I am reproducing this ‘lonely Ukraine’ message where their endless subjection to Russian aggression has gone out of the headlines, much to the pleasure of Putin.
Ukraine Is Becoming Old News, And I Can See It
Fewer people are still paying attention than we think
Apr 17READ IN APP
My wife is the one who watches how many people are here.
I get anxious around numbers. The moment I start watching them, I am afraid I could start writing for them instead of saying what is in front of me.
So she looks at the subscriptions, the counts, the metrics. I look only at the sentences and your replies.
Last week she told me two things.
She told me that new people have been finding this journal every single day.
I see your names, your comments. I can see when a reader finds this journal and they stay because it reached them.
But she also told me there are fewer of you here now.
Not as many people are here as there were eight months ago.
It didn’t happen all at once, just a little less, but month after month since last August.
Which means something simple:
More people are leaving than arriving.
She told me carefully, like she knew I wouldn’t take it well.
She knows me.
I didn’t answer, but I kept coming back on the next days.
It wasn’t the numbers that stayed with me.
It was what they points to.
Four years.
A child born the day this war began is now old enough to ask questions.
A generation has grown up under sirens.
Four years is long enough for most things these days to start fading.
To become what people think they already understand.
Or just something they are tired of.
Old news.
A country can become old news while the war is still happening.
The headlines move. Attention moves.
What happened this morning will always outrun what has been happening for four years.
And attention right now is oxygen.
I know that is a lot to ask of people who did not start this war.
People have their own lives, their own weight…
Here, with all of you, it can feel like the entire world is still paying attention.
But this is only a small part of the world we live in.
And most of it doesn’t see this at all.
There are people around you who stopped feeling this.
I cannot reach them, but maybe you can.
If any of this here has ever stayed with you, you can pass it on:
I don’t think I am doing anything special here.
I think most of you would do the same or even more if this was your country and your life.
That is what keeps me writing.
Ukraine has been asking for attention for four years.
That is a long time to ask anything.
What is happening here goes beyond Ukraine. It is about whether anything we say we value actually holds.
Freedom. Decency.
The idea that people deserve to exist without someone deciding they should not.
This is not abstract.
It is happening.
And when attention fades, something is lost with it.
Not here alone.
Everywhere.
I can see it happening from here.
—Viktor
🇺🇦
Some people don’t look away.
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