Ukraine was on the minds of many at Chalke, England’s largest history festival, in the last week of June. The war came up in talk after talk, and Ukraine’s diaspora tent, “Reborn,” drew steady interest, yet in Britain’s daily news cycle, Ukraine can already feel far away.
Adélie Pojzman-Pontay and Francis Dearnley, of “The Telegraph’s Ukraine: the Latest,” took time on the festival’s sidelines to consider whether people are still interested, and what it takes to keep Ukraine on the front page.
JOIN US ON TELEGRAM
Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.
Pojzman-Pontay described an audience of their podcast divided roughly into thirds: one-third in the UK, one-third in the US, and one-third in the rest of the world, “primarily the rest of the English-speaking world.” Across those regions, Ukraine has slipped down the news agenda, but Pojzman-Pontay said listeners are “sad to see it drop from the headlines, even if they understand why.”
That sentiment captures the peculiar politeness of liberal neglect. People understand why editors make room for Gaza, Iran and the next crisis, they understand that attention is finite, they understand the pressures of the newsroom, yet the result is still absurd. A war shaping Europe’s future is treated as something one must go looking for, like a niche interest.
Pojzman-Pontay put it plainly: “They [the listeners] understand what is at stake for Ukraine, but also for the rest of the world in terms of geopolitics and defense... Sometimes they have no other source for daily updates.” The BBC, she said, had done “Ukrainecast” daily, then moved it to twice a week, and “wrapped up the project in December last year.”
Other Topics of Interest
