Hello and welcome to the intelligence from the economist.

In New York, I'm John Fassman.

And in London, I'm Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Residents of Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, are without safe drinking water indefinitely.

The tale of how that happened is sad, but even more sadly, not unusual.

Some 21 million people in the world's richest country lack access to reliable water.

And the taxonomy of finance types has always included chartists, the kind of thinkers who

aim to divine the future from nothing more than charts of market moves.

Their recent rise is not a sign of their deep insights, it's a sign of widespread unease.

But first, for weeks a much trailed counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces in the country's south

only slowly materialized.

The narrative about the country's east had become one of stalemate, a war of attrition.

All that has changed in just the past few days.

Further and further east each time, reports emerge of Ukrainian soldiers recovering territory.

In Balaklia, they tore down a Russian banner on a billboard revealing a Ukrainian power.

Video after video shows Ukrainian flags firing.

After a few kilometers from the border, one district mayor cut the lowered Russian flag in two with a knife.

On Saturday, Ukraine's president Vladimir Zelensky said the Russian army is these days displaying

its greatest skill, showing its back.

It's a stunning turnaround, one that has the rapt attention not just of Ukraine's people,

but also of Russia's war hawks and western backers of Ukraine.

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