We know what Russian President Vladimir Putin wants in Ukraine: to wipe the country off the map. We also know what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wants: to keep Ukraine alive as a democratic state. The question is what the West wants. What is its strategic goal? So far, the West’s objectives have been framed in the negative: to avoid being drawn into a war with Russia, while still doing whatever possible to help the Ukrainians.

The Ukraine war has major economic consequences for energy, food, inflation and poverty, according to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The EBRD's chief economist, Beata Javorcik, spoke to AFP about the fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, from where more than three million refugees have fled so far.Global lenders are giving billions for Ukraine, including a two-billion-euro (US$2.2 billion) "resilience package" from the London-bas

War. Inflation. And now, COVID lockdown deja vu in China.

In terms of geopolitical impact, nothing could be more important than the United States’ (US) shift from strategic cooperation to strategic competition with China.

China, the country where the coronavirus was first detected in 2019, is among the last remaining devotees to a zero-COVID approach to the pandemic.But after two years of virtually closed borders, mass testing, targeted lockdowns and quarantines, the strategy is being stress-tested like never before as cases surge across the country.With millions currently under lockdown, can China's approach hold out against the march of the Omicron variant?What Is Zero-COVID?China essentially closed its

The world economy's fragile recovery from the COVID-induced crisis is now threatened by Russia's war in Ukraine and soaring commodity prices.Here are four questions regarding the risks to global gross domestic product (GDP):Will Growth Stall? "The war happened right at a time when Europe and the United States (US) had a recovery that was going really well. Projections in Europe were among the highest ...

In the space of a single day, 28 February, Vladimir Putin’s “Fortress Russia” collapsed. The rouble plunged by about 30 percent, and Russian authorities closed all financial markets. Russians raced to ATM machines to withdraw as much money as they could, desperate to exchange it for anything that wasn’t the rouble.

The decision by many multinational corporations to exit Russia, after decades of engagement between global business and Russia’s state-dominated economy, indicates that investors can no longer rely on the regime to enforce the rule of law. Russian President Vladimir Putin, once regarded as a modernizing autocrat, is now clearly driven by personal obsessions rather than any rational cost-benefit calculation.

China set its lowest annual gross domestic product (GDP) target in decades Saturday, as Premier Li Keqiang warned of a "grave and uncertain" outlook against the backdrop of the coronavirus, a property slump and uncertainty over the war in Ukraine.Li announced the unusually modest target of around 5.5 percent growth for 2022 – the lowest since 1991 – in his speech opening the annual session of China's rubber-stamp parliament.Addressing about 3,000 members of the National People&

On 18 February, 2022, six Filipino nationals from Ukraine arrived in the country after the Philippine government announced free repatriation flights for Filipinos living in the crisis-driven Eastern European state. The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has estimated more than 350 Filipinos living in Ukraine.