Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review | Published 3 July 2023 | Reporting Period: 3 April – 2 July 2023
Quarterly Briefing
- Wagner Group forces seize Rostov-on-Don and march on Moscow on June 23 before Prigozhin stands down; Putin’s authority is challenged but intact.
- Sudan’s civil war begins April 15 as the military and Rapid Support Forces fight for control of Khartoum; millions displaced.
- Ukraine’s Kakhovka dam is destroyed on June 6, flooding the Kherson region and poisoning agricultural land.
- Russia captures Bakhmut on May 20 after months of grinding urban combat; Ukraine retreats to prepared positions.
- Ukraine launches its long-awaited counteroffensive in early June; progress is slower than expected against Russian defences.
- Jamaica’s inflation moderates toward 8 per cent; the Bank of Jamaica signals a pause in its rate-tightening cycle.
Prologue: A Quarter the World Was Not Expecting
As this edition is published on 3 July 2023, the reverberations of three seismic events are still being felt: an armed mutiny by the world’s most prominent private military force that brought its column within 200 kilometres of Moscow before standing down without a shot; a new civil war in Africa’s third-largest country; and the destruction of a major dam on one of Europe’s great rivers, flooding a region of 80,000 people and threatening the water supply of Ukraine’s south. None of these was anticipated twelve weeks ago. All three reshape the geopolitical landscape in ways that are not yet fully understood. For Jamaica and the Caribbean, the quarter reinforced a pattern that has been evident since February 2022: the world’s primary conflict producers are generating instability faster than the world’s institutions can absorb it, and small island economies pay the price in commodity prices, freight costs and compressed development finance.
Wagner’s Mutiny: What Happened and What It Means
On the evening of 23 June, Yevgeny Prigozhin — founder of the Wagner Group and one of the most prominent figures in Russia’s war in Ukraine — announced that his forces were seizing control of Rostov-on-Don, Russia’s major southern military headquarters, and beginning a march on Moscow to confront the Russian military leadership. For approximately 24 hours, Wagner columns moved north through Russian territory with limited opposition. The Russian government declared a state of counterterrorism operations. President Putin made a televised address calling the mutiny “treason.”
The mutiny ended on 24 June, when Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko mediated a deal: Prigozhin would withdraw his forces and go to Belarus; criminal charges against him and his fighters would be dropped; Wagner personnel in Ukraine could continue serving under the Russian military. Rostov-on-Don was surrendered without further incident. By early July, the terms of Prigozhin’s situation — whether he is genuinely in Belarus, whether Wagner continues to operate in Africa and elsewhere, whether the deal holds — remain unclear. Analysts are debating whether this was a genuine breakdown of control or a controlled exercise in pressure politics. What is not in doubt is that for approximately 24 hours, the Kremlin faced the most serious domestic security challenge since Boris Yeltsin’s standoff with the Russian parliament in 1993.
For the Caribbean, the mutiny matters for several reasons. It introduces significant uncertainty into Russia’s war-making capacity and political stability. Wagner’s continued operational role in Africa — where it operates in Mali, the Central African Republic, Libya and Sudan — is now uncertain, creating unpredictability in already-unstable regions that affect commodity supply chains. Most immediately, any prolonged Russian internal instability raises energy price volatility and could accelerate or disrupt the trajectory of the Ukraine war in unpredictable ways.
Sudan: The New Crisis Nobody Saw Coming
On 15 April, fighting broke out in Khartoum between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — a powerful paramilitary force that had been nominally integrated into the national security structure but operated as a semi-independent entity. The trigger was a dispute over the terms of a civilian government transition and the planned integration of the RSF into the national army. Within days, the fighting had spread across the capital and to Darfur, where RSF forces were accused of attacks on civilian communities echoing the 2003–05 genocide.
By early July, fighting had killed thousands, displaced approximately 2 million people inside Sudan and pushed more than 500,000 across international borders into Chad, Egypt, South Sudan and Ethiopia. The UN described it as one of the fastest-developing humanitarian crises in the world. Multiple ceasefire agreements brokered by Saudi Arabia and the United States collapsed within hours of taking effect. Both the SAF and RSF appeared committed to a military resolution.
Sudan is not a major trade partner of Jamaica, but the conflict’s effects on Caribbean economies are structural. It adds to the global humanitarian burden on Western development budgets; it creates a new vector for political instability in the African Sahel; and it is consuming the diplomatic bandwidth of the African Union and key regional powers at a time when those institutions are also being asked to address crises in Haiti, the DRC and West Africa’s coup-affected Sahel nations.
Ukraine: Dam Destruction and the Counteroffensive Begins
On 6 June, the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam on the Dnipro River in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine was destroyed in what Ukrainian officials and Western governments attributed to a Russian explosive detonation from within the dam’s structure, which had been under Russian control since the beginning of the occupation of Kherson Oblast. Russia denied responsibility and attributed the destruction to Ukrainian sabotage. The dam’s failure caused catastrophic flooding downstream, inundating approximately 40 communities on the Ukrainian-controlled western bank of the Dnipro, forcing the evacuation of approximately 80,000 people, destroying agricultural land, contaminating drinking water systems and threatening the cooling water supply to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
The destruction of the dam was the largest act of environmental sabotage in Europe since the Second World War. It also transformed the southern military theatre: the flooding made the river more difficult to cross for both sides, consolidating defensive positions along much of the front. Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which had been expected to include a southern thrust toward Melitopol, was pushed primarily toward the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk directions instead.
Ukraine launched its formal counteroffensive in early June, with armoured brigades equipped with Western-supplied vehicles advancing into Russian defensive lines in multiple sectors. Progress in the quarter’s final weeks was slower than Ukrainian planners had hoped: Russian forces had constructed extensive layered fortifications, including minefields, anti-tank obstacles and prepared firing positions, over the previous months. Western partners — who had delayed providing tanks, F-16s and long-range missiles through the winter — continued to pledge support while debates about escalation and war aims persisted in NATO capitals. As this edition is published, the counteroffensive is weeks old and its ultimate scope is not yet clear.
Energy markets responded to Ukraine’s continuing war with some relief: oil prices fell from their 2022 peaks and were trading in the $70–$80 range as of early July, easing the fuel import burden on Caribbean economies compared to the previous year’s extraordinary levels. But wheat, fertiliser and cooking oil prices remained above pre-war baselines, sustaining elevated food import bills across the region.
Haiti: Crisis Deepens as MSS Mission Remains on Paper
Haiti’s gang crisis entered its second year of acute intensity during Q2 2023. The G9 Family and Allies coalition and rival groups continued to contest control of Port-au-Prince’s key infrastructure, with the Cité Soleil and Martissant corridors particularly affected. The fuel terminal at Varreux, which supplies approximately 70 per cent of Haiti’s petroleum products, was blockaded and briefly seized on multiple occasions. The Haitian National Police, depleted by resignations, budget shortfalls and gang infiltration, was increasingly unable to respond.
CARICOM continued to press for deployment of the multinational security support force whose authorisation had been sought from the United Nations Security Council. Kenya had confirmed its willingness to lead the mission; negotiations were ongoing over financing, legal frameworks and the composition of contributing countries. A Security Council vote on the authorising resolution had been expected before mid-year but was delayed by geopolitical complications. CARICOM heads of government, including Jamaica’s Prime Minister Holness, maintained public pressure for rapid action, warning that the deterioration in Haiti had direct consequences for regional security and migration patterns.
Jamaica: Inflation Retreating, Housing Market Resilient
Jamaica’s economic picture was cautiously positive at the close of Q2 2023. Headline inflation, which had reached double digits in 2022, was retreating toward 8 per cent as global commodity prices eased from their war-driven peaks. The Bank of Jamaica signalled a potential pause in its rate-hiking cycle, raising investor confidence that the worst of the tightening was behind the economy. Tourism continued its recovery, with the summer season opening strongly across the resort parishes.
The housing and real estate sector remained active despite elevated interest rates. National Housing Trust mortgage approvals tracked above the previous year’s pace, and private developers reported continued demand for residential units in Kingston’s new growth corridors and in the resort parishes. Construction input costs — steel, cement, imported fixtures — remained above pre-2022 levels, reflecting the lingering effects of commodity inflation and supply chain disruption. Developers were managing these pressures through phased construction and revised pricing, but the affordability challenge for first-time buyers remained significant.
The Jamaican diaspora in North America and the United Kingdom continued to send remittances at volumes that exceeded pre-pandemic levels, providing critical support to household consumption and housing-market activity. This flow was being watched carefully given the US Federal Reserve’s continued rate hikes and the risk of a US economic slowdown, but as of July 2023, the diaspora income channel remained strong.
Looking Ahead
The third quarter of 2023 opens with three major uncertainties: whether Russia’s post-mutiny political situation is stable or in flux; whether Ukraine’s counteroffensive will achieve significant territorial gains before autumn; and whether the international community will actually deploy a security force to Haiti before the country’s crisis deepens further. A fourth uncertainty — whether the Panama Canal’s growing El Niño drought will disrupt Caribbean supply chains — is forming quietly in the background. Jamaica’s economy is navigating this environment with reasonable success, but the external risk environment as July 2023 begins is as complex as any since COVID-19.
Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review is published quarterly, examining how wars, geopolitical tensions and major international crises have shaped Jamaica, the Caribbean and their economies.
Follow Jamaica Homes on Youtube @jamaicahomes and Instagram @jamaica_homes and on Facebook @jamaicahomesnews Send us a message or email us at onlinefeedback@jamaica-homes.com or editor@jamaica-homes.com
Visit our YouTube Community ↗