The Economist Continental Europe Edition January 21, 2023

Russia intensified its missile attacks on cities in Ukraine, part of its strategy to bomb the population into submission. One rocket hit a residential block in Dnipro, killing at least 40 people, the deadliest single loss of civilian lives in Russia’s latest campaign. It has mostly targeted energy infrastructure, causing widespread loss of power in the depth of winter. Ukraine’s interior minister was killed in a helicopter crash in a suburb of Kyiv. The helicopter came down in dense fog near a nursery, killing at least 14 people in total. The interior ministry is responsible for domestic security and has helped gather evidence on Russian war crimes. Christine Lambrecht resigned as Germany’s defence minister. She had lost credibility after a number of gaffes, such as offering to supply Ukraine with helmets when…

Markets were left dumbfounded by the Bank of Japan’s decision to stick with its policy of controlling the yield on Japanese long-term government bonds. Investors were expecting the central bank to at least signal that it would change its monetary policy, after it had raised the cap on fluctuations (above or below a target of zero) in ten-year bond yields in December. Since then it has spent ¥34trn ($265bn) purchasing bonds to keep yields low. The yen fell by 2% against the dollar after the announcement. Britain’s annual inflation rate dipped only slightly in December, to 10.5%. The government has promised to halve the rate this year. Food prices rose by 16.9% over 12 months, the fastest pace in decades. In America the inflation rate fell to 6.5% in December. In…

TURKEY HAS NATO’s second-biggest armed forces. It plays a crucial role in a turbulent neighbourhood, especially in war-scorched Syria. It exerts growing influence in the western Balkans, in the eastern Mediterranean and more recently in Africa. Above all, it is important in the Black Sea and in Russia’s war in Ukraine; last year it helped broker a deal to let more Ukrainian grain be shipped to a hungry world. So outsiders should pay attention to Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections, which Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested this week will be held on May 14th. All the more so since, under its increasingly erratic president, the country is on the brink of disaster. Mr Erdogan’s behaviour as the election approaches could push what is today a deeply flawed democracy over the edge into…

“WHY DO WE have to grow up?” Walt Disney once wondered. As it launches its centenary celebrations on January 27th, the Walt Disney Company has sustained its appeal to the young and young-at-heart. This year Hollywood’s biggest studio will invest more in original content than any other firm. It dominates the global box office, with four of last year’s ten biggest hits, and has more streaming subscriptions than anyone else. Its intellectual property (IP) is turned into merchandise ranging from lunchboxes to lightsabers, and exploited in theme parks that are churning out healthy profits even as covid-19 lingers. More than just a business, Disney is perhaps the most successful culture factory the world has ever known. So the upheaval rocking the company today has relevance far beyond its empire (see Briefing).…

IN 1516 THOMAS MORE described the ideal health-care system. “These hospitals are well supplied with all types of medical equipment and the nurses are sympathetic,” the philosopher wrote in “Utopia”. “Though nobody’s forced to go there, practically everyone would rather be ill in hospitals than at home.” Five centuries later, those who prefer to be ill in hospital would struggle to make it past the lobby. People often lament the shortcomings of their own country’s health system. They tend to ignore the extent to which pressure is visible across the rich world (see Finance & economics section). Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is in a winter crisis like none before, with people who have heart attacks waiting 90 minutes for an ambulance. In Canada things are so bad that a children’s…

THE GLOBAL financial crisis of 2007-09 showed that huge bombs had been placed in the rich world’s banking systems and capital markets. If one blew up, as Lehman Brothers did, it could send a blast wave through the rest of the economy. The companies that run power stations, railways and ports can be every bit as systemically important as banks. Eskom, South Africa’s state-owned electricity firm, was once among the world’s largest utilities by installed capacity. In recent decades it has been hollowed out by graft, cronyism and mismanagement. Daily blackouts now close South African factories, offices and shops. The government reckons this “load-shedding” trimmed GDP growth by about 1.3 percentage points in 2019. The effect is now surely worse: there were roughly four times as many blackouts in the first nine…