The Economist April 30th 2022 7
The world this week PoliticsEmmanuel Macron was
reelected as president of
France, again trouncing his
nationalistpopulist challeng
er Marine Le Pen. He won
58.5% of the vote to her 41.5%.
However, Ms Le Pen increased
her vote share by eight per
centage points since their
previous contest, in 2017, and
turnout was the lowest since1969. Mr Macron, a proEuro
pean centrist, said he would
try to address the anger of
those who feel left behind by
globalisation. He will now try
to hold on to his party’s major
ity at parliamentary elections
due in June.
Fighting continued in eastern
and southern Ukraine. The
Russian invaders are trying to
seize more territory, but have
still not vanquished the last
defenders of Mariupol, who
are hunkered down in the vast
Azovstal steelworks. Russia is
using air power and missiles to
attack infrastructure across
the country, targeting railway
lines and stations in an effort
to slow the flow of Western
arms to Ukrainian forces.America held a conference at
its Ramstein air base in
Germanywith 40 countries to
discuss the defence of Ukraine.
Christine Lambrecht, the
German defence minister,
announced that her country
would send armoured vehicles
for the first time. This change
in policy comes after weeks of
criticism levelled at Germany
for not doing more to help.Antony Blinken and Lloyd
Austin, America’s secretaries
of state and defence, went to
Kyiv to meet Volodymyr Zelen
sky, Ukraine’s president. They
later announced an additional
$713m in American militaryaidto 16 countriesinthe
region,$322mofwhichwillgo
toUkraine.MrAustinpredict
edthatUkrainecouldwinthe
warandsaidAmericawas
eagertohelpit doso.Cuttingoffthegas
Russia’s state energy giant,
Gazprom, suspended gas
suppliesto Bulgaria and
Poland because they have not
made payments in roubles, a
condition Russia has demand
ed to shore up its currency.
European gas prices soared
again on the news. Poland said
it was prepared and would
obtain gas from elsewhere. Nayib Bukele, the president of
El Salvador, extended for a
second month a state of emer
gency imposed after 87 people
were killed in March in a spate
of gang violence. The emergen
cy rules allow the police to
arrest people without explana
tion; more than 19,000 have
been rounded up in the past
month. A new law also appears
to make it illegal for journal
ists to report on gang activity. Protesters took to the streets in
Mexicoafter the body of
Debanhi Escobar, an 18year
old law student, was found in a
water tank in a motel in Mon
terrey. She had been missing
for nearly two weeks. A woman
in Mexico is nearly three times
more likely to be murdered
than a woman in the United
States. Mass testing in Beijing re
vealed dozens of new cases of
covid19. Some neighbour
hoods in China’scapital were
sealed off. The number of cases
in Shanghai, which has been
locked down for weeks, started
to fall. But some residentsthere woke to find new green
fences shutting them into their
compounds.Three Chinese academics and
their driver were murdered by
a suicidebomber in Karachi,
Pakistan’scommercial capital.
One of the academics was the
director of the local Confucius
Institute, an organisation
linked to the Chinese govern
ment that promotes Chinese
language and culture around
the world. The Baloch Libera
tion Army, a separatist group
that opposes Chinese invest
ment in Pakistan, said it
carried out the atrocity. The latest closeddoor trial in
Myanmar of Aung San Suu Kyi
convicted her of corruption,
adding five years to her impris
onment. Ms Suu Kyi has been
in custody since the army
ousted her fledgling demo
cratic government in 2021. She
has been tried on a range of
trumpedup charges; there are
12 more court cases to come. Singaporehanged a Malaysian
man who was convicted in
2010 of trafficking heroin,
despite evidence that he was
mentally deficient. It has
carried out two executions
within a month; another is
scheduled for April 29th. North Koreaheld a martial
parade, at which it displayed
banned intercontinental bal
listic missiles. Kim Jong Un,
the dictator, vowed to increase
his nuclear forces and said
they were prepared to put
“their unique deterrent in
motion at any time”. Clashes between Palestinian
protesters at Jerusalem’s al
Aqsa mosque andIsraelipo
lice erupted again. There have
been no deaths in the current
round of violence, though
scores of Palestinians have
been injured. Israel’s govern
ment and Hamas, the Islamist
group that runs the Gaza Strip,
have so far managed to prevent
a wider conflict. The juntas runningBurkina
Fasoand Guineaboth missed
a deadline to present plans fora transition back to civilian
rule. ecowas, the west African
regional bloc, has already
imposed sanctions on Mali
after coup leaders there de
layed elections and a transfer
of power back to a civilian
government.Members of the East African
Community, another regional
bloc, agreed to send troops to
theDemocratic Republic of
Congo. There has been a
resurgence in violence in the
east of the country by groups
including the Allied Demo
cratic Forces, a jihadist orga
nisation, and the m23, a mili
tia that was previously backed
by Rwanda.The High Court in Britain
ruled that the government
acted unlawfully when it
released patients from hospi
tal into care homes at the start
of the pandemic. The judges
found that policy advice
issued in March and April
2020 did not take into account
the risk to elderly residents of
transferring asymptomatic
patients into homes.Harvardreleased a report into
its historical links with slav-
ery. It noted that scores of
slaves toiled at the university
until slavery was outlawed in
Massachusetts in 1783. The
university has created a
$100m fund that will be used
in part to “identify, engage
and support” the direct
descendants of the slaves. It
stopped short of calling for
reparations.Hardlylikeforlike
Although tensions between
the two countries are at their
highest for decades, America
and Russia agreed to a
prisoner swap. Russia re
leased Trevor Reed, a former
marine who was imprisoned
after a drunken altercation
with police in Moscow. His
trial in 2020 was described by
America as a “theatre of the
absurd”. America in return
released Konstantin Yaro
shenko, a Russian pilot con
victed of conspiring to smug
gle cocaine.