Honestly, I don’t think that’s what’s happening.

Western media is overwhelmingly profit-driven, which implies that it has a selection bias for flashy, attention-getting stories and headlines. Grinding, grappling, (relatively) slow-paced maneuver-based warfare across a front many hundreds of kilometers long is neither of those things.

The vast majority of modern western media simply no longer has the organizational structure or journalistic tone to cover sweeping, years-long strategic military struggles - which is precisely what the Ukrainian War is.