The Observer.

Hello, it's Ada here and you're listening to the slow newscast from The Observer.

This week, a question of culpability.

I remember vividly the morning of the 24th of February 2022.

It was a Thursday and I was woken up by the sound of my phone ringing at 5am.

It was my boss.

I worked for a news agency at the time on the Europe desk.

He was calling me to ask how soon I could get into the office.

It had finally happened.

After a couple of tense weeks of Putin threateningly amassing troops on Ukraine's borders,

Russia had launched its ground invasion.

I sat on the tube that morning, looking at everyone around me in the carriage,

and wondering if they knew yet.

Had these people on their morning commute

realised that the unthinkable had just happened. A ground war in Europe was now a reality.

I'd spend the next year of my life editing the horrifying images of war. In the end, I couldn't hack it.

But those kinds of images followed me out of that job, because in the time since, and with

the proliferation of conflict in other parts of the world, war feels closer than ever, living

on our phones and on our social media feeds.

It seems unlikely that there are more wars happening now than ever before, but it feels like it.

After the end of World War II, the idea of a rules-based order of accountability and justice equally applied to all, even the idea of free trade, seems to have given way to something more brutal, an era of strong men and a survival of the fittest

attitude towards international relations. In the face of these challenges, institutions like the

...