On the fourth grim anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, it is impossible to deny the mark the war has left on Ukrainians. In our eyes, Ukraine is turning into Europe’s 21st century Guernica while global attention shifts to competition for resources, the AI revolution and the spectacle of robot martial artists.

If one were to sum up these four years, it would not be a story in which courage and righteousness guarantee a happy ending. This war has been strikingly black and white, but the reaction to it was anything but. 

Ukrainians, from the very beginning, drew parallels with Tolkien’s world. The orcs invaded but, in our version, the elves never truly arrived. Weapons come, but unevenly, delayed by endless debates about how not to provoke the orcs.

The eagles have not come either. The Sky Shield initiative still hasn’t taken shape, leaving the Ukrainian sky dangerously open and, as a result, millions without water, electricity, or heat after repeated missile and drone strikes on civilian infrastructure.

Nor did a true Fellowship of the Ring emerge. Ukraine remains outside Europe’s formal security architecture, effectively shielding the continent while lacking NATO membership, acredible alternative alliance or the prospects of one. Hybrid formats — cooperation with NATO, enhanced partnership in frameworks such as the Joint Expeditionary Force — are better than nothing, but far from adequate.

Worse still, undeniable tensions in Trans-Atlantic cooperation and within the European Union — alliances........

© The Moscow Times