Yuriy Ryzhenkov is that rare CEO who has led his firm of 33,700 people during a never-ending war. He is the chief executive of the largest steelmaker in Ukraine, Metinvest. More than 8,000 of his employees are fighting Russian forces. Factories are under constant bombardment. Hundreds of Metinvest colleagues have been killed.
Amid the flames and destruction, Ryzhenkov says that this period of the war is as tough as anything the company has seen since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than four years ago.
“The blockade of the seaports is more severe now than it was in 2022,” Ryzhenkov, who became CEO in 2013, tells me. “We’ve been hit numerous times. Our facilities have been hit over the last four and a half years, and even though we were restoring them after every hit, you lose. You get weaker with every such attack.”
Trump threatens to end arms supplies to Ukraine as he funds Russian diesel
U.S. officials made a series of phone calls to their NATO counterparts threatening to stop supplying arms and intelligence to Ukraine, the FT reports. President Trump also announced an “energy ceasefire” on Truth Social, which was immediately broken by a Russian bombing raid on a Kharkiv power plant. Moscow has not commented.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Axios the ceasefire “was news for me.” After the bombing, he said, “It’s clear Putin doesn’t read Truth Social,” according to the BBC.
The events suggest that Trump made the announcement without informing either side.
At the same time, Trump’s deal to buy previously sanctioned Russian diesel has been met with dismay across Europe—former U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson called it “sickening”—and among members of the U.S. Congress.
MORE FROM FORTUNE
The IEA wants to empty its oil reserves faster. A federal watchdog says the U.S. isn’t ready for what comes next – Heather Occhino
Nearly 70 million kids now have a Trump Account—but parents have to claim it first. Here’s who gets the $1,000 – Fernanda Tronco
China’s debt interest costs are soaring above U.S. levels and growing faster than any other budget category as Beijing struggles to prop up growth – Jason Ma
For the first time ever, 10-year bond yields track diesel prices more closely than crude, and Trump’s fuel deal with Putin may be too little too late – Jason Ma
MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America’s $19.2 billion in megagifts last year – Sydney Lake
THE POLLS
Republicans’ biggest problem lives in the White House
Midterm election polling suggests Democrats are likely to take the U.S. House in November, but the Senate is currently “too close to call,” according to Andy Laperriere and his team at Piper Sandler. If momentum is shifting away from the Republicans, that would be in large part due to President Trump, Laperriere said in a recent email: “Among GOP voters, his overall job approval has dropped from about 90% when he was sworn in to about 75% today.”
“More ominous for Republican incumbents is how GOP voters rate his job performance on issues ranging from the war in Iran to tariffs to the economy. His handling of inflation is even worse.”
HOLL-AI-ND
Is AI giving the U.S. “Dutch disease”?
Younger readers might not be familiar with the “Dutch disease,” a term first coined by The Economist in 1977 to describe the way a sudden economic boom in one sector can derail a country’s entire economy. In the case of the Netherlands, the crisis began when the Dutch discovered they owned a vast natural gas field in the North Sea. Gas exports were so successful that foreign buyers’ demand for Dutch gas pushed up the guilder. This made exports from its manufacturing and agriculture sectors very expensive, triggering a sharp increase in unemployment from 1.1% to 5.1%.
AI might be generating Dutch disease in the US, according to economists at Apollo Global Management and Pantheon Macroeconomics. Apollo’s Torsten Sløk noted that demand for AI is so hot that companies issuing debt to fund its development are insensitive to rising interest rates. (And they might be driving those rates, because the more debt that gets issued, the higher interest rates go.) The result is that AI is “draining capital, power and labor from vulnerable sectors like housing and autos,” Sløk said on his blog.
Separately, Samuel Tombs and Oliver Allen at Pantheon Macroeconomics published these two charts recently. The first shows that AI is contributing to U.S. GDP growth, but because so much AI hardware is imported, much of that spending is going abroad (negative “net exports,” as the chart puts it). At the same time, investment in the sector is so hot that it might be crowding out investment in non-AI industries.
THE MARKETS
Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia propel the price of oil as Q3 earnings from banks and chipmakers loom
Asian markets sold off today following repeated attacks on Saudi Arabia’s international airport in Riyadh by the Iran-backed Houthi terror group—a move that kept the price of oil solidly above $100 per barrel.
But European stocks held up, and U.S. futures were marginally positive before the New York open.
The Q3 earnings season gets into gear this week, led by multiple U.S. banks. We’ll also hear from semiconductor supplier ASML on Wednesday and chipmaker TSMC on Thursday—reports that will give traders new guidance on the strength of the AI boom.
- S&P 500 futures were up 0.11% this morning. The index rose 0.59% on Friday.
- In Europe, the Stoxx 600 was up 0.43% in early trading, and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 was up 0.57% before lunch.
- Asia: South Korea’s KOSPI was down 3.65%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was closed for a national holiday. India’s Nifty 50 was down 0.85%. China’s CSI 300 was down 0.68%.
- Brent crude was $105 per barrel.
- Bitcoin was at $83,424.
CHART OF THE DAY
Most Americans are working longer hours than a year ago
The average number of hours worked by Americans each week is going up, according to Bank of America Institute’s Liz Everett Krisberg and David Tinsley. This chart shows which industries are making their staff work longer, and how much their average hourly wages are.
NUMBER OF THE DAY
100,000 centenarians
The number of people aged over 100 in Japan, the first country to reach this milestone, according to HSBC’s Herald van der Linde. 88% of them are women.
THE FRONT PAGES TODAY
At Davos, Kimberly Guilfoyle boasted of private jet trips, luxury stays – WSJ
Wall Street’s record-breaking trading streak set to cool – FT
Silicon Valley’s horror shows – Axios
Why the Houthis are so hard to defeat – Bloomberg
She was offered $40 million for silence on Elon Musk. She spoke out instead. – NYT
ONE MORE THING
Inside the rage retreats where women pay up to $4,500 to scream in the woods
Sometimes, when relationships and world politics give people plenty to be angry about, the impulse is to go outside, disconnect, and be one with nature. But for some women, it means letting out a good guttural scream, according to Fortune’s Tatiana Sataua.
At Lumalia Emmy Armstrong’s Holy Rage Retreats in the Oregon woods near Portland, small groups of women gather among the trees, expressing themselves through sound and movement. In intimate groups of up to 10 women, hearing one woman growl can give another permission to do the same. Later, they burn letters written during a group discussion and close the retreat with a song.
A group of adults growling in the woods might sound like an unusual way to spend an afternoon, let alone money. But organizers are selling something they say participants struggle to find elsewhere: a place to be angry without judgment. Prices vary widely. Armstrong charges $600 for a 3.5-hour session, while the Bay Area CBT Center advertises multi-day rage retreats for up to $4,500 per person.
- Would you like to sponsor this newsletter? Contact advertising@fortune.com for details.
#U.S #threatens #cut #arms #supplies #Ukraine #Trump #announces #ceasefire