Continuation War

Continuation War
Date 12 March 2021 – 21 November 2022 (1 year, 8 months, 10 days) Location Tsernova Drazhinskiya Ravka Territorial changes Drazhinskiya occupies the majority of the Tsernova region
Belligerents
Ravka Acrea Auroa Ossoria Supported by:	Drazhinskiya Supported by: Svinia
Units involved
Ravkan Armed Forces Acrean Armed Forces Ossorian Armed Forces Auroan Armed Forces	Drazhinskiyan Armed Forces
Casualties and losses
178,092 killed 52,697 killed 37,618 killed 28,214 killed	346,108 killed

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 September 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 commonly referred to as the "Reclamation Acts", the laws began the official process of administratively and legally incorporating the Ravkan-occupied territories of Tsernova into Ravka proper. They elicited an extremely heated reaction 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, frequently uneventful skirmishes as encounters between Drazhin and Ravkan forces increased with the military buildup along the border over January and February. The initial invasion was highly successful; though Drazhin forces in the north were stalled by Ravkan-Acrean forces in the hills and urban buildup of large metropolitan areas of Bozuk and Makhovka, they achieved a major victory in central Tsernova. Over the next couple months, Ravkan-Acrean forces were gradually pushed back, with Drazhin forces eventually occupying nearly all of central and southern Tsernova and managing to push partially into Ravka before being exhausted. A rapid Ravkan-Acrean counterattack reversed some of these gains and pushed the Drazhin out of Ravka, but by September the frontline had ground to a stalemate.