KARACHI: A book titled Ukraine War: Beyond the Headlines by eminent journalist Munir Ahmed was launched at the Quaid-i-Azam House Museum on Friday evening.

The event was organised by the Karachi Council on Foreign Relations (KCFR).

Welcoming the guests, KCFR chairperson Nadira Panjwani said, “A unique feature of the book is that it’s a non-Western perspective on the Ukraine conflict.”

After giving a brief geographical history of Ukraine, she said since its independence in 1991, Ukraine’s politics has reflected competing visions.

At launch of Ukraine War: Beyond the Headlines, Russian diplomat praises Pakistan for ‘always taking an independent and well-balanced position’

“Over the decades, Western powers and Nato have pursued a campaign of bolstering Ukraine as a bulwark against Russia and their aggressive eastward push created conditions for a full scale military conflict between Russia and Ukraine in 2022,” she said.

Russian Consul General Andrey Viktorovich Fedorov said the Ukrainian crisis has become one of the most serious and complicated geopolitical problems of the 21st century.

“As you know, at the very beginning of the crisis and even before it, the western media outlets generated a wave of hysteria… Now they are focusing on Russian drones which allegedly show up in various European countries. Each time it turns out that it was not a drone or that it was a Ukrainian drone,” he said.

He said Pakistan has always taken an independent and well-balanced position. “I’d like to express my gratitude to all Pakistani experts, writers and journalists who, like Mr Munir Ahmed, want to learn the truth in our complicated world. I hope the book we’re launching today will enrich the knowledge of each reader and serve as a source of further insights and analysis.”

Dr Huma Baqai said her central message for the evening was very simple, “Wars are never easy, and those who initiate them often underestimate how difficult it will be to end them.”

Dr Naazir Mahmood said Mr Munir Ahmed’s book tries to be an unbiased version of what’s happening in the region.

Speaking on the occasion, the author said that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine surged again in 2021. When he started reading about it, he got to know how another massacre was engineered in 2014. The two countries at the time were contributing significantly to the global food basket and 40 per cent energy to Europe and beyond.

“What happened that suddenly they became enemies? Who engineered that conflict? That was my interest,” he said.

Referring to his first article on the subject in January 2022 titled ‘Ukraine — the Next Afghanistan?’, he said: “In my first piece, I tried to explore the similarities in the causes behind the Afghan war and the forthcoming conflict. I was consistently writing about the conflict. After two years of writing those pieces, I thought I had a good number of articles, and if I wrote one or two exclusive chapters [for a book]… but unfortunately, due to the tried to explore the similarities in the causes behind the Afghan war and the forthcoming conflict. I was consistently writing about the conflict. After two years of writing those pieces, I thought I had a good number of articles, and if I wrote one or two exclusive chapters [for a book]… but unfortunately, due to the bureaucratic hurdles that we usually face in Islamabad, it could not happen.

“I struggled for two years. But [later] I was encouraged by retired Lt Gen Asad Durrani. We used to meet each other at different diplomatic events. One day he asked me, ‘what are you doing man’. I told him I’d been writing about Ukraine and had compiled a couple of more chapters, adding to the volume of articles that I’d written. It would be great if you [Gen Durrani] could write the preface to the book. I had asked a couple of other people as well about it, but Gen Durrani was the one who kept his promise,” he said.

Mr Ahmed said a few months back, he got connected with Amazon. On Oct 6, the book was published in different market places. “And that basically gave me a new energy.”

With reference to the subject of the book, the author said, “Usually what we see at the forefront is not the story. The story is behind it.”

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2026