It’s not just the liberation of Kherson in life… there’s the missile launch in Poland too. It is inevitably the Przewodow episode that we remember from this umpteenth week of war in Ukraine, which ends this Friday, the 268th day of conflict. Still, several Ukrainian cities, including the capital kyiv, have been the targets of new Russian strikes as snowflakes fell in a country plagued by power cuts. Between missile fire, recession and inflation, 20 minutes takes stock of the conflict in four infographics
Nebula around a missile in Poland
Who fired? A missile killed two people on Tuesday in the Polish village of Przewodow, near the border with Ukraine, heavily bombarded by the Russian army. After immediately accusing Moscow and convening its national security council, Warsaw changed its mind on Wednesday, considering it “highly probable” that it was an “unfortunate accident” due to a Ukrainian projectile. In the meantime, Joe Biden had declared that it was “improbable” that the missile was fired from Russia and assured that he would “determine what exactly happened”. The Kremlin, which denies any responsibility, welcomed the “restraint” of the American reaction.
kyiv, for its part, called on Wednesday for “immediate access” to the site and a “joint examination of the incident”, continuing to evoke Russian responsibility. However, this Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he “did not know what happened”. The same day, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured that Russia bore “ultimate responsibility” for the deadly fall of this missile in Poland. The same evening, Ukrainian experts arrived in Poland to participate in the investigation aimed at determining where the missile was fired from. “We hope that they will quickly gain access to the site of the incident, in cooperation with Polish law enforcement,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said on Twitter.
In Kherson, chaos and hope after the Russian withdrawal
After eight months of occupation, the inhabitants of Kherson live free, but in chaos. With the city’s electricity and water supply cut off after the Russians destroyed major utilities before their withdrawal, residents are rushing to stockpile basic necessities as yesterday draws near. Residents are now queuing up to pick up SIM cards, get pensions and scraps of humanitarian aid.
Meanwhile, a senior Ukrainian human rights official said on Thursday that the scale of torture cases in Kherson during the Russian occupation was “horrendous”. “I have not yet seen” torture “on such a scale”, “after visiting all the torture rooms in various regions of Ukraine”, said Dmytro Loubynets.
Russian forces, which after withdrawing from Kherson, announced that they had left the city of Nova Kakhovka (see infographic), Moscow accusing kyiv forces of bombarding this city located near a strategic hydroelectric dam.
Russia in the red
As this infographic shows, Russia technically entered a technical recession this week (according to the definition commonly used), almost nine months after the start of the military offensive in Ukraine. Its gross domestic product (GDP) fell 4% in the third quarter, according to an initial assessment published on Wednesday. The statistics agency Rosstat announced these figures in the wake of a second quarter already weighed down (-4.1%) by the heavy Western sanctions taken in the spring to punish Moscow.
According to the cabinet of Boris Titov, representative of entrepreneurs to the Kremlin, almost a third of 5,800 Russian companies recently surveyed have suffered a drop in their revenues in recent months. The fact remains that, according to a forecast by the Russian Central Bank made on November 8, GDP should contract around -3.5% over the whole of 2022, a far cry from the apocalyptic forecasts envisaged in the spring. The country is still officially in a situation of full employment, with an unemployment rate of 3.9% in September, according to the Rosstat statistics agency.
Meat prices soar
In the United Kingdom, between inflation that exceeds 11% and the shortage of eggs, the traditional “English breakfast” costs more and more to prepare. And the war in Ukraine has something to do with it, as can be seen in the infographic above. “The box of 360 eggs costs 68 pounds compared to 20 three months ago,” lamented a London resident to AFP on Thursday.
And in the face of inflation, which weighs above all on the smallest purses, some French people are struggling to maintain a healthy diet, between unaffordable vegetables and the return of junk food. This Wednesday, above her trolley “half as full as before”, Catherine Garnier, 39, sighs: “I took less vegetables and meat, more pasta and potatoes. Exit also the few organic products that she sometimes allows herself. Inflation, in particular that on food products (+12% over one year in October, according to INSEE), risks degrading the quality of French food.
For several months now, many French people have favored “a single family dish” where meat is replaced by eggs or starchy foods, observed Lydia Rabine, analyst for the Kantar research institute, at the start of the week. In the first half of 2022, the French consumed an average of 1.5 kg of red meat and around a kilo of poultry less than in the same period last year, according to Kantar.