The slow international response to climate change has placed the world on a path to destruction, UN Secretary-General
Journalists often make mistakes. As someone who dropped a bit of a clanger this week (I said there was a deal on the EU’s sanctions on Russian oligarchs 24 hours before there actually was one), I’m especially eager to avoid repeating one I made just a few months ago.
Early this year I repeatedly wrote that Ukraine was set to run out of money in April, or – when I felt like being more specific – in “early” April. Nor was I alone: European Commission officials, Ukrainian officials, and many of my fellow journalists said the same thing.
In retrospect, however, the claim never really made much sense.
For one thing, it was never clear what it actually meant. (That Kyiv would default on its debt? If so, why not just say that? And if not, what?) For another, Ukraine’s behaviour didn’t really fit that of a country that was on the brink of fiscal armageddon.
On 20 February, Hungary shocked Ukraine and its European allies when it announced that it would veto a €90 billion loan to Kyiv, citing the latter’s failure to restart oil flows through a damaged pipeline that transits Ukraine on its way from Russia to Hungary.
