Ukraine is slowly being left to its fate because the Israel-Hamas war is offering a more gruesome, gripping story

When Hamas terrorists launched their brutal assault on Israel — a massacre that killed 1,400 citizens including a majority of civilians — they altered the course of history not only in West Asia but also in Europe, where Ukraine is locked in a gritty, attritional war of survival. Worringly for Ukraine, the battle against Russia is being steadily pushed to the margins of global consciousness, and as the much-hyped counteroffensive comes to a grinding stalemate, the risk is growing with each passing day that Ukraine may be left with no choice but to accept the fait accompli. War is ugly. War is brutal. War is also a spectacle. In the competition for global attention, critical to Ukraine if it wants more funds and weapons to avoid a devastating defeat, the Israel-Hamas war is telling the more compelling story. The bloodiest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, at the end of which more than 200 were taken captive, and the profound human suffering in Gaza where already 10,000 Palestinians have died of bombing and around 11 per cent of the buildings have turned into a rubble — create a moving, traumatic tragedy that is threatening a much bigger war, rewiring old alliances, triggering Islamist movements in western societies, dominating media headlines, and swaying hearts and minds of people even continents away. As Arta Moeini writes in Unherd, “millions on social media (have) picked a side, proudly displaying their solidarity flags and condemning their opponents as either evil terrorists or genocidal oppressors. Both foreign states and populations assumed reflexive positions, railing against antisemitism or settler-colonialism and identifying with the “victims” in a Manichaean struggle that cares little for historical context, nuance or open debate.” In contrast, the protracted conflict in Ukraine is bogged down in marshy trenches and minefields, and battlefield progress is being measured in terms of inches. The long war is shortening its appeal. Instead of self-identification with Ukrainian suffering, a war fatigue is setting in. Ukraine has lost the buzz. It is now fighting to stay relevant in global conversations. At the height of the crisis Kyiv was struggling to derive sympathy in the poor and middle-income countries many of whom were unwilling to buy into the Western apocalyptic worldview, now more than 600 days since the war even the American support is showing signs of slipping. The latest Gallup poll on American views of the war in Ukraine finds that 41 per cent people believe the “US is doing too much”, a significant rise from 24 per cent in August 2022 and 29 per cent in June 2023. On the key question which side is winning the war, 64 per cent Americans are now saying that “neither side is, which is a seven-percentage-point increase since June.” Some Senate Republicans are tying further aid package for Ukraine with border security and demanding a crackdown on asylum claims as a prerequisite for backing Biden’s funding request. The Republican-led US House of Representatives, meanwhile, has approved a $14.3 billion aid for Israel’s war with Hamas, but no money for Ukraine. Unthinkably, Ukraine seems to be losing support even among some of its staunchest East European allies in Slovakia and Poland. The shift in the attitude of western public and politicians is caused as much by the lack of momentum in Ukraine’s counteroffensive as the gut-wrenching carnage in Gaza where graphically violent images and videos arising from flattening of entire neighbourhoods in the enclave is triggering massive pro-Palestinian protests in western cities such as London, Washington DC, Berlin or Paris, aided by shifting demographics owing to mass migration. To former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, now 100 years old, who had fled Nazi Germany with his family in 1938, the scenes of celebration in streets of Berlin at Israeli women, children and the elderly being killed, raped, maimed and brutalized by Hamas was a bitter pill to swallow. According to Politico, Kissinger said, “It was a grave mistake (for Germans) to let in so many people of totally different culture and religion and concepts, because it creates a pressure group inside each country that does that.” That pressure is showing in diverse ways. It is causing a rift within the ruling Democratic Party in the US where the “progressive” section is pulling away from Biden’s unwavering support for Israel’s retaliation, while global pressure is growing on the US president to use his leverage and press Israel for a ceasefire. Alongside, the magnitude of the West Asian crisis and the possibility that it may lead to a wider escalation where regional actors or opportunistic militia groups may join in, is keeping the Biden administration up at night. The US president has already made a trip to Israel and his top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken just completed a crash tour of the region with pit stops in Israel, Jordan, the West Bank, Iraq and Turkey to gauge the mood, calm the frayed nerves and prevent the conflict from spilling over. Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed militia in Lebanon, is still watching from the sidelines and menacingly threatening to widen the conflict “ if Gaza bombing goes on”. The US has deployed two warships in the eastern Mediterranean area to deter precisely such a development, and on Sunday the US Central Command rather unusually announced the passing through the region of a nuclear-powered Ohio-Class submarine in a clear bid to project power. If there was any doubt left, Blinken also issued a stern warning to Iran not to widen the Israel-Hamas conflict through its proxies. The timeline of West Asian crisis dovetails neatly with the quiet slipping of the Russian invasion of Ukraine into relative obscurity. Four weeks have passed since the deadly terrorist attacks on southern Israel. Four weeks since Israel launched its retributive violence to wipe out Hamas. It hasn’t been able to achieve its objective yet since the terrorists, well prepared for Israel’s retaliation, are hiding inside Gaza’s labyrinthine tunnel network and launching guerrilla warfare while Israel’s relentless bombing turns the enclave into a pulp and ratchets up civilian casualties, deepening a moral hazard for Israel. In taking shelter inside and underneath hospitals, amid civilians, using ambulances as transport vehicles, Hamas is lodging an asymmetric war where global public opinion is the weapon to answer Israel’s might. This Hamas calculation, however, is incumbent on the belief that Israel will indeed be thwarted by public mood and won’t cross the red lines. And yet the bombings are not stopping, and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is angrily dismissing all talks for ‘ceasefire for hostages’ deal. Israel appears desperate despite the high number of civilian casualties in Gaza — and in a way is refusing to play the game Hamas wants it to play — because the indescribable atrocities on 7 October by Hamas has gifted Israel an existential reason that subsumes morality. The Jewish people have been pushed far too much to the wall. Quite naturally, the geopolitical repercussions of this crisis at this stage appear much deeper and graver than Ukraine where western hopes of giving Vladimir Putin a bloodied nose appear to have come unstuck in Ukrainian swamps along the seemingly impenetrable Russian defence lines. Regardless of the claims made by Volodymyr Zelensky, it’s apparent that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is going nowhere. Its troops are exhausted, manpower significantly depleted, morale low and the weapons stocks even lower. Former advisor Oleksiy Arestovych has accused Zelensky and his military commanders of “making strategic mistakes and failing to break Russian lines.” To quote Jason Willick in the Washington Post, “Ukraine’s counteroffensive was supposed to sustain political support for Kyiv by proving that it could reconquer lost territory. Now, supporters of Ukraine might need to make the inverse argument: Ukraine is not reconquering substantial territory, and aid is needed indefinitely to forestall a devastating defeat.” The pessimism over Ukraine stems primarily from its lack of military progress on the ground. Ukraine has found it almost impossible to break through Russian defences and entrenched positions and its stated goal of reaching Melitopol to cut off Russia’s access to Crimea and retake the peninsula, considered Russia’s fortress, now looks increasingly remote. With the approaching winter, Ukraine’s counteroffensive will face even greater challenges. To top it all, Ukraine seems to be suffering from a paucity of manpower. No amount of sophisticated weaponry given by the West will work unless it can find soldiers to operate. The failed counteroffensive has undermined two key Ukrainian objectives. One, it has demolished all hopes of forcing Putin to the negotiating table. A protracted war suits the Russian president as he watches the US and its allies struggling to maintain funding and supply of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. He can play the waiting game better than Zelensky for whom an attritional trench war could be fatal. Two, the failed attack has proved that Russia has a decisive advantage in manpower. As Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top general, told The Economist in an interview, the assumption that Russia could be stopped by loss of manpower was faulty. “That was my mistake. Russia has lost at least 150,000 dead. In any other country such casualties would have stopped the war,” Zaluzhny was quoted, as saying. Russia can draw from a bigger population and a seemingly deeper supply of manpower. General Zaluzhny’s views in the interview, that the war has reached a “stalemate” which cannot be broken unless there’s a miracle, put him on a collision course with Zelensky who is apparently miffed with his commander-in-chief for being so candid. It underlines the frustration within Ukrainian ranks. On top of that, it is quite clear that the US is struggling to match its actions and commitments in two theatres — that has competing and overlapping need for funding and already-stretched ammunitions — and a quiet reassessment is under way.

Washington has already been stretched thin on Ukraine — where degrading Russia became an existential need — when the West Asian crisis blew up, and America’s need for prioritizing theatres means that it has had to go for a rapprochement with China. Biden’s open-ended backing of Israel indicates that Washington will now prioritise the West Asian theatre, leaving Ukraine largely to its fate. That may explain why western officials are sounding less enthusiastic behind the scenes on Ukraine, even though the official rhetoric remains upbeat. It also explains why Ukraine is being privately pushed to accept the inevitable. In a damning newsbreak, American media outlet NBC News has reported that US and European officials have “begun quietly talking to the Ukrainian government about what possible peace negotiations with Russia might entail to end the war” and that the talks “took place last month during a meeting of representatives from more than 50 nations supporting Ukraine, including NATO members, known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group.” Calls for peace negotiations are a euphemism for throwing in the proverbial towel. Ukraine’s failure to achieve measurable success on the battlefield has not only robbed it of its stated goals, but also considerable media support where the story has stagnated and isn’t igniting enough passion. This, in turn, is informing and shaping the politics and geopolitics. In targeting Israel, Hamas may have ended up dealing Ukraine a body blow. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.