Almost four years have passed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the world, it seems, has already moved on. The international agenda is full of new issues, other crisis centers fill the news broadcasts, and the natural fatigue of the global audience creates a familiar pattern: As time passes, its involvement decreases.
However, in Ukraine, contrary to the indifference that is evident around the world, life is not returning to its normal course. The war has not stopped for a moment.
Ukraine manages to stand against the nuclear superpower, which uses the most barbaric methods of war. Our lines of combat actions with the enemy are about 1,200 km. – just imagine the scope – with the hundreds of thousands of military personnel and equipment engaged in actions.
Casualties continue to climb
In June and July 2025, the highest civilian casualties were recorded since the beginning of the invasion: 232 dead and 1,343 injured in June, and 286 dead and 1,388 injured in July. These are not abstract numbers, but families who have lost loved ones, children who have been injured, and communities that have been destroyed.
Those horrible numbers may be even worse, since we have no data from the territories occupied by Russia. In the city of Mariupol alone, the tragedy of the Russian invasion may result in tens of thousands of civilians killed.
According to the current data, over 40,000 civilians have been killed or injured since the war began, and 12.7 million people are now in need of humanitarian assistance. Russia abducted and illegally transferred over 20,000 Ukrainian children, which is a harrowing testament to its genocidal policy against Ukraine. This is one of the greatest humanitarian tragedies of our time, but the world has become accustomed to the background noise, and the ongoing reality in Ukraine has been pushed to the margins of consciousness. We urge Israeli officials to join the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children.
This indifference is dangerous not only for us Ukrainians, but for everyone who believes in a world order that protects sovereign states, citizens, and fundamental rights. When an international community allows such a war to become routine, it weakens itself. Every precedent of indiscriminate harm to civilians that is not met with a sharp and clear response punctures another hole in the dam of protecting universal values.
The struggle in Ukraine is not a local struggle. It is not confined to the geographical borders of our country. This is a test for the entire international system: Is the free world still ready to stand up to aggression, to defend small countries against powerful neighbors, to preserve the right of every people to live in security?
The fact that this war is ongoing, with the aggressor a player on the international arena, is vivid proof that those international bodies established to sustain peace and order in the world have totally failed.
In Israel, in particular, they understand very well what a continuing security reality is. They understand what a sense of loneliness is, and what the gap is between the need for support and the world’s attention that wanders onward. Therefore, the Israeli public can recognize what the world prefers to ignore: that the struggle in Ukraine is a struggle for values that are well known here, too: civil security, freedom, and the right to self-defense.
Ukraine is not asking for mercy. It is asking for continued recognition of the difficult reality in which it finds itself, and for the international community to understand that this war is not “just another conflict.” It is setting dangerous precedents for the future. It is testing the strength of international institutions. It is sending a message to every aggressive regime in the world.
Will the world respond or remain silent?
Silence, it must be said clearly, is not neutral. It legitimizes and allows the war to continue. It harms not only us, but the security and stability of all of Europe and the entire free world.
Ukraine needs clear voices, and the world also needs to learn the clear principle that aggression does not pay. Occupation is illegitimate, and harm to civilians is not tolerated. The values of freedom and democracy are not a slogan; they are the basis of the world order.
Our war is a line of defense for all of you.
We must not let it disappear from the news; we must not let the global routine obscure the seriousness of the situation.
As long as children in Ukraine go to shelters instead of to school, the whole world is being tested. And if the world fails this test, no one knows where it will be required to stand again.
The writer is Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel.