When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the controversy dominated news stations across the world. This correlated with funding commitments from the international community and favorable immigration status for Ukrainians around the world.
A few months after the war began, media coverage of Ukraine began to die down as public interest waned. When media coverage began to drop, so did the number of Ukrainian refugees badmitted into other countries. Likewise, funding commitments from the U.S. and European countries have not been fully realized in the last two years, or even close to the original amount.
While the war in Ukraine remains an important issue, in the eyes of most Americans, it has been thrown into the evergrowing pile of old news.
From February through March of 2022, Google searches on Ukraine were one of the most searched topics, totaling more than one million. However, by April 2022, public interest in the conflict dropped. There were only 625,170 articles published about the Ukraine-Russian conflict and the numbers continued to go down after that, and the number of Google searches went with it. However, the decline in media coverage had far more of an impact than just Google searches.
Since the decline in media coverage of the war in Ukraine, only about 31% of committed funds from the European Union have been disbursed. Ukraine is struggling to get by with minimal funding, and without pressure from the public of foreign nations to actually make a change, there will be no improvements made to the situation in Ukraine. The public may not apply pressure to their representatives if the issue is no longer front and center in the media. Adding to the problem of minimal disbursed funds, a small percentage of them are being given to refugee efforts.
In February of 2022, 427 Ukrainian refugees were admitted into the U.S., yet by September of 2023 only 34 Ukrainian refugees were admitted to the U.S. The same decline is occurring in Europe. During the early months of 2022, Poland, a country bordering Ukraine, received a peak of 200,000 refugees. In 2023 those numbers dropped to less than 50,000. How has this much of a drop happened? It is most likely because as public interest goes so does national policy on the topic.
Ukrainians have gone through immense suffering, and the impact of having little to no media coverage in foreign countries will have a detrimental effect on the country getting continued funding support or refugees being welcomed by foreign countries.
Change starts with individuals actively making the choice to educate fellow citizens about important issues to stay relevant. The data on refugee numbers and foreign funding for Ukraine says it all. Unless the media continues to focus on pressing issues, eventually something that was once seen as monumental by the world, will be left behind. Ukraine is an example of this.
