December 02, 2025

When Defense Becomes Destruction: Austria-Hungary’s Mistake and Ukraine’s Risk

By: Franz-Stefan Gady

This article was originally posted on War on the Rocks.

The southeastern Polish city of Przemyśl, with its elegant 19th century Habsburg-era train station, remains one of the principal gateways to war-torn Ukraine. I pass through it regularly on my way to Ukraine, never missing a chance to visit the statue of the good soldier Švejk on one of the town’s squares. Over a hundred years ago, in the first months of World War I, this at-the-time multinational city in the northeastern corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire became the center of military operations on the Eastern Front, site of the largest and bloodiest siege of the war, and an illustration of the upsides and downsides of dogged static, positional defense — the usual approach of the underdog — and that contingency is the ultimate arbiter of its effectiveness. It holds a valuable lesson for the ongoing fighting in Ukraine.

A “no step back” defense posture by Ukrainian forces risks worsening the relative attrition rate between Ukrainian and Russian forces.

Przemyśl was the most important bulwark in the Empire’s East, with a single mission. In the event of war with Russia, it was meant to protect the passes into the Carpathian Mountains from which a Russian invader could march into the Hungarian plains, on to Budapest, and knock the Dual Monarchy out of the war. The idea was simple: Russia would have more men and materiel available and likely attempt to steamroll Austrian forces with its sheer mass and push back the frontline. In such an event, with the frontline being pushed back and Austrian forces retreating under pressure, Przemyśl was supposed to serve as a bulwark tying down significant Russian forces and buying Austria-Hungary time.

Read the full article on War on the Rocks.

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