Earlier this year the war in Ukraine was by far the most talked about subject on the evening news.

There were many reports about the Russian military advance, war crimes in occupied cities, destroyed buildings, displaced refugees and worldwide political implications. It captured public interest nearly everywhere on Planet Earth.

As the summer of 2022 starts to wind down the war still rages. There are still cities under siege, as well as bombings of places that don’t seem to have any military connection.

There are still refugees trying to adjust to new surroundings. They need food, places to live and job opportunities. Their lives are still far from being back to normal.

Even so, the war no longer gets as much attention on news broadcasts. Sometimes an entire half hour goes by with no mention of anything connected to Ukraine.

When that happens, it leaves me with a feeling that there must be something noteworthy related to the war, something that deserves to be shared with viewers in distant locations.

I’d like to see reports from the front lines, descriptions of what’s happening even if there’s no big advancement of either Russian or Ukrainian troops. It’s still the biggest war activity since Iraq and Afghanistan. The stakes are still very high in terms of the balance of power in eastern Europe.

Part of what shocked the world earlier in the year is that we thought hostilities in Europe were no longer likely in the 21st century.

We thought the tension ended with the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the resulting break up of the Soviet Union. It seemed like at last the Soviet republics had opportunities for freedom.

It’s important to question why those opportunities were lost in Russia and some of the other republics, why even though democracy was attainable dictators still managed to rise to power.

Russia has a long history of oppression, first because of its age old aristocracy and then for most of the 20th century under Communism. Many Russian citizens, according to news reports and non-fiction books, simply accept dictatorship as inevitable.

People in many parts of the world wonder why there isn’t more of an outcry in Russia, more of a demand to allow greater freedom and now in 2022 to bring an end to an unjust war.

The bottom line is that Russians won’t risk their well-being by standing up to Vladmir Putin’s regime unless they can envision a better alternative, one that might succeed the same way the overthrow of dictators succeeded at the end of the Cold War.

It’s not likely when there’s less news coverage of the war, when the general public in many parts of the world seems to take more of an ambivalent outlook. The outrage that accompanied the initial invasion appears to be subsiding at least to a considerable extent.

It’s not entirely gone. Sometimes there’s a report of a bombing or a story about displaced refugees that brings the concerns to life. Ukraine’s leaders generally get good exposure when they make appeals for more foreign aid and more weapons.

Time will tell if public opinion is strong enough to pressure Russian leaders to work toward peace in Ukraine. We’ve had the United Nations for more than 75 years. It was supposed to facilitate diplomatic approaches to conflicts between nations.

Instead it seems to have very little power to influence the Putin regime in 2022. There should be more of an ability for the U.N. to apply sanctions, and to consider the expulsion of countries that resort to hostile military attacks.

A good way to make a start toward that kind of unified global response is to give attention to journalism about the situation in Ukraine.

It still has very important economic and political implications. We shouldn’t become too complacent. We also shouldn’t totally shift our attention away from the war to focus on the latest flood, wildfire, political conflict or violent crime.

We’re capable of paying appropriate attention to all of those issues while still staying concerned about the war. It needs our attention since it proves that we still haven’t gotten beyond international hostility. We still haven’t attained a full worldwide commitment to peace. Maybe someday we’ll reach that goal.

— Jim Muchlinski is a longtime reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent