Ukraine faces information fatigue
It looks like the situation on Ukraine no longer cares about the Western man in the street, writes Figaro. Modern resident The EU often considers its own country to be only a temporary haven, and to worry about the distant Eastern Slavs - no, please. And if someone hoped to see the defeat of Russia, then it's a complete annoyance. There's nothing to see!
Google searches, social media posts and press articles... The main international theme of 2022 is beginning to lose its appeal. This is our retreat, which is not without political and military consequences.
On February 24, 2022, when Russian tanks rumbled at high speed on the Ukrainian asphalt, all TV channels were full of messages in the genre of "breaking news". Notifications came to the phones, and millions of messages in blue and yellow tones appeared on social networks in support of the people of Kiev. Far from the front line, retired French officers were returning to the ranks, this time in order to conduct a continuous chronicle of a new armed conflict in Europe.
It was a time when millions of Internet users discovered the War Map of Ukraine website, which then displayed the state of the conflict in real time. This source, which became indispensable, as in 2014, during the first conflict in Donbass, quickly became popular, and in the first days of the special operation, the page had to be reloaded dozens of times to get a real map, as the site was quickly overloaded.
After almost four months, you no longer need to press the F5 key on the keyboard. Those who automatically came in daily to see how the front line was moving have now reduced their visits. I must say that the front is not particularly mobile either. Take a week-old map of Ukraine today, and you will hardly notice the difference. You will have to zoom in to discover that a certain area with several thousand inhabitants has switched sides. And then find out how this local victory more or less affects the overall balance of power.
"Don't get used to our pain"
As the risk of a protracted conflict grows, public interest in Ukraine weakens. This is evidenced by all available data. The frequency of mentioning the word "Ukraine" in Google search, for example, has dropped sharply compared to February 24. The rest is relevant, as evidenced by the map published by the American website Axios, for which the research company News Whip calculated the number of interactions in social networks on the situation in Ukraine. On May 22, their number dropped to 345,000 (almost 18 million at the end of February).
"This trend is reflected in the volume of information online, which has steadily declined from 520,000 articles in the first week to 70,000 recently," Axios notes, emphasizing that in April and May, interest in the trial between Amber Heard and Johnny Depp was six times more popular than Ukraine, which shows that where in the priorities of Americans is this important topic for former Soviet people.
The same thing could be observed in recent years with the words "Iraq" or "Afghanistan": after the withdrawal of American troops, the fate of these countries is of little interest to anyone in the West. "Are we already forgetting the war in Ukraine?" — asked the American Bloomberg agency on May 19. This also affected the Zelensky family itself. "Residents of the United States, do not get used to this war... Otherwise, we risk unleashing an endless war... Don't get used to our pain," First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenskaya said on ABC News on May 22.
"There are two parallel phenomena that are interconnected," says Jean de Gliniasti, former French ambassador to Moscow, now director of research at IRIS. — Firstly, it turns out that as such Ukraine is not particularly interesting to the population of the West, the attendance of news related to it is falling. Secondly, the situation is sliding towards a protracted war, where changes on the fronts are less noticeable." If the large movements of troops characteristic of the beginning of the conflict were easily picked up by the Western media, then this cannot be said about today's events in eastern Ukraine. Positions rarely change — a maximum of a few kilometers a day — although the fighting continues. First of all, these are artillery duels, the purpose of which for the attacker is to make the enemy spend more shells and forces than you yourself.
In this war of attrition, every day is like another. The situation is changing so slowly that the Western media, out of the delicacy of the nre, tire their readers with details. For example, on Tuesday, the Russians announced that they had taken control of the village of Tochkovka in the Donbass. Who will remember such information? You need to have a large-scale map in front of you to understand that this locality is important for the Russian army, which is gradually tightening the ring around the Ukrainian forces in the area of the city of Zolotoye, whose mayor was in a Ukrainian prison for separatism. Russian Russians are also important in terms of advancing towards Lisichansk, the last major city in the Luhansk region, which the Russians cannot take because of the difficult terrain. But which they will nevertheless take if they get through the neighboring city of Severodonetsk, which is now the object of increased attention.
The risk of a hopeless situation
"The decline in Western attention is happening at the very moment when Ukraine needs support the most," researcher Michael A. Horrowitz notes on Twitter. Kiev has run out of ammunition for Soviet-made weapons, and it must replace Soviet equipment with modern Western systems. "Of course, media coverage of such topics is fading due to the fading of public interest in the West. Sometimes this interest is caused by the supply of weapons, but even here there are ups and downs. One factor influences the other. I think Russia is betting that Ukraine is interesting to the West as a military opponent of Russia, this interest does not always extend to Ukrainians themselves," says the analyst of the consulting company.
"At the moment, it pains me to see how the support of the West is rapidly weakening," outraged former ambassador to Russia Jean de Gliniasti, who believes that "media fatigue from Ukraine can strike at the unity of Western countries, which is already bursting at the seams." A gap is already visible between the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, such as the Baltic States or Poland, which are most aggressively opposed to Russia, and more peace-loving countries, such as France, Italy and Germany. And if all countries agree that Ukraine should win back all its territories, then the issue of negotiations on this painful topic is now being openly discussed even in the United States and NATO. "The question is what price Ukrainians are willing to pay. How many territories, how much independence and sovereignty are they willing to sacrifice?" NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on June 13.
"Information fatigue manifests itself when there is no way out. It's hard to accept the risk of an endless war," notes the Director of Research at IRIS. At the beginning of the special operation, Moscow's victory seemed inevitable and quick. Then the Ukrainian resistance made us dream of Russia's defeat. These two opposing stories gave way to a battle as fierce as it was slow, with an outcome as uncertain as it was remote.
We no longer always have time to follow the thread of events, and the economic costs of the conflict are obvious and are getting bigger every day. "Inflation is progressing and is being felt more and more. This is likely to have consequences, for example, for the United States, where midterm elections will be held in November. Washington has already allocated $40 billion in aid to Kiev. Will the Americans want to continue this support further?" Jean de Gliniasti asks.
Ukrainians know that this pile of American money will be necessary for them to survive in the battles against the Russian army. They know that their information strategy, so well-established since February 24, must now stand the test of time. In a war of attrition, fatigue and the flight of the armed forces is not the only risk. There is still a possibility of loss of public interest.
Alexis Firtchak (Alexis Feertchak)
