April 9, 2022- 6:45 p.m.
Ukraine War Ignites Protests in Peru as Inflation Anger Goes Global
Marcelo Gonzales is tired and angry about rapidly increasing living costs in his dusty village on Peru’s desert coast, where food and fuel inflation inflamed by the war in Ukraine has ignited protests that threaten to destabilize the government.
The social upheaval in the Andean country underscores how the impact of Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine is rippling around the world, with leaders in Sri Lanka and Pakistan also under public pressure over difficult economic conditions.
Inflation in Peru has reached its highest level in a quarter of a century, hammering people already hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic since early 2020.
“The cost of a family’s basic daily needs has brutally gone up,” Gonzales told Reuters, surrounded by hundreds of angry residents in the western village of Villacuri and where people from all parts of Peru come to work at the large fruit plantations nearby.
