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It is not presently possible to make PSTN phone calls to several of the people in warzones with whom I use WhatsApp to communicate.

IP networks have much more reach than the PSTN these days. It's not 1995.

Out of interest, is Ukraine one of the war zones?

I don't know the phone numbers of anyone except my mother and my bank.

Sure but if you have them in WhatsApp, you have them in your phone. At least, I can't add someone to WhatsApp - I can only add them as a phone contact and then WhatsApp magically parasites off that.

You can save them on your phone you know that?

Let’s do a phone group call with 50 people, fun.

I don't know anyone who do that on whatsapp.

Group messaging is extremely common. If you replaced this with calls, you would need some kind of group phone call. It was sarcasm.

yeah I understand that but I don't know of any big group of that size where I could not suffer a few hours of downtime.

I don't see how I could be in a situation where sending a message to a +50 group is critical.