This Saturday marked two years since the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin's Russian troops, and, on the anniversary, a sense of weariness is clearly felt by the West. As is often the case in a world increasingly influenced by immediacy, in which what is urgent ends up displacing what is important, the country led by Volodymyr Zelenskiy is fighting hard against oblivion. And this weekend several European figures travelled to Kyiv to deny from within the territory that the Ukrainians are alone in the fight against the Kremlin's dictatorial regime.
Other news has occupied the space of the war in Ukraine, and although Putin remains the embodiment of evil, the latest example is the murder of the dissident Aleksei Navalny, aged 47, in a maximum security prison in the Arctic Circle, interest in the war has been waning. For a while, the conflict between Israel and Hamas had dominated the news, but even the war in the Middle East has slipped off the radar of mainstream news. This is undoubtedly good news for Putin, who is accustomed to manoeuvring with public opinion very much against him, which he balances with an authoritarian regime capable of overriding any news, even the accusations of the murder of Navalny.
This Sunday, for the first time, Zelenski put a number on the total of Ukrainian soldiers who have died since the beginning of the invasion, which he put at 31,000. The balance does not include the number of wounded or missing military personnel, according to the Ukrainian president. According to his data, the Russian casualties are about 180,000, a figure that is, perhaps, exaggerated, but in all probability the figures set by observers from different positions cannot be far off. To this death toll must be added the tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians who have lost their lives as a result of the war or as a result of torture by the Russian regime. We are therefore talking about one of the deadliest wars in Europe in recent times.
As is often the case in a world increasingly influenced by immediacy, the country led by Volodymyr Zelenskiy is fighting hard against oblivion
While all this is happening, the numbers of the conflict have become devastating in their scale. About 18% of the territory of Ukraine is occupied by Russia. More than 10 million Ukrainians have been forced to leave their country, of whom 6.4 million have found refuge in other European countries, with Germany (over a million), Poland and the Czech Republic leading the way. In addition, 3.7 million Ukrainians are displaced within their own country. Europe has become Ukraine's principal donor with more than 144 billion euros; on the other hand, aid from the United States is currently halted by a blockade in Congress due to the Republicans, who have frozen about 60 billion dollars.
With the US election campaign on the horizon, Trump's radical opposition to maintaining Democratic commitments may end up being a valuable boon for Putin. The former president's isolationism is a path which has consequences that reach into the medium-term. Not only for Ukraine, but for everyone.