August 25th 2022

The Economist this week

Highlights from the latest issue

Six months ago Russia invaded Ukraine. On the battlefield a war of attrition is under way along a thousand-kilometre front line of death and destruction. Our cover this week is about the other struggle raging over Ukraine—an economic conflict of a ferocity and scope not seen since the 1940s, as Western countries try to cripple Russia’s $1.8trn economy with a novel arsenal of sanctions. The effectiveness of this embargo is critical to the outcome of the Ukraine war. But it also reveals a great deal about liberal democracies’ capa­city to project power globally into the late 2020s and beyond, including against China. Worryingly, so far the sanctions war is not going as well as expected.

Zanny Minton Beddoes
Editor-in-chief

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The world this week

Ukraine celebrated its independence day, coincidentally on the six-month anniversary of the Russian invasion. Kyiv put on a display of ruined Russian military equipment, to mock Vladimir Putin’s reported plan to hold a victory parade there six months ago. Rumours that Russia would lob missiles at Kyiv this week proved unfounded, but a Russian strike on a train station in Ukraine’s east killed 22 people. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, pledged to drive Russian forces entirely out of the country, and said that Ukraine had been “reborn” in the conflict.

More from Politics this week

A whistleblower claimed that Twitter had “egregious deficiencies” in data privacy and other sensitive areas, and had misled regulators over its cyber defences. Peiter Zatko was head of security at Twitter from late 2020 until his sacking earlier this year. The company said his allegations were full of “inconsistencies”. Mr Zatko’s claims about the handling of fake accounts parallel Elon Musk’s reasons for wanting to ditch his takeover of Twitter. Mr Musk’s lawyer said a subpoena had been issued to Mr Zatko. A subpoena has also been handed to Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s former boss, ahead of a trial that will determine if the deal should go ahead.

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