The Economist Latin America April 16, 2022

Politics Following Russia’s withdrawal from northern Ukraine, the inhabitants of Kyiv, the capital, as well as other northern cities such as Sumy and Chernihiv, enjoyed a week with no shelling or rocket attacks for the first time since the war started on February 24th. Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, farther to the east, was largely quiet, too. But there are fears that Russia is preparing a massive new assault in the Donbas region in the south-east. Vladimir Putin said peace talks were at a dead end and that Russia would prevail. Joe Biden, America’s president, described Russia’s actions in Ukraine as genocide. Karl Nehammer, the chancellor of Austria, became the first Western leader to visit Mr Putin since the war began. He emerged gloomy about the prospects for peace. Nice to see you Ursula von…

Politics Following Russia’s withdrawal from northern Ukraine, the inhabitants of Kyiv, the capital, as well as other northern cities such as Sumy and Chernihiv, enjoyed a week with no shelling or rocket attacks for the first time since the war started on February 24th. Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, farther to the east, was largely quiet, too. But there are fears that Russia is preparing a massive new assault in the Donbas region in the south-east. Vladimir Putin said peace talks were at a dead end and that Russia would prevail. Joe Biden, America’s president, described Russia’s actions in Ukraine as genocide. Karl Nehammer, the chancellor of Austria, became the first Western leader to visit Mr Putin since the war began. He emerged gloomy about the prospects for peace. Nice to…

IT IS OFTEN said that China’s government plans decades ahead, carefully playing the long game as democracies flip-flop and dither. But in Shanghai right now there is not much sign of strategic genius. Even as the rest of the world has reopened, 25m people are in a citywide lockdown, trapped in their apartments and facing food and medical shortages that not even China’s censors can cover up. The zero-covid policy has become a dead end from which the Communist Party has no quick exit. It is one of a trio of problems faced by China this year, alongside a misfiring economy and the war in Ukraine. You may think they are unconnected, but China’s response to each has a common root: swagger and hubris in public, an obsession with control in…

THE WAR is first of all about the fate of 44m Ukrainians. But in the shattered ruins of Mariupol and Kharkiv a worldview is also at stake. Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine to force it to renounce the West and to submit to the Kremlin. He believes that big countries should be free to dominate smaller ones. Ukraine counters that it will choose its own allies. With Western backing, it is affirming the universal principle that all countries are sovereign. Whoever prevails on the battlefield will win a fundamental argument about how the world should work. It matters, therefore, that off the battlefield this is an argument the West is losing. Most of the emerging world either backs Russia over its invasion or is neutral. Some countries depend on Russian arms, others…

WHEN PAKISTAN’S top brass helped install Imran Khan as prime minister in 2018, the former cricket champion seemed like the perfect front man. He was a sporting hero, dashing and cosmopolitan. Even so, he had cultivated a folksy, pious air, along with a streak of indignant nationalism that could fire up a rally. His party looked different from the tiresome old lot, which are run as fiefs by political dynasties. His attack on the entire political class as irretrievably corrupt dovetailed helpfully with the work of the aptly named NAB, or National Accountability Bureau, which was trying to put an end to one of those dynasties by prosecuting Nawaz Sharif, the outgoing prime minister. Most important, Mr Khan cheerfully did what the armed forces wanted, be it cosying up to China…

IT IS OFTEN said that China’s government plans decades ahead, carefully playing the long game as democracies flip-flop and dither. But in Shanghai right now there is not much sign of strategic genius. Even as the rest of the world has reopened, 25m people are in a citywide lockdown, trapped in their apartments and facing food and medical shortages that not even China’s censors can cover up. The zero-covid policy has become a dead end from which the Communist Party has no quick exit. It is one of a trio of problems faced by China this year, alongside a misfiring economy and the war in Ukraine. You may think they are unconnected, but China’s response to each has a common root: swagger and hubris in public, an obsession with control…