Another night, another volley of drones humming over darkened cities and villages. Ukraine and Russia traded strikes overnight, each side reporting damage to infrastructure that ordinary people depend on — power lines, water systems, roads, maybe a hospital or a school. The reports are terse, almost routine now. But behind each bullet point is a community waking up to find that the basics of life have been knocked out again, and that the repair crews — the electricians, the plumbers, the engineers — are once more the first responders to a conflict that seems to have no end.

This is not the kind of news that makes headlines beyond the initial alert. The world has grown used to the rhythm of this war, and the rhythm is exhausting. Yet this particular exchange comes at a moment when international mediators are pushing hard for a new ceasefire. The United Nations, with its characteristic blend of hope and powerlessness, has called for de-escalation. But no agreement is in sight. The gap between the rhetoric of peace and the reality on the ground is as wide as ever, and it is ordinary working people on both sides who are left to navigate the wreckage.

Let us start with the infrastructure. When we talk about damage to infrastructure, we are not talking about abstract targets on a map. We are talking about the heating that fails in a Ukrainian apartment block as winter tightens its grip. We are talking about the water that stops running in a Russian border town, leaving families to queue for bottled supplies. We are talking about the substation that catches fire and plunges a neighbourhood into darkness, where a single mother has to decide whether to keep the lights on for her children’s homework or save the battery for her phone to call for help if the sirens go off again. Infrastructure is not steel and concrete; it is the web of care that holds a society together, and it is being shredded nightly.

And who repairs it? Not the generals, not the diplomats, not the politicians who give press conferences from secure locations. It is the municipal workers, the linemen, the water utility staff, the emergency crews — often low-paid, often under-equipped, always expected to be heroes. They are the ones who crawl into the rubble at dawn, who risk their lives to restore a service that will likely be destroyed again the next night. They are the quiet backbone of resilience, and they are the ones most often forgotten in the grand narratives of strategy and sovereignty. A just peace would begin with acknowledging their labour, not just the high-stakes diplomacy that rarely mentions them.

The timing of these attacks is especially bitter. Mediators — from Turkey, from the Gulf, from Western capitals — have been shuttling between Kyiv and Moscow, floating proposals for a limited truce, perhaps around energy infrastructure, perhaps along the front lines. The UN Secretary-General has again used the bully pulpit to call for restraint, to invoke the language of humanity and the laws of war. But the drones flew anyway. They always do. The question is why, and the answer is not as simple as a refusal to negotiate. It is that the negotiations themselves are conducted in a context where the costs of war are externalised — borne by the civilians and the workers — while the benefits of war, if they can be called that, accrue to those who hold power and profit from its continuation.

Consider the arms trade. Every drone that flies is a product of a vast industrial enterprise that employs thousands, enriches a few, and operates across borders. The military-industrial complex is not a conspiracy theory; it is a supply chain. It spans factories in dozens of countries, research laboratories, logistics firms, and a web of lobbying that ensures defence budgets keep growing. For those at the top of that chain, the war is not a tragedy but a business opportunity. The longer it lasts, the more contracts are signed, the more stock prices rise. We do not often talk about this when we discuss ceasefires, but we should. Because until the people who profit from conflict have a stake in peace, peace will remain a slogan, not a priority.

The UN’s call for de-escalation, however heartfelt, lacks enforcement. The Security Council is paralysed by vetoes and rivalries. The General Assembly can pass resolutions, but they are advisory at best. International law is invoked selectively, and accountability is rare. When civilian infrastructure is struck, there are condemnations, but no one is ever held to account. The victims are left with broken lives and broken homes, and the world moves on to the next crisis. This is not a new pattern; it is the pattern of modern warfare, where the powerful use their military might while the rest of the world watches, often from a distance, often with a sense of helplessness that itself becomes a kind of complicity.

And what of the broader implications? The brief mentions that continued hostilities undermine peace efforts and pose risks to global energy security and food supplies. These are not abstract risks. They are price increases at the grocery store, higher heating bills in Europe, shortages of grain in Africa and the Middle East. The war in Ukraine has already disrupted wheat exports, fertiliser production, and natural gas flows. Farmers in distant countries struggle to afford inputs; families in Yemen or Somalia go hungry. The cost of war is always global, and it always falls hardest on those who are already struggling. Working people everywhere — from the port of Odessa to the factory floors of Germany to the smallholder farms in the Sahel — are paying for a conflict they did not choose and cannot end.

The peace efforts themselves deserve scrutiny. What kind of ceasefire is being proposed? Is it a ceasefire that protects civilians, or one that consolidates territorial gains and freezes a frontline that will continue to bleed? History tells us that ceasefires without justice are just pauses before the next round. A sustainable peace requires addressing the root causes: the militarisation of borders, the scramble for resources, the geopolitical ambitions of great powers, and the unchecked influence of arms dealers. It also requires accountability for war crimes, and a recognition that the people who have suffered the most must be at the centre of any reconciliation process. So far, that is not what the mediators are offering. They are offering a respite, perhaps, but not a solution.

Let us also consider the media coverage. The BBC and Reuters report the strikes, the diplomatic statements, the damage assessments. They do their job, and we should be grateful for that. But the framing often treats both sides as equivalent — a drone for a drone, a casualty for a casualty — as if the war were a football match with equal teams. This is not to deny that there is suffering on both sides, or that Russia has legitimate security concerns, or that Ukraine has made mistakes. But the context matters: the invasion, the occupation, the forced displacement, the destruction of entire cities — these are not symmetrical acts. A peace process that fails to acknowledge the asymmetry of power and responsibility will only deepen the cynicism of those who have lost everything.

We must also talk about the human toll in terms of mental health, of grief, of the exhaustion that comes from living in a war zone. The drone attacks are not just physical; they are psychological. The constant threat of a whirring engine in the sky, the sirens at 3 a.m., the uncertainty of whether the next strike will hit your home — this is a form of torture that the world has normalized. The children who grow up with this fear, the elderly who cannot run to shelters, the families who have been displaced multiple times — their trauma will last for generations. And yet, the peace talks do not include them. They are spoken of as statistics, not as people with names and faces and stories.

In the face of this, it is easy to despair. But the history of peace movements shows that change is possible when ordinary people refuse to accept the unacceptable. From the anti-nuclear campaigns of the Cold War to the mass protests against the Iraq War, there is a precedent for civil society challenging the war machine. Today, there are grassroots organizations in Ukraine and Russia, in Europe and beyond, working for dialogue, for humanitarian corridors, for the protection of civilians. They are underfunded, often harassed, but they persist. They are the seeds of a different future, and they need our support — not just in words, but in resources, in visibility, in political backing.

The UN’s call for de-escalation is a reminder that the international community has not given up entirely. But de-escalation is not enough. We need a ceasefire, yes, but we also need a process that addresses the underlying grievances, that includes civil society, that places human security above state security. We need to reimagine what security means: not the security of borders and governments, but the security of people — their homes, their livelihoods, their communities. That is the lens through which we should view these drone strikes. Every drone that hits a power station is a blow to the security of a family. Every retaliatory strike is a failure of imagination.

The war in Ukraine is a global tragedy, but it is also a mirror. It reflects the priorities of a world order that values power over peace, profit over people. It shows us the cost of letting the military-industrial complex shape our foreign policy. It reminds us that the poor and the working class are always the first to be sacrificed on the altar of geopolitics. If we truly want peace, we must challenge the systems that make war inevitable. That means demanding transparency in arms deals, supporting peacebuilding initiatives, holding our leaders accountable, and remembering that the victims of this war are not abstractions. They are people like us, with dreams and fears and families.

So as the drones fly again tonight, as the diplomats shuffle their papers, as the UN issues another statement, let us not look away. Let us instead ask the hard questions: Who benefits from the continuation of this war? Who carries the cost? And what would it take to build a peace that is just, sustainable, and rooted in the dignity of every person? The answers are not simple, but they are necessary. And they start with us — with our refusal to accept the unacceptable, and our determination to stand with the workers, the families, and the communities who are paying the price for a peace that remains out of reach.