Four Years Later, Still No Safe Distance

Four years ago, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The anniversary invites summaries. What changed? Who gained? What failed? What is the likely settlement? Analysts need these questions. The calendar does not make the answers cleaner.

The anniversary problem

An anniversary turns continuous suffering into an event that can be scheduled. Speeches are made. Images are selected. The rest of the week returns to normal.

Ukraine does not experience the war as an annual observance. It experiences another night of alarms, another family decision, another repair, another mobilisation, another calculation about whether a building, school, road or power connection will still exist tomorrow.

I am tired of sophisticated surrender

There is a style of commentary that presents itself as realism. Ukraine should accept what cannot be changed. Europe should recognise Russia’s interests. Continued resistance prolongs suffering. The argument often sounds mature because it is delivered without anger.

Sometimes compromise is necessary. Sometimes the least bad settlement is still terrible. But realism that requires the invaded country to absorb the aggressor’s choices while everybody else congratulates themselves on peace is not neutral. It assigns the cost to the people with the least comfortable options.

I do not know how the war ends. I do know that rewarding territorial conquest changes the calculations far beyond Ukraine.

Anger must not become prejudice

I am angry enough that the word hatred sometimes feels honest. Yet hatred of Russians as a category would copy the same moral laziness that propaganda encourages: replace people with a mass, erase individual choices, and make nationality sufficient evidence.

No. The condemnation should be severe and specific: the Russian state, the invasion, the armed forces committing aggression, the officials ordering it, the institutions financing it, the propagandists celebrating it and the citizens who knowingly support it.

Specificity does not weaken anger. It keeps anger from becoming stupid.

No safe distance

The lesson for Eastern Europe is not that war is inevitable. It is that peace requires maintenance. Alliances, industry, infrastructure, public trust and political attention cannot be improvised after deterrence fails.

Four years is long enough for fatigue. It is not long enough to pretend the cause has disappeared.