It remains a phenomena crying out for an explanation.

Always trying to find additional insight by looking at the negative space but at the risk of appearing to conflate separate issues.    

In this instance, the negative space is what is not being reported out of the Ukraine.  What is it that we ought to be hearing about that we are not?  There are several candidates.  Until today, I have heard nothing or less than I would have expected about:

Spring thaw as an impediment to Russian maneuver.

Civilian casualties.

Ukrainian civilian food supplies.

Ukrainian civil services (trains, buses, hospitals, electricity, water, gas, telecoms, etc.) and their apparent resilience. 

Ukrainian military leadership and intended strategies.

On the last item, there is lots of reporting about the surprisingly effective resistance by Ukraine so far with much focus on patriotic Ukrainians taking up arms.  I am not discounting that.  But if the Russians have been effectively resisted so far, it almost certainly has to have been by the Ukrainian military.  I see almost no discussion about their preparations, plans, capabilities, or strategies.  

The other item, among many, in the negative space, is Covid-19.  The topic which has dominated western headlines for two years.

Up until World War II, battlefield deaths were always exceeded by deaths from disease.  Cholera, typhus, respiratory illnesses - there were a whole raft of diseases killing off troops before they ever made it to battle.  In World War II we got smart and we got good at maintaining the health of troops during and after battle.  

But the fundamental issue is always there.  We practice good hygiene and track and monitor troop health and provide good, targeted and rapid responses to disease.  We vaccinate more and we have better treatments than in the past.  It is a whole infrastructure of health to guard and protect precious life.  

And I have read absolutely nothing about the risk Covid-19 might pose to the combatants.  The Russians with 200,000 troops or more in close quarters and mobile conditions and the Ukrainians similarly exposed with a mix of mobile troop deployments and massive refugee population movements.  

Were Covid-19 the danger it has been made out to be, one would expect that it would have at least some operational impact and that there would be at least some discussion.  And I am not seeing that.

It may be as mundane an explanation as that we are between variants and February/March is a low point in the seasonality of that region.  Or that the Russian vaccine is highly effective (it would appear not).  Or that Russia and Ukraine are treating Covid as a state secret when it comes to the military and that is why there is no coverage.  Or that Covid is simply not operationally relevant to those young and healthy enough to be in the military.

Or any of a dozen other plausible explanations.  But it remains a phenomena crying out for an explanation and instead we have a yawning silence.