A USUALLY apolitical friend phones me in a state of deep distress about Ukraine. It’s the first thing she thinks about when she wakes in the morning, the last thing she thinks about when she goes to sleep. She’s been waking up during the night asking herself what is wrong with humanity.

Another friend tells me that she had to stop her 11-year-old searching for Russian soldiers in their back garden after the little girl came home frightened by her primary school news on Ukraine.

Over a morning cuppa, a colleague who volunteers as a community gardener heard a fellow volunteer opine that it was time to drop a nuclear bomb on Russia.

My colleague was horrified but didn’t dare voice dissent because the rest of the gardening squad seemed to agree.

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In the current feverish climate, even to slightly question pro-war sentiment in the Ukrainian context could be construed as heartless and unpatriotic, like tackling a gang of White Feather ladies in 1914 as they tried to shame the nearest eligible male into enlisting for the Great War.

A neighbour looks visibly down, and has none of his usual light chat. He is so depressed by Ukraine that he has stopped watching the news to save his flagging mental health. The constant bombardment is just “too much”, he says.

I have never seen so many people so disturbed so gripped by fear.

Mind you, a two-year-long diet of “Don’t kill Granny” messaging has certainly conditioned us to expect the worst and pick over emerging crises obsessively, to the detriment of our mental health.

But this is certainly the first occasion in my lifetime when the bloody, brutal business of war has been shoved in our faces, over and over again.

War is always hideous. We know that at a cerebral level. But never before have we had a war set out before us in such visceral daily detail.

Troubling war dispatches have generally been conveyed to our TV screens by ‘embedded’ reporters attached to military units, describing events from a safe distance.

“Behind me, you can see the smoke and missile trails....” Ukraine, on the other hand, is a war played out on social media in graphic detail, courtesy of citizen journalism, which brings it up close and personal.

It is a shock. Wars in recent times have happened in foreign places to faraway people, ‘others’ who do not look like ‘us’, faceless people who are presented as inhabitants of benighted geopolitical regions with intractable problems.

Racism underpins much Ukraine coverage.

The BBC’s interview with Ukraine’s deputy chief prosecutor, David Sakvarelidze, was one such case: “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed”.

Yet his comments will resonate with many viewers who never dreamt that such vivid horror would seep towards them.

The Ukraine war has had more coverage in a few weeks than the Saudi-US/UK coalition war on Yemen has had in seven years.

In Yemen, where people are not typically blond and blue-eyed, tens of thousands of civilians have been killed or wounded as a direct result of the fighting, including more than 10,000 children.

Some of them were slain by UK-supplied weapons. To our shame, the UK exported £11 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, fully aware of their evil purpose, in 2019 alone.

On the 20th of January, an estimated 100 Yemenis were killed in just one Saudi-coalition air strike. Did their deaths command sextuple-page spreads? Funny that.

Of course, in the case of Ukraine, people are rightly angry that Russia invaded a sovereign state.

As Condoleeza Rice said: "When you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime.”

What stunning hypocrisy, coming from a key architect of the invasion of Iraq.

The selectivity of war reporting from notable mainstream outlets is blatant.

In 2009, the BBC refused to broadcast the Disasters Emergency Committee’s Gaza Humanitarian Appeal to provide food and shelter to Palestinians there, following an Israeli assault that left 1,330 Gazans dead, 460 of them children.

The BBC attempted to justify its decision on the grounds that it would compromise its ‘impartiality’.

Magnificently, Tony Benn had the guts to hijack a BBC interview, talk over the presenter, and give viewers details of the appeal himself, right down to the 999 PO box number for donations.

When it comes to Ukraine though, impartiality is something the BBC and most other major news outlets have temporarily mislaid.

From a study of news reportage, a cynic might reach the conclusion that editors, tired of wringing more headlines out of Covid in its twilight hours, have set upon Ukraine as the next big nightmare that will command headlines. Be careful here, lest honest, raw reporting strays into whipping up pro-war sentiment.

"Populations don’t like wars...and have to be fooled into war”, Julian Assange warned. I have the uncanny feeling that a War with Russia machine has already been cranked up.

There was something really weird, positively Orwellian, about Volodymyr Zelenskyy's speech being broadcast in the House of Commons. Unprecedented, it indicated a view, directed from above, that every right-thinking citizen must be part of a ‘consensus’ on Ukraine.

MPs had tears in their eyes. Compassion is an invaluable emotion. Without it, we are psychopaths. But when we express it, let us at least be consistent in applying it to all peoples and all countries.

And when faced with a possibly deranged leader who has his finger on the nuclear button, the last thing we need is gushing, incontinent sentiment.

Talk of no-fly zones and hasty actions will rebound on us.

Sanctions against Russia are predicted to cut UK living standards by £2,500 per household.

Food shortages, with eye-watering fuel and fertiliser price hikes, will surely follow. That’s all bad enough, but it pales in comparison to the prospect of nuclear war.

We need intelligent, concerted diplomacy and negotiation with a laser-like focus on finding a settlement that Putin might accept.

Hot-headed retaliation will be our downfall.

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