Putin on the fritz: Six months of war in Ukraine

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. In New York, I'm John Fassman.

And in London, I'm Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Voters in Angola, sub Saharan Africa's third largest economy, head to the polls today. Joao Lorenzo, the incumbent, wants another five year term, but his party has been losing support. And trust in the electoral process is low all around.

And what's now the largest arts gathering in the world started off with eight drama troupes showing up uninvited and staging anarchic cheap shows on the fringes of a snootier festival. These days, the Edinburgh Festival fringe is the main attraction.

But first, Today is Ukraine's Independence Day. It's also been six months since Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, launched his war against the country. The opening days and weeks of the invasion were chaotic. The capital, Kyiv, was under heavy assault. Hundreds of thousands of people fled. The situation was fluid and things were moving quickly. But as the months have dragged on, those frenetic early encounters have given way to a grinding war of attrition.

Today marks six months since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in the small hours of 24 February 2022.

Christopher Lockwood is the Economist's Europe editor.

Six months later, the war has come not exactly to a standstill, but almost to a kind of stalemate, with Russia having very largely failed to achieve any of its objectives.

Let's start with the reason this is all happening in the first place. Russia wanted to invade Ukraine and, as it puts it, return it to Russia. How much of Ukraine has it, in fact, taken?

Well, this has been a remarkably unsuccessful campaign. Russia launched its attack by heading in from the north, from the east, from the south. It wanted to take territory in all of those places. But an absolutely critical part of the operation was an airborne assault on Kyiv, the capital, that was undertaken by special forces and it failed. It was repulsed by the Ukrainians on the first night. They denied The Russians the ability to secure a landing area so they could bring in paratroopers. And really the. The Russian invasion never could succeed after that. The aim had been to decapitate the government, I think to kill or capture Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine. And this is actually quite similar to what Russia had done in Crimea eight years earlier in 2014, where they surrounded the parliament building and took it over. That completely failed. And so they switched to another plan, which was to seize as much territory as they could in the north, the east and the south. And what's been happening ever since has been the gradual grinding to a standstill of that Russian advance and in places it being reversed.

Do you think either country has the upper hand right now?

It depends on what you mean by the upper hand. Russia is still occupying about 20% or so of Ukraine's territory, though bear in mind it had 7 or 8% before, after its earlier invasion in 2014. So it's added a bit of territory. So to that extent it's got an upper hand. But it is no longer making any significant gains. It's inching forward in the eastern Donbas region. In the south, it's losing territory very slightly, but neither side is mounting decisive movements against the other in any of those spheres. The big place where Russia lost was in the north, where it had occupied big chunks of territory, almost surrounding, though not completely surrounding, Kyiv, the capital, and Kharkiv, the second biggest city out in the northeast. And it's been pushed well back from Kyiv. In fact, it abandoned the entire north. It's still hanging on closer to Kharkiv, but from most of the north of the country it withdrew to concentrate in the east and in the south. And it's still gaining very small amounts of territory in the east. But the battle is turning into something a bit looking like a standstill now. There's a lot of talk about a big counter offensive by the Ukrainians. It has begun to a certain extent in the south, but so far making quite little progress. We have to see if they have something much bigger and bolder up their sleeves. We don't know that yet, Chris.

Ukraine has received a great deal of support and weapons from Western allies. Do you think it's getting enough and do you see it continuing for as long as it needs to?

Well, enough is a difficult question. Enough for what? They don't have enough to drive the Russians out of their country, that's for sure. They don't have the sort of long range weapons that will enable them to strike deep into Russian territory where troops can be being brought up and trained and supplied and so forth. So they're only able to operate essentially within their own borders. They would like to have much more. The more they have, the easier it will be for them to push the Russians out. That said, in the last few weeks we've seen the delivery of very significant amounts of medium range missiles which are being used to pretty devastating effect by the Ukrainians striking targets deep into Crimea, knocking out ammunition dumps, logistics centres, headquarters, all that kind of thing. Really demoralizing the hell out of the Russians, I suspect.

So some combination of bravery, ingenuity, Western weapons and Western intelligence sharing helps explain Ukraine's success. What explains Russia's unexpectedly poor military performance?

Lots of reasons. One, nobody really knew what this invasion was for. It seems to have been very badly prepared for by the troops. Most of the original troops that went in were told that they were on a training exercise. Some of them apparently didn't even realise they were inside Ukraine because they'd all had their phones taken away from them, so they couldn't use Google Maps or anything like that. There are terrible stories about the extent of corruption within the Russian armed forces, so that the tens of billions of dollars that have been spent supposedly on keeping the Russian military machine up to snuff have all been stolen. And as a result, again, stories of Russian vehicles very poorly maintained, sometimes using cheap Chinese tyres, which exploded many, many morale problems. Of course, as the scale of the death started to get higher and higher. Everything points, I think, to an idea among the top Russians, maybe just among Putin himself, that this would be a very quick knockout blow. There was certainly no proper planning for anything like the sort of long campaign that we've seen.

You mentioned morale problems among Russian soldiers. What about Ukraine? How do you think their morale is holding up and will hold up in the coming months?

Ukraine's morale is remarkably high at the moment, perhaps a little higher than it ought to be. They think that after six months they've fought the Russians to a standstill, even reversing some of their gains. Every day that goes by, they feel they get stronger because they get more equipment from the West. We're now helping with training, so their soldiers are getting better trained, so morale is pretty good as long as the west keeps on supplying it. There's a danger that Ukraine could go bust if it's not given sizeable economic assistance from the West. That's another thing. Apart from the military side, the economy is probably working at about sort of half its pre war level, because it's very difficult to move things in and out. Agricultural goods have been pretty much frozen, though. That's starting to change as some supplies have been able to leave the port of Odessa. So government revenues are at a fraction of where they were. And without budgetary support from the west, they'll find themselves in great difficulties. But the good side is that the west does seem quite prepared to do that. It's a bit ad hoc and a bit of a drip feed, but America's been generous. The EU countries are all doing their bit. The IMF and the World bank have helped. So, you know, it is to be hoped that Ukraine will be able to find its way through economically.

The world has watched six months of fighting. Do you think we're in for another six months? Is there anything you've seen that suggests that we could see a resolution before next February?

That's a tricky question, of course, and it's a big hostage to fortune. But at the moment, I don't see anything to suggest that this war is going to end anytime soon. Neither side can win it. Ukraine simply doesn't have the resources to force the Russians out. And clearly the Russians don't have the resources to force the surrender of Ukraine. But neither side can afford to lose it. It will be extremely difficult for Zelenskyy to turn around to his people and say, we're going to let the Russians have another great slice of our territory. And equally, it will be very difficult for Vladimir Putin to say to Russians, all these sacrifices were in vain. Now, with both sides unable to win and unable to lose, it seems to me you've got the perfect recipe for a long drawn out conflict. Add to that the fact that as far as we know, all attempts to get peace negotiations, or even talks about talks going, seem to have ground down into the sand. Early on. There was some vague reason to hope. At least some people expressed optimism. I was a bit wary of it myself, but that went absolutely nowhere. And I don't think there's even any significant feelers being put out yet. So in the absence of any strange game changer, I think the scene is set for something that could easily go on for another six months. But I could be totally wrong if something could happen tomorrow, some secret deal in Switzerland that I'm not aware of or some such thing, but it doesn't look like it at the moment.

All right, Chris, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thank you.

And to hear a discussion of the West's economic response to Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Listen to this week's episode of our sister podcast Money Talks. The panelists discuss what sanctions are and aren't doing, how Russia's economy is holding up, and what other economic measures the west could take. Today, Angolans head to the polls in what looks to be their country's most hotly contested election for decades. For 47 years, the West African nation has been ruled by one party, the MPLA and a succession of kleptocratic leaders. After casting his vote, the incumbent president Joo Lorenzo told Angolans to go out and do the same, adding that democracy and Angola would win the day. But the country is facing many challenges. Much like his predecessor, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Lorenzo has presided over a system that enriches few and leaves many in poverty. Over the last two decades, his ruling party has derived much of its support from its role in ending Angola's civil war. But now that support is waning. In the closing days of this presidential campaign, large crowds have turned out for opposition parties, setting the stage for an election that could have wide reaching consequences for the region.

Well, this is the fourth election since the end of the bloody Angolan Civil War in 2002, and the last three have been marked by a steady decline in the number of people voting for the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or the mpla, which is the ruling party.

Kinley Salmon is an Africa correspondent at the Economist.

Five years ago, the party's share of the vote dropped 261 from 70%, according to official figures. And recent polls show even less support for the government than that. All this really means that the MPLA faces probably its strongest electoral challenge yet.

So tease that out for us. Kinley, why has the MPLA lost support?

Well, there really are a lot of reasons. Angola has very high unemployment, corruption is an enormous problem, and there's been and continue to be really significant repression of civil liberties and frustrations with those three things in particular are very strong among Angola's disillusioned youth. And for many of them, the civil war, the memory of it, is not so fresh. And so going against the government that ultimately won that war is perhaps less controversial. Angola is also very heavily dependent on oil revenue, which accounts for about half of the country's GDP and nearly all of its exports. Despite President Lorenzo saying he would diversify the economy when he came to power, that really hasn't happened much. And then the low price of crude during Lorenzo's tenure has also meant there's basically been a prolonged recession, including later a bailout from the imf. On top of that came the pandemic. And so it's been a pretty tough time recently though. Things have looked a little better. The currencies got stronger. The situation is still pretty tough. And of course, opposition parties are capitalizing on all that economic difficulty.

And tell us about the opposition.

Well, the main or most notable opposition party is the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, most commonly known as unita. They fought on the other side of the civil war against the MPLA. And its leader, Adalberto Costa Jr. Has been attracting pretty large crowds this time around. And much of his support and the party's support comes from urban areas, which in themselves are 65% of the country's population. And surveys sort of back up the sense that the opposition is doing a little better. One published by afrobarometer, which is a Pan African pollster, suggested that support for the ruling part of the MPLA had dipped from 38% in 2019 to to just 29% earlier this year. And backing for the opposition unit had risen from 13% to 22% over the same period. So there is a sense of the opposition starting to make inroads.

So the polls have narrowed. Could this support translate into ballot success?

Well, I think one needs to be cautious about making that sort of typically logical step because like some other ruling parties in Africa, the MPLA uses the power of the state to tilt the playing field, or at least to try to do so. The recent rise in the oil price has probably helped with pre election spending binge to provide a sweetener to voters. Perhaps even more notably, the Constitutional Court is packed with pretty pliant judges and they've made life pretty tough for the opposition unit. They forced it to redo its internal elections, they prevented it from forming an opposition coalition. And last year the parliament, which is for the most part just rubber stamps things change the electoral law to centralized vote counting. Unita, the opposition and other parties in the opposition worry that will make it easier to rig the election. So in short, there's quite a few reasons to be skeptical about whether those polls will really translate into success at the ballot box for the opposition. The MPLA remains a pretty formidable force and I think an upset is not particularly likely.

So the MPLA are far less popular, but look ready to rig the vote and ensure the result. How's this going to land with Angolans?

Well, public trust in the National Electoral Commission and the electoral process, it's probably fair to say, is already quite low, surveys suggest. And so there are worries by people watching the election that the sense that the election is rigged or results that seem scarcely believable could see. Violent protests erupt, typically in Angola, when dissent of any sort flares up, the powerful security apparatus around the president suppresses that very quickly and sometimes quite violently. And I think that if there is protests off the back of this, that kind of quick repression is probably the most likely scenario. But there is always a chance that things could get further, further out of hand.

And what does the election mean for the region more broadly?

Well, so Angola is really quite an important country for the region. It's the third biggest economy in sub Saharan Africa. It's a really major oil exporter, which has brought it close ties with China in particular, over recent years. And the country also plays a role diplomatically. It's helped be a neutral ground for some conflict mediation between other countries in the region. It's taken a number of refugees over the years, and so successful elections in Angola that were peaceful would be a real positive step and a positive sign in the region. On the contrary, if things did go into greater protests or more violent protests, that would be quite destabilizing, not just for the country, but for those countries surrounding it, and potentially of quite significant concern for other players who are buying oil from it, such as China, or indeed the United States, who've kind of ramped up engagement with Angola, partly in response to the Chinese presence. But I think what's most important for everyday Angolans is actually the fact that the MPLA staying in power probably means more of the same. And that has been really a rule by a pretty paranoid party, you know, dominated by securocrats who have got rich and fat on the fruits of crony capitalism, whilst most Angolans have really struggled. And more of that is probably not good for Angola, and it's also probably not good for the region either.

All right, Kinley, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

On. The Fringe is the world's largest arts festival. And it's essentially a ship. Huge gathering of artists and spectators from all over the world. It brings together comedy, spoken word, theatre, dance, music, magic, circus. And it also brings together a collection of artists who are, some who are amateur, some who are students, some who are professional, including some very big names.

Faye Lomas writes about culture for the Economist Edinburgh.

As a city becomes completely taken over by it, it's impossible to walk up the high street without being handed out flyers or treated to a snippet of song or a street performance or some actors walking around in costume. And venues will program often from 10am into the small hours. So it's not uncommon for certain particularly keen audiences to fit in. Maybe six or seven shows a day, maybe even more.

So how did the Fringe get started?

The inaugural Edinburgh International festival opened on August 24th in 1947. Initially the first international festival had a program that included opera, chamber music, Scottish song, ballet, drama. But really significantly, it didn't include any Scottish theatre. And this stirred up controversy. In the run up to the festival, organisers were accused of cultural elitism and of failing to acknowledge Scottish drama. What happened was that eight drama troops, six of whom were Scottish, turned up independently and uninvited to stage their own shows in protest against the snub. And these anarchic performances captivated audiences and they were cheaper to watch. The word fringe was first used in relation to these performances. Performances. And ultimately the word stuck. The main event of the Edinburgh International Festival thus unwittingly gave birth to another event, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The relationship between the fringe and its official cousin remained fractious for nearly two decades. And the Fringe was not actually acknowledged in the Edinburgh Festival's official programme until 1969. Only five years later, however, in 1974, the fringe sold more tickets than the main festival and it's remained huge ever since.

Well, why though? How did it get so huge so fast?

So in the early days it was really the revue shows, which were theatrical skits that mix comedy with song, that really cemented the Fringes place within Britain's cultural consciousness. And their success actually encouraged the International Festival to expand its programming and to feature more popular performances, including famously in 1960 when they featured a show called beyond the Fringe, which was a peerless piece of satire that starred Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore.

We're especially privileged to have with us this evening His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip. Good evening, sir. Would you like to be seated? This one here?

Either one.

Well, I'm used to sitting on the right as soon times.

The Fringe was a program, lots of review shows. It also became known for really daring, radical work. And this was work that often pushed at the boundaries of moral sensibilities. Some conceptive newspapers at the time would comment in horror about filth on the fringe. At the same time, shows that were challenging social mores often saw their sales soar.

So it's sort of limit pushing, nose thumbing theatre to begin with. How did it sort of progress since then?

It really continued to grow exponentially. It increasingly became a platform for professional performers as well as amateur and student groups. It also became increasingly international. It also increasingly started to gain a reputation for stand up comedy. And that particularly developed in the 90s, where it became a real breeding ground for comedy. This year, Nish Kumar, Josie Long, Stuart Lee are among the comedy acts featured. And this means that really big names like these require big venues. The vast majority of performances in the Fringe do still unfold in pop up or converted spaces. They might be in an attic or a cellar or a university room. And so this aspect of it is not dissimilar to the makeshift spaces that hosted the first shows. Back in 1947, I spoke to Anthony Alderson, who runs the Pleasants, which is a festival organization, and he described the ways in which he thinks that the Fringe has retained the spirit of its early days and why he thinks it's such a special place for artists.

What hasn't changed, and I'm delighted that it hasn't changed, is the spirit of the thing, the spirit of new companies, new work, young people coming, that absolute spirit of belief that, you know, I've got a play, I've got a comedy show, I want people to see it and I want to walk away with a press pack or a list of promoters or contacts or whatever it is. And, you know, it's the start of many people's careers, and it still is.

The Fringe has long prided itself on the fact that it welcomes anyone with a story to tell and a venue willing to host them, and it can be a catalyst for stardom, as Mr. Alderson said. From Tom Stoppard with Rosencratz and Guilds and Stern are dead in 1966 to fleabag, which Phoebe Wooler Bridge formed at the fringe in 2013 and which catapulted her to fame.

So with all that growth, has the Fringe retained its original spirit, do you think?

I think inevitably a trade off comes with size and success. And what we've seen happen is that over the years, the rebellious spirit that pervaded much of the early years of the Fringe has been somewhat curtailed as professional demands have started to trump spontaneity. A real issue now is that the risk taking that's associated with the Fringe is as much financial as it is creative. Groups who want to perform there must walk out on registration fees, marketing costs, accommodation, transport, as well as paying a guarantee, often upfront to venues. So to guarantee that they'll pay the venue for a certain percentage of ticket sales. And this means there are real genuine financial risks for artists performing there. These are disproportionately affecting artists of colour and artists from working class backgrounds. I spoke to Amina Hammond, a young British theatre producer, and she told me about the challenges of setting up a show this year.

That's the really big thing about Fringe.

For me, is you have to lose money there. It's incredibly rare to break even unless you're kind of a solo artist going on your own.

Some institutions, such as Pleasants, now offer funding opportunities to artists. Fringe of Colour, an organization founded in 2018, runs a database of shows where at least half of the performers are black or people of color, and provides ethnic minorities with free tickets for these productions.

So where to next for the Fringe, then, as it continues to grow and to change?

An institution that's as large as the fringe realistically can't expect to retain its edge. And increasingly, performers are seeking opportunities beyond it. There's a sort of fringe developing to the fringe itself. There's the free Fringe, which charges neither performers nor audiences and instead conducts a whip around at the end of each show. There's also an organisation called Forest Fringe that was set up in Edinburgh that offers a home for experimental work that maybe doesn't suit the fringe's punishing timings and commercialization. Now, of course, the Fringe will continue to be a hive of creation and a magnet for crowds who are looking to be entertained. But what I would say is that it's now very much part of the establishment and that has all of the problems that come with being part of the establishment.

Thanks very much for joining us, Faye.

Thank you very much, Jason.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. Let us know what you think of the show. You can get in touch@podcastseconomists.com and you.

Can subscribe to the economist@economist.com intelligenceoffer the link is in the show Notes. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

Sam.