Grain, Gas and Grievance
- Tor Martin Flesvik
- Jun 16
- 18 min read
Updated: Aug 17
A walk down the economy and history of the Russia–Ukraine conflict
Tor Martin Flesvik
Partner & Head of Equity Research
In the rich black soils of Ukraine lie the seeds of an age old entanglement. For centuries, Ukrainian wheat filled the granaries of distant markets, earning the land its moniker as the breadbasket of empires. Under the Tsarist Russian Empire, most of Ukraine’s territory was absorbed by the 18th century, including the fertile south conquered by Catherine the Great. The steppes of New Russia, today’s southern Ukraine were swiftly colonized by farmers and immigrants, and the port of Odessa blossomed into a cosmopolitan hub for exporting grain. By the late 1800s, wheat and other crops from Ukraine flowed to tables across Europe, underpinning the tsar’s realm with agricultural plenty.
Equally vital was Ukraine’s mineral wealth. The Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, once sparsely populated Cossack frontier, transformed into an industrial heartland as the empire hurtled into the industrial age. By 1913, on the eve of the First World War, the coal mines and steel mills of Donbas were producing a staggering 87% of the Russian Empire’s coal and 74% of its pig iron, the raw fuel and metal of industrial power. This made Ukraine not only the breadbasket but also a furnace and workshop of the Tsar’s domain. Railroads snaked south to haul Donbas coal, and factory towns sprang up, drawing in Russian workers and Russifying the eastern cities. Meanwhile, most ethnic Ukrainians remained peasants in the countryside, tied to the soil even as serfdom was abolished in 1861. The imperial center treated Ukraine as both colony and heartland: a source of food, raw materials and recruits, but also a borderland to be firmly controlled. Russification policies suppressed the Ukrainian language and identity, reflecting a view from St. Petersburg that Ukrainians were Little Russians inseparable from the greater Russian body politic. The economic subordination of Ukraine under the tsars thus went hand in hand with political domination, a pattern that would sow grievances for generations.
The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 gave Ukraine a brief taste of independence amid the chaos of civil war, but by the early 1920s Ukraine was forcibly Sovietized, folded into the new USSR as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Under Moscow’s rule, Ukraine’s economy was tightly integrated into the Soviet centrally planned machine. In the 1920s, Soviet policy even promoted the Ukrainian language and culture as a policy of Ukrainization, but this brief flourish ended as Stalin’s regime tightened its grip. The price of Soviet integration would soon be paid in blood and wheat. In 1932–33, Stalin’s drive to collectivize agriculture seizing grain to fuel rapid industrialization led to a terror-famine known as the Holodomor. Harvests were requisitioned at gunpoint; grain exports continued even as Ukrainian villages starved. Millions perished in this man made famine (estimates range from 2.6 million to as high as 10 million dead), a trauma that scarred the national memory. Ukraine’s fertile fields had become a weapon against its own people, sacrificed to Soviet economic dogma.
Despite such suffering, Ukraine remained essential to the Soviet economic engine. The USSR’s industrialization in the 1930s leaned heavily on Ukrainian iron, coal, and labor. The industrial base built in cities like Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro) turned Ukraine into the second largest economy of the Soviet Union, a crucial republic for heavy industry and armaments. This status made Ukraine a battleground once again during World War II literally and figuratively. Nazi invasion and scorched earth combat left Ukraine in ruins: an estimated 6.8 million Ukrainians, soldiers and civilians, were killed in World War II, and whole cities were leveled. Yet, within a decade after 1945, Soviet central planners had rebuilt Ukraine’s industries at breakneck speed. By the mid-1950s, Ukrainian industrial output had more than doubled its prewar level, making the republic one of Europe’s leading producers of coal, steel, machinery and other commodities. The Donbas mines churned, the steelworks of Mariupol and Kryvyi Rih roared, and new hydroelectric dams spanned the Dnieper River. Ukraine once again more than pulled its weight in the union, it became the USSR’s breadbasket and its workshop, accounting for a substantial share of Soviet grain production, minerals and manufacturing.
However, this Soviet economic model brought mixed blessings. Ukraine’s farms were collectivized and controlled from Moscow, and its factories followed Moscow’s plans. The Soviet emphasis on heavy industry and defense over consumer goods meant Ukraine excelled at producing steel and rockets, but lagged in living standards. By the 1980s, growth had stagnated and the inefficiencies of over centralization were evident. Environmental catastrophes like the Chornobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 added to disillusionment. Still, when the Soviet Union began to crack, Ukraine’s economic heft made it pivotal. In 1991, as the USSR disintegrated, Ukraine then the second most populous Soviet republic declared independence, taking with it a large chunk of the Soviet industrial base and some of the richest farmland on Earth. The stage was set for a grand post Cold War experiment: could this cornerstone of the Soviet economy transform into a prosperous free market democracy on its own? The answer would prove more complicated than many hoped.
Divorce and disputes after independence
When the Soviet empire fell apart, the economic bonds between Russia and Ukraine did not sever neatly. Initially, the two newly sovereign states remained deeply intertwined. Ukraine inherited factories that relied on Russian suppliers and markets, Russia’s pipelines still snaked across Ukrainian soil to deliver gas to Europe. In the 1990s, both economies plunged into severe depressions common to post Soviet transitions. Ukraine’s output collapsed to less than half of what the Ukrainian SSR had produced in the late 1980s. Hyperinflation wiped out savings, and industrial production cratered as Soviet supply chains broke down. By 1998 Ukraine was among the poorest post Soviet states in per capita GDP. This painful decade left many Ukrainians impoverished and disillusioned, even as a new class of oligarchs amassed fortunes from the privatization of state industries.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Russia remained Ukraine’s largest trading partner and an indispensable economic ally and at times, antagonist. Moscow provided critical economic support to its junior partner in the form of cheap energy. For years, Russia sold natural gas to Ukraine at heavily subsidized prices, a boon estimated to cover most of Ukraine’s enormous energy needs. This underpriced gas was a double edged sword, it propped up Ukrainian industries like steel and chemicals by keeping input costs low, effectively a multi billion dollar annual gift, and cushioned Ukrainian consumers with affordable heating. But it also fostered dependency and corruption. Politically connected tycoons in both countries siphoned profits via opaque gas trading schemes, and Kyiv’s politicians grew accustomed to Moscow’s energy largesse. Ukraine grew dependent on oil and gas coming from Russia at almost no cost, as one analysis noted. Rather than reform its economy with the windfall, Ukraine coasted through the 2000s, failing to diversify or seriously tackle graft. By the early 2010s, Ukraine was often dubbed the sick man of Europe, its economic potential unrealized due to mismanagement and ingrained corruption.
Even as trade and energy linked the two countries, a tug-of-war emerged over Ukraine’s geopolitical orientation. All Ukrainian presidents after 1991 balanced between keeping ties with Russia and heeding a public desire to integrate with Europe. The tension came to a head in 2013. Ukraine negotiated an Association Agreement with the European Union, promising closer trade links and reforms. Moscow viewed this as a dire threat not only a political snub, but an economic loss, fearing Ukraine slipping out of its orbit. The Kremlin applied intense pressure on Ukraine’s Russia leaning president, Viktor Yanukovych, to ditch the EU deal. Carrots and sticks were both employed. Russia dangled a generous $15 billion loan and cheaper gas if Ukraine aligned with Moscow instead. Simultaneously, the Kremlin wielded trade as a weapon in the months leading up to the decision, Russia suddenly banned imports of Ukrainian chocolates, machinery and other goods and even temporarily halted all Ukrainian exports at the border. The message was clear, choosing Europe would incur Russia’s wrath in lost trade and punitive measures.
In late 2013, Yanukovych bowed to Moscow’s pressure and scrapped the EU agreement. The decision ignited the Maidan revolt also known as Euromaidan in Kyiv, as hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets to demand a European future and an end to oligarchic corruption. By February 2014, after a bloody crackdown failed, Yanukovych fled the country. Sensing an opportunity to snatch victory from the jaws of its diplomatic defeat, Russia struck back. Within days, masked Russian troops, the infamous little green men seized control of Crimea, Ukraine’s strategic Black Sea peninsula, home to a Russian naval base. By March 2014, Crimea was annexed by Russia, and shortly after, pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbas, backed by covert Russian firepower, declared rebellion against Kyiv. The first hot war on European soil in the 21st century had begun.
From annexation to all out war
The simmering conflict that started in 2014 set the pattern for what would become the full blown Russia–Ukraine war of 2022. In the initial phase, Russia’s intervention was limited and covert enough to avoid a total rupture in economic relations. Still, the impact on both economies was significant. Western nations imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 for the Crimea grab targeting Russian banks, oil companies and cronies of President Vladimir Putin. These measures, coupled with a collapse in oil prices that year, tipped Russia’s economy into recession in 2015 and sent the ruble plunging. Ukraine’s economy, for its part, went into freefall. The loss of Crimea and parts of the Donbas historically the most industrialized, coal rich region was a heavy blow. By 2015, Ukraine’s GDP had shrunk by over 16% in two years, a depression exacerbated by war damage and the cutoff of trade. Two of Ukraine’s major steel plants and many coal mines lay in war-torn Donbas, and exports from those areas halted. The government in Kyiv required international bailouts, and inflation soared as gas subsidies were slashed. The conflict zone itself became an economic deadland; damage to infrastructure and industries in eastern Ukraine by 2021 was estimated in the tens of billions of dollars.
Crucially, the 2014–2021 period also accelerated the economic decoupling of Ukraine from Russia. What had been an uneasy interdependence began to unwind. Ukraine dramatically reduced trade ties with its aggressor to the east: Ukrainian exports to Russia plummeted from about $29 billion in 2011 to just $5 billion by 2021. Russia, once the destination for a third of Ukraine’s exports ranging from steel to food products, was replaced by the European Union and China as Ukraine’s top trade partners. Perhaps the biggest divorce came in energy. In June 2014, Ukraine stopped buying natural gas directly from Russia, after decades of being one of Gazprom’s largest customers. Instead, Ukraine developed the capacity to import gas from European neighbors and tapped domestic reserves, an extraordinary reorientation for a gas-dependent economy. By cutting off this umbilical cord, Ukraine freed itself from Russia’s most powerful lever. No longer could Moscow threaten to turn off the taps in winter to bend Ukraine to its will. The broader significance of these shifts was profound: by the late 2010s, two economies once deeply enmeshed were largely disentangled.
Moscow, however, sought new ways to squeeze Ukraine. It built pipelines like Nord Stream under the Baltic Sea and TurkStream under the Black Sea, aiming to bypass Ukraine and deprive it of transit fees and strategic importance. But these moves did not force Kyiv’s surrender. If anything, they strengthened Ukraine’s resolve to integrate with Europe and improve energy independence. A low-intensity war smoldered in the Donbas for years, costing some 14,000 Ukrainian lives by 2021 and turning once-vibrant cities like Donetsk into struggling garrisons . Diplomatic efforts, including two Minsk ceasefire accords, froze the frontline but failed to produce a lasting peace or a political solution. Through these years, Ukraine’s economy slowly recovered from the initial shock, helped by reforms and Western aid, while Russia adapted to sanctions through import substitution. Yet both sides were bracing, perhaps unknowingly, for a larger confrontation.
That confrontation exploded in February 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an act far more audacious and destructive than its 2014 incursion. The world watched in shock as Russian tanks rolled toward Kyiv in an attempt to decapitate the Ukrainian government. This was the biggest military offensive in Europe since 1945. It also unleashed economic shockwaves of a magnitude unseen in generations. Western nations responded to the invasion with unprecedented sanctions, effectively severing Russia from global finance and trade with advanced economies overnight. In a matter of weeks, Russia went from a major node of the world economy supplying Europe with energy and the world with grains, metals and fertilizers to the most sanctioned country on Earth. Trillions of dollars of Russian assets were frozen, global companies from BP to McDonald’s abruptly pulled out of Russia, ending three decades of post Soviet investment. The Kremlin, for its part, seemed prepared to weather the economic fallout, having built up $600 billion in currency reserves and reoriented trade towards Asia. Putin wagered that Russia’s vast commodity wealth would let it outlast Ukraine and the West’s resolve.
Economic consequences of a modern war
The economic toll of the current war on Ukraine has been devastating. In the first year after the full invasion, Ukraine’s GDP plunged by about 30–35%, the largest single-year collapse in the country’s modern history. Whole swathes of infrastructure have been destroyed, ports, bridges, factories, and power stations as Russia’s bombardment seeks to cripple Ukraine’s capacity to sustain itself. The World Bank estimated Ukraine’s physical damage in the hundreds of billions of dollars, a figure that rises with each missile strike on power grids or apartment blocks. Before the war, Ukraine’s economy was heavily reliant on exports of grain, steel, and other commodities and suddenly, its Black Sea ports were blockaded and many steel mills such as the famous Azovstal plant in Mariupol were occupied or ruined. Industrial production and agricultural harvests have both been slashed. An economy that managed to grow modestly in the late 2010s is now propped up by emergency loans and aid from Western backers to maintain basic services and a wartime footing.
Perhaps the most tragic economic cost is the human one: millions of Ukrainians have been thrown into poverty, and over 6 million people have fled the country as refugees. This mass exodus, roughly 15% of Ukraine’s pre war population means a huge loss of workers, entrepreneurs, and consumers. Factories that haven’t been wrecked by shells sometimes find themselves short of labor or unable to get raw materials. Farms lack young farmers, as so many are now soldiers at the front or displaced abroad. Unemployment has soared, and inflation while tamed somewhat by strict financial controls has eroded incomes. The government in Kyiv has run double digit budget deficits to fund the war effort and relief, largely financed by foreign aid. Despite the gargantuan challenges, Ukraine’s economy has not completely collapsed. Adaptation is visible, exporters use rail and river routes through Europe when possible, and businesses relocate to safer western regions of Ukraine. A degree of wartime entrepreneurship has appeared, and allies have kept Ukraine supplied with fuel, electricity equipment, and financial lifelines. Still, by any measure, the war has undone decades of economic development. Ukraine will require a Marshall Plan scale reconstruction once the guns fall silent, and the economic decisions made in these dark hours such as anti-corruption measures and strengthening the rule of law will shape its post war trajectory.
Russia, too, has paid a steep price, though its economy initially proved more resilient than many expected. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, as sanctions hit, the Russian ruble’s value plummeted and lines formed outside Russian banks. Analysts in early 2022 predicted the Russian economy would contract by 10% or more. In fact, Russia’s GDP fell by a relatively modest 2.1–2.5% in 2022 according to estimates, a painful recession but far from an economic collapse. Swift action by Russia’s central bank (such as capital controls and jacking up interest rates) stabilized the currency, and record high oil and gas prices for much of 2022 provided a windfall that Moscow used to cushion the blow. By pivoting exports to China, India, and other non-Western markets, Russia kept its energy flowing abroad, albeit at discounted prices. The West’s partial embargo on Russian oil and gas was impactful but phased in gradually, giving the Kremlin time to adjust. Moreover, years of import substitution since 2014 had spurred some domestic production of food and manufactures, preventing outright shortages.
Yet the headline GDP figures masked deep wounds in Russia’s economy. As 2023 unfolded, signs of strain grew. Western sanctions increasingly targeted high tech components and critical industries, eroding Russia’s industrial capacity. The exodus of hundreds of foreign companies left entire sectors from auto manufacturing to finance, bereft of investment and expertise. Car production in Russia, for instance, fell to a fraction of its pre war level as Western and Japanese automakers pulled out and spare parts became scarce. To fill the gap, the Kremlin pushed the economy into a war footing. Factories that once made civilian goods have been repurposed to produce tanks, ammunition, and military uniforms. This militarization of the economy kept certain metrics like industrial output appearing surprisingly stable, but it has meant a dramatic shift in priorities. By early 2023, an estimated one-third of Russia’s federal budget was being devoted to defense and internal security guns instead of butter. Such spending is sapping funds from health, education and infrastructure. The Russian state’s finances are increasingly strained: in the first quarter of 2023, Russia’s budget deficit hit 2.4 trillion rubles, more than half the shortfall expected for the entire year. With export revenues dropping as European energy purchases dry up and the costs of war rising, Russia faces the prospect of draining its once-formidable sovereign wealth funds. By the end of 2023, analysts predicted severe financial difficulties for Moscow’s regime.
Beyond the spreadsheets and budgets, Russia’s long-term economic prospects have dimmed as a result of its war of choice. The country has become a pariah in many markets, its trade links to Europe severed after decades of integration. A “brain drain” is underway as educated young Russians leave the country, unwilling to live under increasing repression and a closed economy. Critical technology imports from advanced semiconductors to commercial aircraft parts are largely banned, forcing Russia to rely on smuggling or less efficient substitutes. The ruble, once stable, has tumbled in value, stoking inflation and undermining household purchasing power. President Putin has touted a pivot to Asia and a self sufficient “Fortress Russia,” but the reality is a shrinking, more isolated economy. The IMF and World Bank predict Russia’s growth, even if positive in 2023–24, will be a fraction of what it could have been without the war and sanctions. In essence, the invasion may have strangled Russia’s own future growth to satisfy an imperial nostalgia.
Global shockwaves
The fallout from Russia’s war on Ukraine has radiated far beyond the two nations’ borders, roiling global markets and reshaping geopolitics. In an increasingly interconnected world, the conflict delivered an economic shock on top of existing stresses from the COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps most immediately felt worldwide was the impact on energy. Russia was until recently the world’s largest exporter of natural gas and one of the top oil producers, and Europe was its biggest customer. When war broke out, natural gas prices in Europe hit record highs as traders feared a complete cutoff of Russian supply. Those fears largely materialized: by the winter of 2022–23, Russia had sharply reduced gas deliveries to Europe in retaliation for sanctions, and the vital Nord Stream pipelines had been sabotaged amid the hostilities. European countries, in response, scrambled to line up alternative gas supplies importing liquefied natural gas from the United States and Qatar, ramping up pipelines from Norway and North Africa, and even reopening mothballed coal plants to keep the lights on. Within a year, the European Union slashed its dependence on Russian pipeline gas from over 40% of supply to around 11%. This stunning pivot required costly investments and triggered a continent-wide energy crunch. Electricity and heating bills for households in Europe doubled or worse in late 2022, contributing to a cost-of-living crisis. Governments in Germany, France and elsewhere intervened with subsidies to cushion consumers and hasten the build-out of renewables and energy terminals. While Europe managed to avert blackouts, the era of cheap Russian gas which had powered European industry for decades was suddenly over. The implications will be lasting, higher energy costs and renewed emphasis on energy security and diversification across the Western world.
The war’s impact on food and agriculture has been no less dramatic. Ukraine and Russia together are agricultural powerhouses, normally supplying roughly 30% of the world’s wheat exports and a majority of its sunflower oil, along with significant corn, barley, and fertilizer exports. The invasion turned Ukraine’s breadbasket into a battlefield. In the spring of 2022, Ukrainian farmers had to don flak jackets to sow seeds, if they could sow at all. The Russian navy’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports trapped millions of tonnes of grain in silos, sending global food prices soaring. By mid-2022, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation’s food price index reached its highest level ever recorded. Countries in the Middle East and Africa that depend on affordable wheat imports were hit hard, with bread prices and food insecurity skyrocketing. Egypt, the world’s top wheat importer, faced supply shortfalls; aid agencies warned of famine risks in Yemen and East Africa due to the double blow of conflict and drought. Russia’s war in Ukraine became synonymous with a worsening global hunger crisis as well as inflation. A U.N.-Turkey brokered deal in mid-2022 allowed some Ukrainian grain to be exported via the Black Sea Corridor, providing partial relief, but Russia’s frequent threats to abandon the deal injected uncertainty that kept prices volatile. By mid-2023, Russia had withdrawn from the grain initiative, again jeopardizing vital shipments. Meanwhile, Russia’s own food exports actually benefited from the situation: with Ukraine hampered, Russian grain grabbed a larger global market share even as Moscow offered discounts to friendly buyers. Still, the overall effect of the war has been to worsen hunger and cause governments worldwide to rethink their food import dependencies and stockpiles.
Global inflation and financial markets have also been buffeted by the conflict. The war compounded existing inflationary pressures that had built up as economies rebounded from the pandemic. Surging energy and food costs acted like a tax on consumers around the world, curbing spending power and prompting central banks to hike interest rates. In 2022, inflation in the Eurozone and UK climbed into double digits for the first time in generations, largely driven by energy prices. The United States, though less directly exposed to Russian commodities, still saw forty-year high inflation partly due to knock-on effects like more expensive diesel and fertilizer. Higher inflation eroded real incomes and sparked labor unrest in many countries. By 2023, global economic growth had slowed notably, with the IMF warning that the war in Ukraine had dealt a massive setback to the world economy. Stock markets initially tumbled when the invasion began, Moscow’s own stock market was shuttered for a month to prevent total collapse and investors worldwide cycled out of riskier assets. Over time, markets adjusted to the new reality, but uncertainty remained high. The war also accelerated conversations about deglobalization. Western nations, jolted by how geopolitical risk can upend trade, started scrutinizing other strategic dependencies, from semiconductors made in Taiwan to rare earth minerals from China. In effect, Russia’s actions led many to conclude that economic interdependence, once seen as a guarantee of peace, could become a vulnerability in conflict. The peace dividend that allowed low defense spending and easy trade in the post cold War era evaporated,military budgets in Europe were promptly boosted to heights unthinkable just a few years prior. Germany, for example, announced a historic increase in defense outlays and canceled the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, abruptly overturning decades of policy that prioritized cheap energy over security.
As the war rages on with no clear end in sight, its economic reverberations continue to shape a new world order. Russia has turned to selling its oil in Asia and using the Chinese yuan for trade to bypass Western sanctions, entrenching a divided global financial system. Europe is investing in energy infrastructure and moving faster toward renewables to ensure it will never again be so reliant on a single authoritarian supplier. Countries in the Global South, caught between condemning aggression and protecting their economies, have sought new alignments and trade partners, sometimes benefiting from discounted Russian commodities. In a larger sense, the Russia–Ukraine conflict has underscored how economic strength and security are as critical on the 21st-century battlefield as tanks and trenches. Ukraine’s surprising military resilience has been bolstered by an influx of Western aid and equipment. Its economic resilience, too, hinges on outside support and its people’s ingenuity under fire. Russia’s aggression, meanwhile, may have weakened not just its adversary but its own long-term economic vitality, as brain drain and sanctions set it back by years.
The saga of Russia and Ukraine is often portrayed as a clash of histories and identities which it is, but it is also a story of economics. From the tsars’ grain quotas to Stalin’s five year plans, from Soviet gas pipelines to today’s sanction-wracked trade wars, material interests have been tightly interwoven with politics. The current war’s far-reaching fallout on national economies and global markets is but the latest chapter in a long tale of intertwined fortunes. Ukraine’s quest for freedom has meant a painful uncoupling from the economy of its larger neighbor, while Russia’s imperial ambitions have unleashed forces that could impoverish it further. As this conflict reshapes supply chains, energy flows, and alliances across continents, the lessons of history are being written in real time. An old empire’s shadow looms over the present battlefield, reminding us that the price of dominance in wheat or in oil, in 1917 or 2025 can be ruinously high. In the end, the Russia–Ukraine conflict shows that economics and power are two threads of the same tapestry, and when they tear apart, the rip is felt worldwide.
Sources:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – “The Underachiever: Ukraine’s Economy Since 1991.” Analysis of Ukraine’s post-Soviet economic trajectory, including historical context .
Encyclopædia Britannica – Entry on Donbas. Provides historical data on Donbas’s share of imperial Russian coal and steel output .
NPR News – “Ukraine: From Breadbasket To Basket Case” (2014). Notes Ukraine’s role as the breadbasket of the Soviet Union and 2014 economic challenges .
Chatham House – “Ukraine–Russia Relations (2021).” Think-tank report detailing trade figures and energy ties, e.g. collapse of Ukrainian exports to Russia and end of gas purchases .
Economics Observatory – “Ukraine: what’s the global economic impact of Russia’s invasion?” (2023). Summarizes the war’s effect on Ukraine’s GDP (30–35% fall) and Russia’s economy under sanctions .
Reuters – “The Ukraine crisis and Russia’s gas threat in Europe” (Feb 2022). Provides context on 2006 and 2009 gas disputes and Europe’s gas reliance on Russia .
Consilium of EU – “Where does the EU’s gas come from?” (2024). Official EU data on the drop of Russian pipeline gas from 40% to 11% of imports .
S&P Global/FAO – Statistics on Russia and Ukraine’s share of global wheat exports (about 30% combined before the war) .
NPR/AP – “Global food prices hit record high amid drought, war” (Jan 2023). Reports FAO data on food price index reaching all-time high due to the war .
IMF (Kenneth Rogoff) – “The Long-lasting Economic Shock of War” (Finance & Development, 2022). Discusses how war in Ukraine exacerbates global inflation and poverty trends .
Author
Disclaimer: This document is a general communication being provided for informational purposes only. It is educational in nature and not designed to be taken as advice or a recommendation for any specific investment product, strategy, plan feature or other purpose in any jurisdiction. This content reflects the personal opinions of the author and is intended for informational purposes only. It is not investment advice, financial advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset. Always conduct your own research and consult with your own qualified financial professional before making any investment decisions. Copyright 2025 Knightsbridge Associates LTD, All rights reserved