravkan forces along the border increased with the military buildup over January and February. The initial invasion was highly successful, and Drazhinskiyan forces achieved major victories in central Tsernova, though Drazhin forces in the north were initially stalled by Ravkan-Acrean forces in the urban buildup of the Bozuk and Makhovka metropolitan areas. Over the next couple months, Ravkan-Acrean forces gradually withdrew east, with Drazhin forces eventually occupying nearly all of central and southern Tsernova and managing to advance into Ravka before being exhausted. A brief Ravkan-Acrean counteroffensive in late summer reversed some of these gains and pushed the Drazhin out of Ravka, but by September major fighting petered out as both sides dug in in preparation for winter. Following Drazhinskiyan strikes into Acrea in May, Ossoria and Auroa joined the war as part of separate mutual defence pacts with Acrea. Negotiations between Drazhin and Ravkan-Acrean diplomats for a peace agreement began in January with Górska acting as the mediating party; against this backdrop, Drazhinskiya launched multiple offensives over the winter but was unable to move the front. It remained deadlocked until June, when a coalition counteroffensive was launched in northern Tsernova and made slow, grinding progress throughout the summer, eventually retaking most of the territory lost in that sector in the first months of the war. A simultaneous offensive to the north of Svaslock was launched in early July, but failed to achieve similar results before both offensives halted in late September. The fighting subsided with an armistice signed in Koszalin, Górska in early November, though negotiations for a lasting peace agreement are still ongoing.

Official figures from all belligerents record a combined total of 752,327 military deaths, with a further 1.97 million wounded, and an additional 520,841 civilian casualties, marking the Continuation War as the deadliest conflict in Eracura since the Great Eracuran War. The high civilian toll of the war is attributed to a combination of heavy urban fighting and collateral damage from missile strikes, drone strikes, and bombing in Drazhinskiya and Ravka. The war caused significant disruption to international markets and in particular international travel; most airspace over central Eracura was closed due to risk for the duration of the war. Tsernova continued to suffer heavily after the end of fighting; in addition to environmental damage, massive amounts of territory remains contaminated by landmines and unexploded ordnance.

The Continuation War was marked by its largely static nature, high levels of attrition, and a slow operational tempo. The conflict prominently featured extensive trench warfare in a variety of terrain, widespread missile strikes and bombing, and the prolific use of drones and artillery. Observers have noted the war's conditions to be an evolution of those seen in the Zemplen War, driven by technological and economic advances over the decade thereafter, and an abrupt turn from expectations set by the maneuver-defined Midsummer War.