AFP

President Vladimir Putin threatened on Monday more “severe” attacks against Ukraine after Russian missiles rained down on the capital Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities in what Washington branded “utter brutality”.

The biggest wave of strikes across Ukraine in months killed at least 11 and wounded more than 80 in retaliation for an explosion this weekend that damaged a key bridge linking Russia to the Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula.

“Let there be no doubt,” Putin said in televised comments addressed to his security council, “if attempts at terrorist attacks continue, the response from Russia will be severe.”

Kyiv said Russian forces had fired more than 80 missiles on cities across the country and that Russia had also used Iranian drones launched from neighbouring Belarus, spurring panic and damaging energy facilities throughout Ukraine.

Putin’s predecessor Dmitry Medvedev warned that the strikes were only “the first episode” of a response to explosion on the Kerch bridge.

But Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said the salvo showed Moscow was increasingly panicked about recent battlefield losses seven months into its invasion.

And his country’s closest allies slammed Russia, with US President Joe Biden saying they strikes “demonstrate the utter brutality” of Putin’s “illegal war.”

Ksenia Ryazantseva, a 39-year-old language teacher, told AFP she was awoken by the blasts.

“We saw the smoke, then the cars, and then we realised we didn’t have a window anymore,” she added. “There’s no military target or anything like that here. They’re just killing civilians”.

– ‘Demonstration of weakness’ –

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the strikes aimed to take down Ukrainian energy infrastructure and regional officials across the country confirmed widespread disruptions.

Russia’s defence ministry meanwhile confirmed it had targeted Ukrainian energy, military command and communications facilities, claiming the strikes had been a success and “achieved their aims”.

Kuleba said the attacks had not been “provoked” and that the onslaught was Moscow’s response to a series of embarrassing military losses in eastern Ukraine.

“Putin is desperate because of battlefield defeats and uses missile terror to try to change the pace of war in his favour,” minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on social media. 

Zelensky said he had spoken with the leaders of France and Germany and urged them to “increase pressure” on Russia.

– Dozens injured –

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken weighed in on Twitter, writing: “We will continue to provide unwavering economic, humanitarian, and security assistance so Ukraine can defend itself and take care of its people.”

In Ukraine, the national police service said that at least 11 people had been killed nationwide and at least another 80 wounded.

Ukrainian officials said the central Shevchenkivsky district of the city was hit and that a university, museums and the philharmonic building had been damaged.

An AFP journalist in Kyiv said a projectile landed near a playground and saw smoke rising from a large crater at the impact site. Trees and benches were charred by the blast and a number of ambulances were at the scene.

In the western city of Lviv, mayor Andriy Sadovyi said there were disruptions to electricity and hot water services after bombardments targeted critical infrastructure.

AFP photographers there saw plumes of black smoke rising above the town’s skyline.

Moldova, west of Ukraine, said several Russian cruise missiles targeting Ukraine had crossed its airspace, and that it had summoned Moscow’s envoy to demand an explanation.

The ex-Soviet country, which is a candidate to join the European Union, has a small breakaway region, Transnistria, which is armed and supported by Russia.

– Crimean bridge attack –

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin’s, meanwhile claimed Monday that Ukraine was preparing an attack on his country’s territory.

He said Russia and Belarus would “deploy” troops together, without specifying where.

The autocratic leader also accused Ukraine, alongside neighbouring Poland and Lithuania, of training Belarusian militants to carrying out attacks at home.

The strikes across Ukraine came a day after Moscow blamed Kyiv for the blast that damaged a bridge linking Crimea to Russia, leaving three people dead.

The blast that hit the bridge — a symbol of the Kremlin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea — sparked celebrations by Ukrainians and others on social media.

But Zelensky on Saturday did not directly mention the incident and officials in Kyiv have made no direct claim of responsibility.

The 19-kilometre (12-mile) bridge is also a vital supply link between Russia and the annexed Crimean peninsula.

Global stocks slid on Monday as investors braced for more large interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve.

The prospect of higher yields on debt was a boon for the dollar, however, which gained on its main rivals.

“We’re seeing mild risk aversion in the markets at the start of the week, perhaps some apprehension ahead of what could be a big few days for the US,” said market analyst Craig Erlam at OANDA.

Last week closed out with news that the US firms created a net 263,000 jobs in September.

While that was down from August it was more than expected, indicating that the US economy is not yet slowing considerably and inflationary pressures likely remain.

That sent stocks sharply lower as it means the Fed is unlikely to relent on interest rate hikes that are meant to tame inflation.

Stocks took a beating in August and September as monetary policymakers made clear they would keep raising interest rates in order to bring down inflation, even at the cost of a recession.

Last week, however, they briefly rallied on hope that the US jobs data would show the economy is already slowing, meaning the Fed could relent on interest rate hikes.

Some investors “may still be hoping that this week’s inflation data will swing the central bank but given previous comments, that doesn’t appear realistic unless we see a significant miss to the downside,” added Erlam.

Adding to the stress is the upcoming corporate earnings season, which many fear will show that companies are feeling the pain of tightening monetary policies.

Elsewhere on Monday, the Moscow stock exchange plunged nearly 12 percent following a weekend explosion that partially destroyed the bridge connecting Crimea to Russia.

Meanwhile, the pound won little support from Britain ramping up efforts to calm markets after a heavily criticised budget.

In what was seen as co-ordinated action, the government brought forward the release date of key economic forecasts and the Bank of England boosted liquidity.

“With the pound remaining weak and (UK) government borrowing costs inching up again towards worrying levels, the UK government and the Bank of England have launched a two-pronged attempt to calm markets,” noted Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.

Oil prices meanwhile fell after the biggest weekly gain since March that followed a decision by OPEC and allied producers led by Russia to slash crude output by two million barrels per day.

The drop Monday came also on demand concerns caused by China’s Covid flare-ups and more weak data out of Beijing owing to lockdowns.

– Key figures around 1530 GMT –

New York – Dow: DOWN 0.3 percent at 29,202.02 points

EURO STOXX 50: DOWN 0.6 percent at 3,356.88

London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.5 percent at 6,959.31 (close) 

Frankfurt – DAX: FLAT at 12,272.94 (close)

Paris – CAC 40: DOWN 0.5 percent at 5,840.55 (close)

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 3.0 percent at 17,216.66 (close) 

Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 1.7 percent at 2,974.15 (close)

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: Closed for a holiday

Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.1034 from $1.1082 on Friday

Euro/dollar: DOWN at $0.9689 from $0.9743

Euro/pound: DOWN at 87.79 pence from 87.97 pence

Dollar/yen: UP at 145.77 yen from 145.38 yen

West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 0.5 percent at $92.20 per barrel

Brent North Sea crude: DOWN 0.6 percent at $97.29 per barrel

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A US trio including ex-Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke, who played a key role battling the 2008 financial crisis, won the economics Nobel on Monday for research on banks in times of turmoil.

Bernanke, together with Douglas Diamond and Philip Dybvig, were honoured for having “significantly improved our understanding of the role of banks in the economy, particularly during financial crises, as well as how to regulate financial markets”, the jury said.

Bernanke, 68, has been both credited for spurring recovery after the 2008 recession and pilloried by critics for doing little to avert it, allowing investment bank Lehman Brothers to collapse.

He received the award for his analysis, conducted in the early 1980s, of the Great Depression in the 1930s, the worst economic crisis in modern history.

In particular, Bernanke showed “how failing banks played a decisive role in the global depression,” making the downturn “not only deep, but also long-lasting,” the Nobel jury noted.

In his role as chief of the central bank, Bernanke “was able to put knowledge from research into policy” during the financial crisis of 2008-2009, the Nobel Committee said.

Bernanke has been hailed for the Fed’s unorthodox response of slashing interest rates and flooding the financial system with liquidity.

– Bank runs –

Diamond, a professor at the University of Chicago born in 1953, and Dybvig, 67, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, were honoured for showing how “banks offer an optimal solution” for channelling savings to investments by acting as an intermediary.

The pair also showed how these institutions were vulnerable to so called bank runs, where a large number of savers simultaneously withdraw their money leading to the bank’s collapse.

The committee added that this dangerous dynamic can be avoided by governments providing deposit insurance and giving banks a life-line by becoming a lender of last resort.

“In a nutshell, the theory says that banks can be tremendously useful but they are only guaranteed to be stable if they are properly regulated”, Tore Ellingsen, chair of the prize committee, said.

Diamond, speaking to reporters after the announcement, reflected Monday on the decision by US authorities not to bail out Lehman Brothers, as they later did other financial institutions.

The bank’s collapse sent shockwaves through financial markets when it filed for bankruptcy in September 2008.

“It would have been better to find a more accommodating way, a less unstable way and unexpected way to resolve Lehman Brothers,” Diamond said, stressing there were questions about what regulators were legally able to do at the time.

“Had they found a way, I think the world would have had less of a severe crisis than it did,” Diamond said.

Speaking in an interview with the Nobel Foundation, Diamond also praised the work of his fellow laureate.

“The world was incredibly lucky to have Ben Bernanke sitting in the Federal Reserve during the crisis,” Diamond said.

– Few women –

Of all the Nobels, the economics prize has the fewest number of female winners: just two since it was first awarded in 1969, Elinor Ostrom in 2009 and Esther Duflo in 2019.

This year, only two women were among the 12 individuals and two organisations honoured, Carolyn Bertozzi in chemistry and Annie Ernaux for literature.

Hans Ellegren, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, told AFP that since the science prizes generally honour research dating back decades, laureates who win “now reflect what the scientific community looked like back then.”

“I’m rather glad to be able to say that we have increased the proportion of women that get Nobel Prizes,” Ellegren said.

He noted that in the last five years, four women had been awarded the chemistry prize and two had received the physics prize, which has been a male-dominated field.

The economics prize, created by the Swedish central bank in 1968, was the only award not included when scientist Alfred Nobel created the prestigious awards in his 1895 will.

But like the other prizes it comes with a gold medal and an award sum of 10 million Swedish kronor (around $900,000).

The winners will receive the prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist Alfred Nobel.