The west is trying to quietly forget the war in Ukraine. It does so at its own peril

‘The question now is, how and when will this war end? Putin’s death will one day be inevitable, but Russia’s defeat is not.’ Russian soldiers walk through the debris of the Azovstal iron and steel works, June 2022. Photograph: AP

“On the front page – war, on the back page – the crossword.” A line from my novel The Light and the Dark sprang to mind as I travelled on a train shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Sitting across from me, a passenger was reading the paper: on the front page, there was the war; on the back page, the crossword. Time has passed since then, and the daily atrocities have started to disappear from the headlines, despite the battles growing more savage each day. But no one in the west wants to hear about war any more – people are tired of horror and solidarity. They want peace, no price rises, a quiet life and a nice holiday.