Ukraine fatigue is setting in, just as Putin hoped it would – iNews

You can feel it happening now. People are starting to lose interest. Ukraine slips off the main headlines every so often for the Chancellors Spring Statement, or the Partygate fines. Itll slip off again soon, then more regularly. And eventually, a few months from now, itll be a news-in-brief, a few quick paragraphs detailing the who-where-when of Russias latest atrocity, with a body count tacked on the end.

Were a month in, and journalists are already starting to report that Ukrainian stories are getting less views, that theyre starting to lose reader interest. People are beginning to switch off.

You can see it in how the story is covered, as well as the priority its given. Our standard tribal enmities are slowly seeping back into the debate. That brief moment of shared moral outrage is fading away.

Its not thuggish Vladimir Putin who is losing his marbles but doddery Joe Biden, a recent Daily Mail comment headline read. Bidens great crime was to say: For Gods sake, this man cannot remain in power. It jumbled up the White Houses strategic approach, which is to deny a wish for regime change, but it had the immense advantage of being simultaneously obvious and correct. Bidens reward for this most minor of gaffes was to be roasted for 24-hours of the news cycle.

Boris Johnson is playing a similar game using the invasion as just another stick to beat his political opponents with. At the Tory spring conference earlier this month he said. Do we want [Labour] running up the white flag? Do you see them standing up to Putins blackmail? Its clearly an attack line hes been developing for the local elections. Last night he told Tory MPs: It is impossible to imagine a Labour defence minister arming Ukraine in the way this Conservative government has.

This is the reward Keir Starmer gets for offering the Conservatives conditional support for their Ukraine response to have it thrown back at him in the most venal and fictitious way imaginable. But it is also a sign that the old formulations are coming back. Were slumping back from unity to division, from emergency to day-to-day political knockabout.

Putin knows it. Hes been exploiting Western division from the very beginning. He is a master at plugging into our tribal disposition and worsening it.

The most shared Russian disinformation post on US Facebook between 2015 and 2017 was an image of the Bugs Bunny adversary Yosemite Sam, with guns drawn and a confederate flag behind him. The caption read: I was banned from television for being too violent. Like and share if you grew up watching me on television, have a gun, and havent shot or killed anyone.

The most liked Russian disinformation post on Instagram was an image of eight female legs with different skin tones, starting with white and ending with black. All the tones are nude, it said. Get over it. It was hashtagged #blackandproud.

The first post was aimed at conservatives, the second at progressives. But in each case, the desired outcome was the same: worsening tribal division. Focusing debate on cultural wedge issues. Fuelling the culture war fire.

Now hes doing it again. Recently they cancelled the childrens writer [JK] Rowling because she fell out of favour with fans of so-called gender freedoms, Putin said last week. It was a trap so obvious a child could see it, but of course, that did not stop the massed warriors on both sides of the gender wars using it for their online squabbles getting played like puppets by the Russian tyrant. And every second they did that was another second the West fought itself rather than the real threat.

You can feel the pace of anti-Putin sanctions grinding to a halt now. Most of the top five Russian banks are still operating on the Swift messaging system, including Sberbank by distance the countrys largest. Russian energy is still being bought by Europe. British sanctions remain middling and half-effective. And yet there is little talk anymore of how we ratchet up to the next stage of punishment. The momentum is being lost.

Yesterday, Russia announced that it was moving its focus from Kyiv to the eastern Donbas region. Weve no idea if that is true. Nearly everything the Russian state says is a lie. But it is perfectly possible that we are now seeing the early stages of a recalibration away from regime change, which is proving impossible, and towards the maximisation of territory which can be demanded as part of a peace process.

And the truth is, many Western commentators will be perfectly susceptible to that objective. You can already see hints of it now. If Putin claims and retains Luhansk and Donetsk the Donbas and allows Ukraine to get on with its life I could live with that, Rachel Johnson said on LBC this week.

Its of no consequence at all what Western commentators could live with in regards to Ukraine. Our feelings are not relevant. If the Ukrainians can accept something, we should too. If they cannot, we must not.

Their autonomy has been talked over and ignored throughout this episode, by Putin himself and his witless enablers on right and left. Now you can see mainstream commentators starting to do the same, as they grow tired of the story.

Cant Ukrainians just accept the loss of a bit of territory? Wont they just give way a bit, so things can be brought to an end? And once you start thinking that way, it becomes possible to actually become quite frustrated with Ukrainians for their recalcitrance.

This is how it starts: with us getting bored. And as we get bored, we retreat back into our usual division and tribal bickering, to our oh-so-sensible assessments of the concessions Ukraine should make and our sluggish initiatives on sanctions.

This is a moment of profound danger. Our attention exhaustion provides hope to Putin and a grave threat to Ukraine.

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Ukraine fatigue is setting in, just as Putin hoped it would - iNews