President Zelensky:

“Exhaustion with the war rolls along like a wave. You see it in the United States, in Europe. And we see that as soon as they start to get a little tired, it becomes like a show to them: ‘I can’t watch this rerun for the 10th time.’”

https://time.com/6329188/ukraine-volodymyr-zelensky-interview/

That interview is tough. But the timing of the piece marks what I’ve seen over the last few weeks: an absolute collapse in public interest in #Ukraine, exacerbated by the war in Gaza, the spectacle of the US Republican Party eating itself alive, and Europe’s cost of living crisis stretching into a second cold winter.

In Poland the closer you get to the border the more you see the international dimension to the war, be it Ukrainians (mostly but not exclusively women) coming and going, or internationals who are still parachuting in, albeit in smaller numbers. But there’s also an acceptance that Ukrainians will be refugees there for years, even in the far western cities like Poznan and Wrocław where you see the Ukrainian language all over the place.

Here in Ireland I got home this week to see politicians clamoring to decide how to kick refugees out of hotel rooms they never asked for (we have a massive housing crisis here, and the government is paying hotels a bundle to house refugees but it’s impacting tourism and we can’t be having that) and complaining about Ukrainians having to leave the country (we also have a massive GP shortage) for services and come back.

The housing Facebook pages are filled with women and small families begging for a place to live, and Irish people being absolutely awful to them in the replies.

My family in America don’t even want to hear about the war, except my opinion on it, and that’s only because they love me.

The UK, for all its faults, is still hanging on for Ukraine, but the war in Gaza is going to demand everyone’s absolute attention. Syria and Iraq, which I covered for almost a decade, could get very bad again too.

Which brings me to something I’ve been saying quietly to friends lately, which Zelensky said in that Time piece is his great fear: “A third world war could start in Ukraine, continue in Israel, and move on from there to Asia, and then explode somewhere else.”

I increasingly wonder if we’re already in it.