The Economist Asia Edition March 5, 2022

Politics Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine did not go to plan in its first week. Russian vehicles ran out of fuel or broke down. The invaders, who had been told they were liberating Ukraine from a “Nazi” government, met stiff resistance and suffered heavy casualties. Ukrainian forces fought back ferociously. Crowds of civilians stood in the way of tanks. Mr Putin switched to more brutal tactics, raining shells on civilians in cities, a war crime. The International Criminal Court started to collect evidence. Russian troops captured Kherson, a port. Kyiv, the capital, prepared for a siege. At least 1m refugees fled Ukraine, mostly to Poland but also to Hungary, Moldova, Romania and Slovakia. Women and children were evacuated on packed trains. The EU vowed to let them in. Ukraine ordered…

MARVEL AT THE heroism and resilience of Ukraine. In the first days of war, the armoured might of Vladimir Putin shrivelled before the courage of the nation he had attacked. In the face of Mr Putin’s invasion, the Ukrainian people have discovered they are ready to die for the idea that they should choose their own destiny. To a cynical dictator that must be incomprehensible. To the rest of humanity it is an inspiration. If only this week’s bravery were enough to bring the fighting to an end. Alas, Russia’s president will not withdraw so easily. From the start, Mr Putin has made clear that this is a war of escalation—a hygienic word for a dirty and potentially catastrophic reality. At its most brutal, escalation means that, whatever the world…

RUSSIA’S INVASION of Ukraine could yet become the biggest military action in Europe since 1945. It also marks a new era of high-risk economic warfare that could further splinter the world economy. The measures the West has imposed on Russia are so potent that they have triggered chaos in its $1.6trn economy and prompted the president, Vladimir Putin, to issue nuclear threats. The instant immiseration of a big economy is unprecedented and will cause alarm around the world, not least in China, which will recalculate the costs of a war over Taiwan. The West’s priority must be to win the economic confrontation with Russia. Then it must create a doctrine to govern these weapons in order to prevent a broader shift towards autarky. The fact that Russia did not take…

WAR IN UKRAINE has caused European natural-gas prices almost to double and sent oil prices soaring to over $115 a barrel. That has added to the inflation problem facing the world’s central banks. And more pain is probably coming. Western energy giants are getting out of Russia, sanctions are wreaking havoc on Russian commodities exports (see Schumpeter) and the cancelling of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany will remove a potential source of relief. If Russian energy exports are cut off completely, the oil price could reach $150, rapidly boosting global consumer prices by another 2% (see Finance & economics section). According to orthodoxy, rich-world central bankers should all but ignore supply shocks such as dearer energy. That is because their direct effect on inflation is…

FIVE YEARS ago a little-known former economy minister won the French presidency in his first bid for elected office. Emmanuel Macron, then 39, became the country’s youngest leader since Napoleon Bonaparte. On April 10th and 24th France will hold its next two-round presidential election. Mr Macron hopes to defy precedent again by securing a second term. This would be quite a feat. For the past 20 years no French president has been re-elected. Only two, François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, have won a second term since Charles de Gaulle in 1965. Mr Macron is nonetheless the strong favourite. Our model gives him an 88% probability of re-election, even though he has yet to hold a rally or take to the campaign trail. Mr Macron has had a lot on, softening…

IN NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) can take media attention for granted. Its infrequent and authoritative analyses of how much climate change human activity is causing, and will cause, and its weighty warnings about the consequent rising seas, deepening droughts, failing crops and so forth lead front pages and news bulletins alike. This week, though, circumstances are anything but normal, and the panel found that getting the world to pay attention to a 3,600-page document describing in great detail the current and future impacts of climate change was hard. To add to the sidelining, the fact that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is likely to bring about a profound shift in European energy policies makes the war particularly fascinating to the sort of climate wonks who…