Some in the West May Have 'Ukraine Fatigue.' But Ukrainians Are Exhausted by the War and Western Inaction.

Notes from my fifth visit to Ukraine since the full-scale invasion

A memorial outside a Kyiv children’s hospital where Russian missiles killed at least 42 people on July 8. (Photo: LJ)

People often use the words fatigue and exhaustion interchangeably, but their meanings are slightly different. Exhaustion is a state of being tired from things like lack of sleep or heavy exercise. Fatigue implies a more constant and perhaps unexplainable state of exhaustion.

With respect to Ukraine, fatigue is often used to explain feelings in the West of wanting to end Russia’s aggressive war even if it means Kyiv being forced to accept Vladimir Putin's terms of capitulation. But you cannot be fatigued by a war you are not experiencing directly. I am coming back from a five-day visit to Kyiv, where many Ukrainians reported exhaustion and showed a sense of urgency, but not necessarily fatigue.

I can understand why Ukrainians feel exhausted. Three out of the four nights I was in Kyiv, I was woken up by air-raid alerts for incoming Iranian Shahed drones.