Italy’s Crisis Redoubles European Foreboding
For many Europeans, the euro’s slide to parity is an apt symbol of the ways in which the war in Ukraine poses economic problems to Europe that are far more extreme than for the United States. President Biden’s determination to bolster Ukraine militarily, rather than seek some diplomatic outcome, may come to be resented as winter takes hold.

Already Mr. Putin’s gas squeeze has led the German government to warn of an imminent recession. Companies and households are preparing for a winter of gas rationing, while homeowners, schools and cities have begun to lower thermostats, cut back on air conditioning and dim streetlights. There are mutterings about American readiness to fight the war at Germany’s eastern flank down to the last Ukrainian.

Italy is looking to speed up energy independence from Russia, in part by pivoting to Algeria for new gas supplies, while ramping up renewable energy sources and burning more coal to keep homes lighted and businesses running.

France, less vulnerable because of its large nuclear power industry, is pushing an “energy restraint plan” that Mr. Macron called necessary in a television interview this week. “This war is going to last, but France will always be in a position to help Ukraine,” the French president said.

That was some distance from his declaration to the Ukrainian leadership in Kyiv last month that “Europe is at your side and will remain so for as long as it takes to achieve victory.”