Washington warned its European counterparts that the Ukraine War will inflict more pain on the country and they will need to do more to help defeat the Russians. 

Among the main concerns is the effort to prop up Kyiv’s economy in the face of new Russian bombings aimed at infrastructure. The Washington Post reported that the Ukrainian economy, which has already contracted by 33 percent in the past year, could fall another 9 percent in 2023. 

The National Bank of Ukraine said about 11 percent of businesses closed as of September and more than half were operating below capacity, The Associated Press reported.

“It’s thought that only about 60 percent of Ukrainians remain in the jobs that they had at the beginning of the war. About 40 percent have either become refugees or have lost their jobs and are looking for work,” Adam Tooze, a professor at Columbia University said in Foreign Policy. 

Inflation in Ukraine is about 26 percent and much of the country is fighting to keep the lights on. The report noted that the country could be left without international reserves to pay for imports and to pay for its foreign debt obligations, which the paper noted would be a “doomsday scenario known as a balance-of-payments crisis.”

Oleg Ustenko, an economic adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, told the Post that the country will need more financial assistance after Russia’s latest onslaught. He said it is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hope to “destroy unity among allies.”

Ukraine needs the additional aid as much of the EU faces economic hardships due to the sanction war against Russia. The bloc is expected to have enough energy stores this winter, but 2023 could be a day of reckoning. 

Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, said last week that the bloc needs to look to renewables to offset the lack of Russian imports. He said this year the bloc suffered some “economic and social bruises,” but the “crisis is not over and next year may well be…much more difficult than this year.”

TRENDPOST: The Trends Journal has reported extensively on the fragile Western alliance and how Europeans are beginning to grow tired of economic hardships to support a Ukrainian government that seems to have no interest in negotiating for a peaceful settlement. (See “PROTESTS BREAK OUT IN ITALY,” “ANTI-WAR PROTESTS SPREADING ACROSS GERMANY, NO PUSH FOR PEACE IN U.S.” and “NEW WORLD DISORDER TOP TREND: PROTESTS ERUPT ACROSS EUROPE.”) 

We have forecast that since the start of the war that the Western sanctions would inflict more economic damage on European countries, more than Moscow. And now, finally, mainstream economists say the trend is only going to get worse as the rising costs of staple goods are impacting society.

The energy crisis created by the Ukraine war and Western sanctions will prolong not only inflation but also the continent’s recession, realizing the ECB’s fears that inflation will become embedded across the economy.

As we have reported, the sanctions imposed by NATO and the United States on Russia have not punished Putin as U.S. President Joe Biden predicted, instead they have ravaged businesses and individuals. Indeed, thanks to the sanctions, in Germany, which once received some 55 percent of its natural gas from Russia, its energy prices spiked 43 percent year-to-date… 41.9 percent for the rest of the euro-currency nations. 

Overall, inflation hit 10.7 percent according to EU statistics. The Trends Journal has noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin is banking on a long, cold winter in Europe for public support for Ukraine to wane.