The fissure between those empires was cemented by the Bosnian Crisis of 1908 which saw Austria-Hungary annex Bosnia and Herzegovina by using Bulgaria's declaration of independence from the Ottoman Empire as an advantageous political catalyst given its destabilization of the Balkan region. Austria-Hungary's actions would provoke Russia to rise to the defense of its Slavic brethren situated in Serbia and Montenegro in a response that would forever alter how Russia would align itself among the continental powers of Europe. While a widespread conflict was averted by the amending the Treaty of Berlin, the political climate the Bosnian Crisis cast would light the fuse for the inevitable outbreak of WWI which was detonated with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Bosnian-Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip.

As the war in Ukraine places Russia at familiar odds with the powers of Europe yet again, the precarious position of ostensibly unsustainable peace across the continent echoes on longer than a century following the First World War. The tension illustrates the axiom that nothing is new under the sun as the volatility of Europe in 2022 mirrors that in 1908. Russia's position against the European hegemony vested in NATO is analogous to its stance in support of the Slavic realm longer than a century ago. Now, following the assassination of Darya Dugina, this century may have found its own Franz Ferdinand.