Dec 17th 2022

The winter war

The world this week

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

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

The Americas

The agony of Peronism

Argentina’s populist political movement is at its lowest ebb

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

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

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