The west must hold its nerve

Hello from London, where the country is celebrating the Queen’s platinum jubilee with a four-day weekend. After weeks of difficult negotiations, EU leaders have agreed to ban seaborne Russian oil imports to further deprive Vladimir Putin of funding for his war in Ukraine. To stop Hungary from blocking the embargo, leaders agreed to temporarily exempt oil delivered by pipeline. The bloc also agreed a ban with the UK on insuring ships carrying Russian oil, shutting Moscow out of the crucial Lloyd’s of London insurance market.

Months since the first packages were announced, sanctions and western business embargoes are slowly filtering into the Russian economy, reports correspondent Polina Ivanova. Though unemployment figures have for the most part stayed stable, the number of jobs advertised in some sectors has halved. Change is most visible in Russia’s shopping districts and malls, where about 15-20 per cent of shops are now shuttered.

Russia is still receiving roughly €1bn every day from the export of oil and gas. But if the EU successfully cuts off these streams, Russians face a disastrous hit to their national finances, writes chief foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rachman. The west must hold its nerve.

My choices this week

1. President Xi Jinping’s policy of zero-Covid is wreaking widespread damage on the Chinese economy. In our latest visual journalism piece, the FT maps the spread of the Omicron variant across the country, and charts the impact on China’s growth prospects.

2. EY’s global chief Carmine Di Sibio is weighing a historic separation of EY’s audit and advisory businesses, following concerns there were conflicts of interest between the two. Our accountancy correspondent explains what a break-up would mean for the Big Four accounting firms. (Free to read)

3. “What stands between Europe and a more unified foreign policy is deeper than transient names and faces, and perhaps too deep to ever overcome.” Columnist Janan Ganesh argues that a common European worldview is as elusive as ever.

4. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has long sought economic influence to match his political power. Recently elected for another four years, his plan to merge three of the country’s largest banks into a single institution could become a reality. In this Big Read, discover the Bank of Viktor Orbán.

5. The high-end Copenhagen restaurant scene is known around the world for its pioneering cuisine. But what happens in the kitchen is another story. For the cover of this week’s FT Weekend Magazine, we lift the lid on the bullying and abuse rife in the city’s top eateries. 

6. Roughly 70 per cent of us have at one time or other suffered from what is known as “imposter syndrome”. Columnist Jemima Kelly writes that the “syndrome” is a misnomer that feeds into a wider trend for pathologising normal human feelings. (Free to read)

Thanks for reading

Roula

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