with missiles and drones from Crimea. There have been at least 56 attacks this month, killing 26 port workers and sailors. Some facilities have suspended operations, including a sunflower-oil terminal at Chornomorsk set ablaze on July 14th. Ukraine’s armed forces do their best. Commander Dmytro Pletenchuk explains that some air defences have moved out to sea, with heavy machineguns mounted on patrol boats. A naval helicopter, he says, recently downed seven Shahed drones on a single mission. But Russia is burying them with numbers. On July 19th the Golden Leo, a Turkish-owned grain carrier, was hit by cruise missiles within sight of holidaymakers on Odessa’s beaches. Ten sailors were killed. On July 29th VesselFinder, a tracking service, showed no arrivals at the ports in the previous 24 hours, though it misses ships that turn off their transponders. On July 22nd Maersk, a Danish shipping giant, announced its vessels would unload at Constanta, in Romania, rather than Chornomorsk. Oleksiy Smolyar, director of an Odessa-based maritime-services company, says large shipping firms have been avoiding Ukraine since spring: the costs of war- risk insurance plus potential lost business outweigh the fees. Their place has been taken by opportunistic Middle Eastern outfits, which bought their first ships (“maybe not so new and not in such good condition”) when Russia launched its full-scale invasion four years ago. Mr Smolyar’s business, Trident Maritime, has shifted to providing inspection services to the “convenience states”—Guinea-Bissau, Togo and the like—under whose flags the opportunists sail. The attacks coincide with Ukraine’s harvest, forecast at 81m tonnes of grains and oilseeds, up from 80m tonnes last year. But Taras Vysotsky, the agriculture minister, warns that exports were down by a quarter in May and June, and “if attacks double or triple, it’ll really be a challenge.” Agricultural goods make up nearly 60% of Ukraine’s total exports. The ministry tracks the numbers of farmworkers killed by Russian first- person-view drones. “Every week we hear that three, four, five farmers have been killed,” says Mr Vysotsky. “It’s obvious that they deliberately hunt people.” Also targeted is farm machinery: 820 pieces of equipment, from harrows to irrigation systems, have been destroyed this year.
Two hours’ drive north of Odessa, Anatoliy Artemenko stands in a field dotted with cylindrical bales. He has 2,000 hectares and grows rice and amaranth as well as wheat and maize. This year he will have a bumper harvest. His problem is what to do with it. With no exports there are no buyers, and his barns are nearly full of unsold produce, although over half the harvest is still to come in. His other big problem is labour. Conscription rules allow businesses deemed critical to the war to reserve up to half their employees. But exemptions must be renewed every six months, and the criteria are tightening. “A lot of men, when they realise that I can’t reserve them, either run away or go into hiding,” says Mr Artemenko. Of the 50-odd he employed before the war, he has lost 30 to recruitment or draft-dodging. Local women don’t want to learn to drive lorries or tractors, he says. Instead he pays his remaining male staff to work twice the hours. The road to Kyiv swoops between huge fields of wheat and sunflowers. Combines are at work, haloed by clouds of chaff. The earth is startlingly black, Ukraine’s famously fertile chernozem. But what use is a good harvest, asks Mr Artemenko, if there is no way of getting it to market? ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/07/30/russian-strikes-may-keep-ukraines- grain-from-reaching-markets
on the ambassador’s yacht A billionaire diplomat’s floating statecraft Jul 30th 2026 AMERICA’S EMBASSY in Rome occupies the imposing Palazzo Margherita, the former residence of an ex-queen of Italy. But this year its flashiest events have been hosted on the Boardwalk, a 117-metre superyacht. With its teak decks, twin helipads and swimming pools, spa and putting green, it is worth an estimated $450m. The owner is Tilman Fertitta, a Texan billionaire and Republican Party donor named as ambassador by Donald Trump. He has spent the summer of America’s 250th anniversary cruising the Italian coast. Mooring off Cefalù and Sorrento, beneath an erupting Mount Etna and fireworks in Venice, the yacht has hosted receptions for politicians, business
leaders and celebrities. Guests drink champagne from commemorative “Freedom 250” flutes. In Naples they included the mayor, the president of Campania and the owner of the city’s football club. In Venice the yacht arrived under the watch of helicopters and rooftop snipers, while activists staged protests against billionaire excesses. In part, the Boardwalk is simply an extension of the ambassador’s official residence. But it also exemplifies changes in American diplomacy. Ambassadors once projected power through institutions and protocol. Under Mr Trump, personal wealth and proximity to the president are at least as important. Mr Fertitta’s businesses include restaurants, casinos, hotels and the Houston Rockets basketball team. Just as Mar-a-Lago has become an unofficial White House, the yacht has become an unofficial embassy. Appointing rich donors rather than foreign-service officers as ambassadors is routine in America. Supporters of the practice see access to the president as crucial to the job, says Ryan Scoville of Marquette University Law School, who studies ambassadorial appointments. Critics argue that political appointees often lack the needed experience and leave much of the work to career diplomats. “A wiser appointee would keep a lower profile,” says Sir Emyr Jones Parry, a former British ambassador to NATO, “and never flash wealth ostentatiously.” That may sound old-fashioned. Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s right-wing prime minister, has praised Mr Fertitta for helping her reconcile with Mr Trump after clashes over Iran and the pope. But Lia Quartapelle of the opposition Democrats questions whether displays of fabulous wealth make good diplomacy when Italians are struggling financially. She went to a “July 4th” party at the ambassador’s official residence. But she hasn’t been on his boat.■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/07/30/in-italy-america-does-business-on-the- ambassadors-yacht
Having clawed his way to power, Andy Burnham wants to give some away The world is entering a post-postcard era A widely repeated statistic is shaping Britain’s grooming-gangs debate Health tech and AI come to equestrianism Britain is struggling to build data centres The indie establishment
Having clawed his way to power, Andy Burnham wants to give some away No representation without taxation Jul 30th 2026 Northampton, a town of some 250,000 people located almost as far from the coast as it is possible to get in England, is a pleasant place. It has become even nicer recently. A fleet of new electric buses trundles along the roads. A derelict pub, the Old Black Lion, has been beautifully renovated. The market square has been spruced up. It will soon acquire a giant sandpit and deckchairs, for those who cannot face the drive to the seaside. What might surprise a foreign visitor, although probably not a Briton, is how these enhancements have been paid for. Every one, including the temporary beach, is financed at least partly by the national government in Westminster.
“Funded by UK government,” reads a sign in the market square, just to rub it in. Britain’s national government grips England—though not Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales—with a tightness that would embarrass a dictator. Westminster decides everything from the sums that local authorities can charge for planning applications (90% of the processing cost) to the tinkling of ice-cream vans (“the passage of music played should not last more than 12 seconds”). It collects almost all taxes, leaving a pittance for local governments (see chart). “We are more centralised than New Zealand, which has five million people,” says Philip McCann, a regional economist at the University of Manchester. You might suppose that an all-powerful central government would at least manage to spread wealth around the country. Yet Britain is startlingly unequal, despite the visible efforts made in towns like Northampton. GDP per person in Greater London is almost two and a half times what it is in north-east England—a bigger gap than the one between New York state and Mississippi in America, or the one between Hamburg and Thuringia in Germany.
Andy Burnham, the new prime minister, thinks these two facts are connected. To him, places are poor not only because they have been overlooked by Westminster but also because they lack the power to improve their fortunes. On July 23rd he opened a “Number 10 North” office in Manchester, where he was recently mayor. As The Economist was published, he was preparing to announce that metropolitan governments would be able to keep more of the taxes raised in their territories. It is a welcome change, but a treacherous one. England was not always so highly centralised. Its towns and cities are studded with spectacular town halls and guildhalls which memorialise an era of civic power in the 19th century. Centralisation lurched forward after the second world war under two great prime ministers. Clement Attlee built a national welfare state and health service; Margaret Thatcher abolished metropolitan governments in London, Manchester and elsewhere. Britons have grown accustomed to centralisation. They use the phrase “postcode lottery” to describe the horrifying prospect of public services differing from place to place. They use local ballots to deliver judgments on national politicians (an awful set of local election results in May triggered the previous prime minister’s downfall). But Mr Burnham’s diagnosis of the link between centralisation and poor local performance is almost certainly right. Local governments currently have few direct incentives to encourage economic growth in their patches. If, probably against strong local opposition, a local authority decides to permit a new housing estate, the transaction taxes on the homes would go to the national treasury, as would the income taxes and vat paid by the new residents. As Rachel Reeves, then the chancellor, put it in March: “The fiscal reward for local economic success flows straight to the Exchequer.” Instead of driving their own growth, local governments beg for handouts. Central-government departments are always offering money for something, and councils might as well ask for some. Local priorities may be a secondary consideration. In 2020 the transport department offered money for schemes that promoted “active” (that is, muscle-powered) travel. Northampton won after proposing to turn a major road one-way for cars and to add cycle lanes.