By Rajan Menon
Despite the Ukrainian Army’s battlefield advances and Russia’s retreats, most recently from parts of Kherson Province, Ukraine’s economy has been left in tatters. A prolonged war of attrition — which seems likely — will subject it to additional strain. For the Kyiv government, the cost of prosecuting the war while also meeting the material needs of its citizens will mount even if the Ukrainian Army keeps gaining ground. Worse, winter looms and Russia, frustrated by the serial military failures it has experienced since September, seems bent on crippling Ukraine’s economy by taking the wrecking ball to its critical infrastructure. On Tuesday alone, an estimated 90 Russian missiles rained down across Ukraine.
Ukraine’s biggest problem may not be the military threat posed by Mr. Putin’s army, significant though that will remain, but rather coping with the destruction Russia’s attacks wreak on its economy — and at a time when the prospects for the large and continuing flow of aid Kyiv desperately needs could diminish because of deteriorating economic conditions in the West.
Despite its recent military reverses, Russia retains immense destructive power. Just within recent weeks, its missiles and drones have struck 40 percent of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, triggering rolling blackouts across the country. Missile barrages left about 4.5 million Ukrainians without electricity. Eighty percent of Kyiv’s denizens were deprived of water; 350,000 homes lost power. As this week’s missile strikes show, Russia is not about to let up.
Amid all this, Ukraine’s leaders must meet the many basic needs of their people, whose lives have been upended. The United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported this month that six million Ukrainians are now “internally displaced” (another seven million have sought refuge abroad). Unemployment had reached 35 percent by the second quarter of this year, according to the National Bank of Ukraine. The poverty rate, 2.5 percent in 2020, may approach 25 percent by December, and twice that by the end of next year. Wartime upheaval and destruction have been especially hard on children; nearly half a million more in Ukraine have been pushed into poverty, the second-largest share in the region.
This piece was originally published in The New York Times on November 17, 2022. Read more HERE.