On August 20, Russia launched one of its heaviest aerial attacks on Kyiv, killing at least 16 people and injuring more than 40. Residential areas, a school and a children’s medical facility were among those hit. Ukraine’s air defences intercepted many cruise missiles and drones, but its shortage of Patriot interceptors left it vulnerable to ballistic missiles. 

At almost the same time, Ukraine has been escalating its own attacks against Russia. Hundreds of drones have been sent deep into Russian territory, striking military and energy infrastructure. In recent weeks, Russian oil facilities, ports, logistics centres and industrial sites have come under attack. A recent Ukrainian strike involving nearly 800 drones was one of the largest of the war. It is a conflict that has become normalised. And that may be more dangerous. There is something uncomfortable about the way the Russia-Ukraine war has slipped down the world’s news agenda. The guns have not fallen silent. The casualties have not stopped. The missiles and drones are flying almost every night. Yet, compared with the first two years of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the war now receives far less attention. The fear is that the conflict may be entering one of its most dangerous phases when the world’s attention is elsewhere.

The Iran-US war has presently consumed headlines, diplomatic bandwidth and military resources. Washington is preoccupied with the West Asia, European governments are dealing with their own wider consequences of the conflict, and media are dominated by images of missiles over Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Ukraine, once the defining geopolitical crisis in Europe, has become almost a background story.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the expectation in Moscow was apparently that Kyiv would fall quickly. Instead, Ukrainian resistance halted the Russian advances.  The war then settled into the kind of conflict where small territorial gains measured in kilometres, sometimes metres. The war-front now stretches for roughly 1,200 kilometres. Russia continues to grind forward in parts of the east, while Ukraine tries to make the cost of every Russian advance high-priced. This is not a frozen war. It is an active war of attrition. And attrition has a cruel arithmetic. A few hundred metres gained may mean hundreds of lives lost. A destroyed........

© Greater Kashmir