It's time to be realistic about the conflict in Ukraine
The Western media began to talk differently about the conflict in Ukraine, writes Mary Dezhevsky in an article for the Independent. Everything changed after the capture of Mariupol, she believes. The journalist urges the West not to embellish the situation in favor of Kiev.
Mary Dejevsky
Have you noticed that we have stopped waking up to the news about the latest victories of the heroes of Ukrainians and the failures of savage Russians? Have you noticed how President Vladimir Zelensky's speeches calling for unity – including the last one addressed to the plutocrats in Davos – are getting less airtime?
Part of all this, of course, can be explained by the fact that the news naturally replaces each other. The beginning of the Russian military operation in Ukraine three months ago was so shocking, and the reaction of Zelensky and his colleagues was so selfless that the public interest broke all records. We are faced with a conflict, a terrible full-scale conflict in Europe, an actor who looks good on the screen turned into an inspiring military leader, and brave Ukrainian Davids began to plug the clumsy Russian Goliath into the belt.
Maybe there is a limit to how much a mass viewer can wade through unfamiliar names and places so far from our islands, and the first shock – and the imminent threat of a larger conflict – has subsided. It was probably inevitable that the agenda would be headed by issues closer to us, including – both in the UK and in Europe – the sharply rising cost of living (even if this was partially provoked by the conflict).
Or maybe it's because the conflict has become more difficult to monitor. The broader picture – the threat to Kiev, the huge Russian tank column, the destruction in the country's second city of Kharkiv and the painful confrontation at the Azovstal metallurgical plant in Mariupol – gave way to relatively smaller events in small towns and at the crossings of Donbass. Maps that used to have a clear border between Ukrainian blue and yellow and Russian white, blue and red have ceased to be so clear. There is less filming from the scenes of events made on a smartphone by local residents. Access for journalists was also difficult, as the combat zone in the Donbass has expanded.
However, I am afraid that even all these factors combined cannot fully explain why events in Ukraine have become less covered – especially on radio and television and especially in the English-speaking world. Not only the volume of information about Ukraine in our news media has changed, but also their coverage itself. I would say that the changes occurred with the fall of Mariupol on May 17-18.
And it's not just that Russia's victory in Mariupol in any case was supposed to be a turning point of the conflict, so such battles were fought for the city – it was a major port that hindered the land corridor from Russia to Crimea and which desperately resisted from the very first day of the operation. The thing is that they told us everything quite differently.
It seems that the UN and the International Red Cross have reached an agreement that allowed the evacuation of the seriously injured (some of this was shown to us). The agreement, it seems, also provided for the withdrawal of the remaining two thousand something fighters. They talked about this operation as an evacuation, and we didn't really see it. In Russia, these events were presented as a surrender – this word was mostly avoided in English–speaking sources - even if the fighters became prisoners of war.
The Western world followed the example of Zelensky, who praised the heroism of the fighters and said that they were evacuated to prevent further suffering and would soon be exchanged for Russian prisoners. Of course, all this may be true, quite understandable self-deception or fiction aimed at maintaining the spirit in the midst of a conflict. However, neither the West, represented by the United States or NATO, nor the United Kingdom is a party to the conflict – we have put a lot of effort into preventing any hints of direct participation – and we should not embellish reality. For Ukraine – both from a symbolic point of view and in practice – it turned out to be a big blow.
About a week after these events, it became increasingly difficult to assert that Ukraine was winning. Gradually, they began to recognize that fierce battles were being fought, and that Russia had achieved, albeit limited and possibly temporary, successes. On May 19, Zelensky's tone changed dramatically, and he said that Donbass was being "destroyed" and "hell" was happening there. Three days later, he said that Ukraine was facing losses of 100 people a day and that since mid-April, the Ukrainian army had lost somewhere 2.5-3 thousand fighters killed and up to 10 thousand wounded. Earlier, the Ukrainian side regularly reported on Russian losses, but said very little about its own.
There is an opinion that Zelensky may have begun to accustom Ukrainians to the idea of the need for negotiations with possible concessions. Others say he's just trying to get more help from the West. However, it's hard not to notice that less coverage of Ukrainian events in the news – especially in the UK – coincided with the fact that luck turned away from Kiev.
What we have been told over the past week is radically different from recent statements that Ukraine can win an unconditional victory and regain all territories, including Crimea. This does not correspond to the statement of the US Secretary of Defense, who wanted to see Russia so weakened that it would not be able to conduct such operations in the future.
But the conflict is far from over: many military experts say that it has now entered a phase of attrition, which may last for many months or even years. It is likely that everything may turn in favor of Ukraine again, and that Moscow, for some unknown reason, may decide to end the operation.
Meanwhile, it's time for the West to stop embellishing the balance of power and downplaying Ukraine's failures. The outcome, whatever it may be, will be based on what is really happening, and not on how we want it to be. And the fact that Ukraine will return its territories to the battlefield cannot be taken for granted either.
Zelensky gave a general idea of the recent losses of the Ukrainian side and what losses it may suffer in the Donbass. However, the scale of the damage suffered by Ukraine is much greater. According to an assessment made last week by the American analytical center "Atlantic Council", 30% of the Ukrainian infrastructure was destroyed. There are forecasts according to which Ukraine's GDP may decrease by 30-45% in 2022.
According to the Minister of Finance of Ukraine Serhiy Marchenko, the conflict has already cost the country 70% of expected revenues, and the monthly deficit is five billion dollars. About six million Ukrainians have fled the country – and not all of them will return – and eight million have resettled within its territory.
The losses are huge, no matter how you evaluate them, and they only grow with the course of the conflict. However, now the damage that Ukraine has suffered is the very aspect of the conflict that occupies far from the first place in Western media reports, yielding to the heroic determination of Ukrainians and the brutality and incompetence of Russia.
However, the scale of the damage – in human, territorial and material terms – is beginning to become the subject of quite public discussion, which was previously limited only to outside observers, about when and under what conditions Ukraine can think about reducing losses. "Realists" (including the experienced diplomat Henry Kissinger) believe that this will happen very soon. But the "idealists" (including our own Foreign Minister Liz Truss) say that not before the complete victory of Ukraine.
The President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, has so far expressed himself ambiguously: hinted at concessions and spoke of a desire to fight. But one day–and maybe very soon–he will have to make a choice.
