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“I definitely expect that things will get worse,” he said.

The European Union exported agricultural goods worth 11.8 billion euros, or $15.8 billion, to Russia last year, and sales have been rising at a rate of almost 15 percent a year.

The economic data and news that Russia was massing troops and military equipment on the Ukrainian border caused stock prices to fall across Europe on Wednesday.

Separately, the German Federal Statistical Office reported on Wednesday that new industrial orders in Germany fell 3.2 percent in June compared with May. Analysts had expected orders to increase.

For Italy, the deteriorating economy puts greater pressure on Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who less than a week ago promised not to impose any more government budget cuts and to invest in improving the country’s roads and other infrastructure. Such promises will be difficult to keep if slower growth, which usually translates into higher unemployment and lower corporate profits, limits tax receipts.A slower economy also endangers Italy’s ability to comply with eurozone rules on budget deficits.

Italy’s 2.1 trillion euro government debt equals 136 percent of its annual gross domestic product, the second-highest debt ratio in the eurozone, after Greece.

They said Italy’s problems stemmed more from its failure make changes needed to improve the performance of its economy.

The slow pace of structural reforms is worrisome,” said Paolo Manasse, a professor of macroeconomics at Bologna University. He said there was no sign of progress on necessary steps like selling off state-owned assets or overhauling the labor market or public pension system.

There is even talk of Russia and China creating an alternative international payment system to replace the SWIFT system, which the US and Europe can use to impose financial sanctions against Russia.

But Putin is ambitious, and – like other autocrats in Central Asian nations – he may remain in power for decades to come. And, like it or not, even a Russia that lacks the dynamism needed to succeed in manufacturing and the industries of the future will remain a commodity-producing

superpower.

US President Barack Obama says that this is not the beginning of a new Cold War; current trends may soon suggest otherwise.

In stepped Mario Draghi, chief of the European Central Bank, with a speech and a plan. The plan was called Outright Monetary Transactions and the speech said Draghi would do "whatever it takes" to prevent a eurozone government from being forced into default or out of the eurozone

subsidies for domestic coal production must be stopped

Ever since these pipelines were effectively handed over to nominally private companies in murky deals, earnings from transit fees have gone missing, along with vast amounts of gas, while little maintenance has been carried out.

An energy ministry that decides who can obtain gas at one-fifth of its cost and who cannot is obviously subject to irresistible pressures to distribute its favors to whomever offers the largest bribes or kickbacks. The same applies to coal subsidies, except that the subsidies go to the most inefficient producers.

these steps also risk hitting eastern Ukraine, which contains a substantial Russophone minority, particularly hard. Some there might be tempted by the allure of a better life in “Mother Russia,” with its vast resources of cheap energy.

And it should open its markets, not only by abolishing its import tariffs on Ukrainian products, which has already been decided, but also by granting a temporary exemption from the need to meet all of the EU’s complicated technical standards and regulations.

At the same time, the EU should help to address the cause of extraordinary heating costs: the woeful energy inefficiency of most of the existing housing stock.

Even a slight improvement in Ukraine’s energy efficiency would contribute more to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions than the vast sums currently being spent to develop renewable energy sources.

“I don’t deal with the exporting process. I take the order and deliver the goods to the port” in Ho Chi Minh City, she said. “The rest lies with my clients.” <img src="http://meter-svc.nytimes.com/meter.gif"/>