The winter war

The world this week

Politics
Business
KAL’s cartoon
Leaders


War in Ukraine
A looming Russian offensive
Ukraine’s chiefs, in an unprecedented series of briefings, tell The Economist about the critical months that lie ahead

Little steps, many lives
China’s covid wave could kill as many as 1.5m people
The government can still avoid an enormous death toll

I say go, go, go!
Why are the rich world’s politicians giving up on economic growth?
Even when they say they want more prosperity, they act as if they don’t

Nuclear energy
The French exception
As the world turns back to nuclear power, it should heed the lessons from France

After farmgate
How to save South Africa
The ruling party is unreformable. The country needs a coalition of the clean

Letters

On public registries in the EU, homelessness, lay-offs, pensioners, Northfield, Bagehot
Letters to the editor
By Invitation


Ukraine and Russia
Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff on how to end war in Ukraine
Covid-19 in China
Two health experts say China’s haste to re-open risks needless death and disruption
Geopolitics
Aaron Friedberg says the West should abandon efforts to integrate a hostile, revisionist China
Briefing


Ukraine’s fateful winter
Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals explain why the war hangs in the balance
Our interviews with the men shaping Ukraine’s response to Russia’s aggression

Restraint under fire
Ukraine’s top soldier runs a different kind of army from Russia’s
Valery Zaluzhny wants to encourage initiative and devolve authority

General principles
“Anyone who underestimates Russia is headed for defeat”
An interview with Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s second most senior soldier
Asia


Sino-Japanese relations
East Asia’s big beasts are getting on badly
Forgetting your parents
Japan’s most endangered languages face extinction
Boy band of brothers
BTS takes on­ Kim Jong Un
At the coal face
Mongolians brave the cold to decry corruption
Banyan
China’s frontier aggression has pushed India to the West
China


On their own
How Chinese people are dealing with the spread of covid-19
No worse than the flu?
What to make of China’s claims about covid
Lives on the lines
Our model shows that China’s covid death toll could be massive
Chaguan
The politics of Xi Jinping’s covid retreat
United States


Picket lines and poké
America’s unions are gentrifying
Mr Musk’s moderation
What to make of the Twitter Files?
Crimes of fashion
Why catalytic-converter theft has soared in America
Chop chop
Axe-throwing may be the friendliest new sport in America
Or else
A city experiments with paying people not to be annoying
Smoke and mirrors
E-cigarette taxes may reduce teenage drink-driving deaths
Lexington
Republicans should leave Hunter Biden to his painting, and the Justice Department

Middle East & Africa


A bitter life for all
The party of Nelson Mandela is imploding
Zilch cows
Commercial cattle-raiding is impoverishing Uganda’s herders
Big brother will see you now
China is helping Zimbabwe to build a surveillance state
The elusive looters
Iraq’s new prime minister vows to clean up the country
Of lions and pride
Morocco’s World Cup success sparks a debate about Arab identity
The Americas


The agony of Peronism
Argentina’s populist political movement is at its lowest ebb
Europe


Survival of the blitzed
Despite power cuts and blockades, Ukraine’s economy is coping
Missing multitudes
The war has worsened Ukraine’s demographic woes
Unbeloved Berlin
Germany’s capital struggles to clean up its act
The job-share taoiseachs
Ireland’s new prime minister is mocked before he starts
Two-speed nation
France needs better slow trains, not just fast ones
Charlemagne
A corruption scandal leaves the EU reeling
Britain


A historical mystery
The strange case of Britain’s demise
Data and declinism
Britain’s economic record since 2007 ranks near the bottom among peer countries
Railing against the system
The British government and the unions dig in on train strikes
Bagehot
Why do Harry and Meghan wind people up?
International


Covid babies
The pandemic’s indirect effects on small children could last a lifetime
Business


Atomic reactions
Can the French nuclear industry avoid meltdown?
A Taj of class
Why Mumbai’s old business district is so shabby
Log off-ice
Tech lay-offs are the latest blow to office landlords
Silicon Wall Street
Big tech pushes further into finance
Cutback Christmas
German retailers aren’t feeling very festive
Bartleby
The enduring value of an analogue technology
Schumpeter
America’s biggest ports face a new kind of paralysis
Finance & economics


First-world problems
How the West fell out of love with economic growth
Facing the music
The game is up for Sam Bankman-Fried
US economy
America’s inflation fever may be breaking at last
Going Dutch
What an unusual auction says about the art market
No time to chill
Europe looks increasingly complacent about the winter ahead
Stormy skies
The struggle to put a carbon price on a flight
Free exchange
The insidious threats to central-bank independence
Science & technology


A brouhaha about fusion
Controlled fusion is little nearer now than it was a week ago
COP15
A UN biodiversity meeting is slugging it out in Montreal
Menstrual products
Not enough is known about the science of pads and tampons
Snake sex
A study of ophidian clitorises suggests snakes are highly sexed
Culture


Beautiful world, there are you
Reading Sally Rooney in China
Turkey and the Ottomans
The Ottoman empire fell a century ago. Or did it?
Johnson
And the word of 2022 is…
The naked truth
Alice Neel’s art is at last getting the attention it deserves
Economic & financial indicators

Indicators
Economic data, commodities and markets
The Economist explains


The Economist explains
What caused the demise of Boeing’s 747 airliner?
The Economist explains
How to design a perfect World Cup
Obituary


To breach a wall
Squadron Leader Johnny Johnson longed to give Hitler a bloody nose