A few months ago, I wrote in this paper about an inner conflict many of us feel as media consumers when faced with our ongoing global horror show. Do we keep doomscrolling, or do we embrace ignorance?

Watching the rapacious power grabs by strongmen such as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, or the remorseless churn of social media algorithms as they stir unrest for profit, it is easy to feel alienated by our helplessness as individuals. For most of us in the West, as I argued then, “We guard our sanity by recognising our powerlessness as individuals. But we owe it to history to bear witness to our times.”

What if you can’t look away? What if you don’t have the luxury of turning off your social media feeds? For many an ordinary person in Ukraine, the on-off bromance between Trump and Putin isn’t just a Twitter/X soap opera, but a lurching barometer measuring the ever-ricocheting chance of seeing your family reunited, your son demobilised, and even your children returned from captivity.

The outlook is bleak. The recent successes of the Ukrainian military – Operation Spider’s Web, which launched drones from within Russian territory to hit warplanes this weekend, and Tuesday’s........

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