Is this the start of WW3?

On 28th July 1914 Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, on 1st September 1939 Germany invaded Poland and on 24th February 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine. The first two events triggered the World Wars and the question on everyone's mind is will today's action cause the Third World War? At this point that's almost impossible to answer but it's certainly the closest humanity has come to a devastating global conflict since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. So why has Russia invaded Ukraine?

Contrary to Putin's claim that it is 'ancient Russian soil', Ukraine has a long national history and it could be argued that Russians can trace their origins to Ukraine. In the 10th Century a group a Slavic clans groups together to form the Kievan Rus which at its height was the largest kingdom in Europe and Kyiv was its capital and cultural centre. Unfortunately the history of Ukraine has long been one of foreign domination - first there was the Mongol invasion which fragmented the Rus' unity, and then Ukraine became dominated by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Following the Cossack uprisings Ukraine remained fragmented and by the start of the First World War Ukrainians found themselves on both sides of the war forced to fight for two foreign empires. The history of Ukraine has always been a nation torn between the west and east.

The First World War destroyed both empires and Ukraine found itself embroiled in the Russian Civil War a brutal conflict that would result in Ukraine becoming a part of the Soviet Union. During the Second World War Ukraine fell victim to Nazism when Hitler broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and invaded the Soviet Union. Over 5 million Ukrainians were murdered by the Nazi regime including an estimated 1/6th of the Jews killed during the Holocaust. The Nazi occupation left Ukraine famine stricken and although its economy recovered as part of the post-war Soviet bloc it experienced ethnic cleansing, oppression and was at the centre of the Chernobyl disaster as a result of control from Moscow.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and a referendum, which voted 92% in favour of independence, resulted in the creation of the free democratic Ukrainian Republic. This brings us back to the question of why invade? Russia was left humiliated by the end of the Cold War and still hasn't come to terms with its diminished role on the world stage - Putin's whole leadership is built on an almost messianic obsession to restore Russia's 'lost glory'. Combined with the expansion of NATO and the EU on Russia's border, the Kremlin has become paranoid of further advances in what it perceives as its sphere of influence. This makes sense given Russia's brutal history and ingrained paranoia of the West but doesn't justify Putin's blatant aggression.

So back to the question on everyone's mind - is this the start of a Third World War? In my opinion not yet, I agree with those that say this is a 1938 moment rather than 1939 and Ukraine is the Sudetenland not Poland. In 1938 Hitler occupied the Sudetenland a region of the sovereign independent Czechoslovakia, the allies attempted to appease Hitler just for him to invade Poland the following year and start WW2. How we respond next is the most important, do we learn from the mistakes of 1938 and show Putin that his actions have military consequences or do we let history repeat itself? Like all reasonable people I fear what war would mean but I'm more afraid of what history has taught us happens when fascists like Putin aren't stopped.