Ukraine Reels Under Fierce Russian Fire, Economy Included

The slow-motion earthquake that is Russia’s war on Ukraine is in its 15th week of ripping the country apart, with Russian forces now said to be killing up to 200 Ukrainian soldiers a day in the embattled eastern region of Donbas. Compounded with those who are injured, the Stars and Stripes estimated 1,000 Ukrainians are being knocked out of the fight daily. The governments of Ukraine and Western countries are also contending with the enormous economic costs of fending off Vladimir Putin’s war machine and trying with limited success to effectively shut it down. The Stars and Stripes reported that the Ukrainians are putting up a brave fight but are running out of ammunition and suffering casualties at a far higher rate than in the initial stages of the war. The “euphoria” that Ukraine’s early victories generated is now eclipsed by Russia’s “overwhelming firepower against heavily outgunned Ukrainian forces”; the long-range rockets Washington has promised have not yet been delivered. Also unsettling is the likelihood that Russian bombers have been launching heavy, 1960s-era anti-ship missiles. The British Defense Ministry said that when used in ground attacks with conventional warheads, they “are highly inaccurate and therefore can cause severe collateral damage and casualties.”Sievierodonetsk, an eastern city with a pre-war population of 100,000, has been hotly fought over for some time, and that city and neighboring Lysychansk are the last major areas of the Donbas’s Luhansk province not under the control of pro-Russia rebels, the Associated Press reported. Some Ukrainian fighters remained in an industrial area of the city, including a chemical plant where civilians had taken shelter during a weeks-long Russian bombardment. A senior American defense official told the Stars and Stripes that Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk could fall to Russia within a week.The general outlook from Kyiv, which itself is relatively calm, is bleak. President Zelensky told the Financial Times: “We are inferior in terms of equipment … we are not capable of advancing … [and] are going to suffer more losses.” That newspaper also reported that according to a source close to the president, Mr. Zelensky privately foresees a war “that could drag on for years, depleting Ukraine’s population as the economy collapses and people move to Europe.”There are morale and manpower issues on the front lines and addressing both has taken on renewed urgency, but in addition Ukraine is bleeding financially. Many newspapers including the Sun have previously reported that the Russian invasion has already inflicted upward of $600 billion in damages on the country. On top of that staggering loss, the Financial Times reported, Ukraine is running a $7 billion budget deficit each month as it struggles to issue welfare and pension payments and pay salaries. One way to do that would be for Ukraine to seize Russian assets in the country, such as factories and banks, and the deputy head of Mr. Zelensky’s office, Rostyslav Shurma, told the FT that “the whole world needs to work” on confiscating Russia’s assets. That, however, is easier done on paper than in practice. Washington froze $300 billion in Russian foreign exchange assets after the invasion in February; the sum could at some point be found money for Kyiv. It is becoming increasingly clear, in any case, that it is impossible to decouple the human calamity of the Russian invasion from the economic toll. According to Bloomberg, the World Bank has now cut its forecast for global GDP to a lowly 2.9 percent, citing supply disruptions triggered by the war in Ukraine. The Washington-based lender reduced its estimate for global growth this year from a January prediction of 4.1 percent; by contrast, the growth rate in 2021 was 5.7 percent. The global surge in energy and food prices shows no signs of diminishing. Foreign Policy reported that the price of oil is galloping toward $150 a barrel, and the chief executive of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, has said he thinks oil is headed to $175 a barrel, which would be almost a third higher than the $120 a barrel at which Brent crude is currently trading. The economic repercussions are difficult to fathom.Is Washington ready to accelerate its delivery of the fiscal and strategic solutions to help beat back the chaos the Kremlin has unleashed? Rudimentary as Moscow’s methods may be, they are unrelenting. The worst thing would be if the West’s well-intentioned but so far piecemeal approach simply whetted Mr. Putin’s appetite for more Ukraine. This appears to already be happening.

Ukraine Reels Under Fierce Russian Fire, Economy Included

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