Is Ukraine Losing the Battle for Your Attention?

TWO HUNDRED DRONES. And almost no headlines.

Is Ukraine losing the battle for your attention?

Two hundred. Last night.

Over a capital of 3 million people in the biggest country in Europe.

I am not reheating old news. This happened less than 24 hours ago.

While Trump was in Canada praising Putin, saying Russia should be participating in that meeting, this same Russia launched one of the largest drone strikes ever against Ukraine.

Dozens dead.

Kindergartens. Dormitories. Residential towers.

Civilian buildings that are, as usual, Russia's favorite targets.

They target life. They spread terror.

And some newspapers didn’t even notice.

You're informed. You care about Ukraine, you cry with us.

But I totally understand if some of you are only knowing about it with these words here, or in the desperate notes I sent along the day.

Photos: Yan Dobronosov, Telegraph Portal “Телеграф”. Kyiv, June 17th, 2025

We're losing the attention war.

We are disputing attention with TikTok dances. With celebrity gossip. With cute cats jumping…

Please, I love cats so much. You may remember my article about them. But that’s just not the point here!

I’m on this social media for a different reason:

I’m here to dispute attention for my country.

To prevent Ukraine from disappearing.

To prevent my country from being vanished.

Because we’re being vanished. Day by day.

No Ukrainian knows if they will be the next. I don’t know if these will be my last words.

But I know that this people, this nation, will not see itself wiped off the earth in silence.

We will shout. We will share. We will speak.

Even if we annoy people. If we become the boring ones of the season.

Even if the war has become just another forgotten headline.

Another "fashionable cause" that’s now "out of fashion."

Some people say: “Ukraine is so 2022.”

But Ukraine is still here. Now.

And those who say that should know Ukraine can be anywhere.

I hate to be the messenger of bad news, but I feel it's a duty that I'm completely involved in and I am so engaged with.

Thanks to those of you who can afford a paid subscription to my writing, I can separate more time to dedicate to this Substack, which I am so involved in, so intensely connected to.

I put my heart, my soul, and parts of me I didn't even know I had into it.

For the past three years, I’ve been delivering food, driving trucks, baking bread, doing whatever I could to survive. Every kind of work is honorable. But right now, at this moment in my life and my country, there's nothing more important than to be here.

To tell you what I see and what I feel in this suffered and sometimes forgotten land.

To make sure I will not testify Ukraine losing the attention war without me doing nothing to reverse that.

So here we are.

And I’ve even launched a second journal: The Freedom Line.

Especially dedicated to you friends in the United States, so we can organize together in this shared battle against Trump and Putin, and share whatever ideas we consider important.

Here and there. There and here.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle both journals, but I’ll try the best I can.

Because I love writing.

I love to write to intelligent and kind people who know the right side of history.

Who choose conscience over convenience.

And I love life too much to let evil win without a fight.

It’s insane to live like that.

It’s getting very painful to keep doing it. But somehow, inside all that pain, there’s also a strange kind of beauty.

The beauty of trying to make someone on the other side of the planet understand why a country they’ve never been to matters.

And it’s not comfortable for me, but I will keep doing it.

Because this is a world where everything is a battle for attention.

Everything.

I know what I’m saying, because I’m in it.

I’m competing for your attention too.

And I feel, every day, how easily things are forgotten.

It’s hard. But giving up is not an option.

Because this country matters, and words carry it forward.

Ukraine isn’t far away.

Ukraine is wherever someone refuses to forget.

And the simple fact you are here means that you’re already resisting the algorithm.

And you have no idea how much that means.

You’re not just a reader.

You’re part of the memory that keeps this country alive.

And even if Ukraine loses the attention war, I'd be honored to lose in your company.

Because we are not fighting this war for a victory at whatever cost.

We are here to stay in dignity.

No matter what happens next.

🇺🇦

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📖 “The Divine Comedian: Ukraine’s Journey Through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise” is my first book: about Ukraine, seen from inside the fire, and the hope that refuses to die. Download it for free (PDF & Kindle).