Hi, 3 charts on the Russian invasion of Ukraine:
It's hard to overstate the political, economic and — most importantly — human impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine this week.
After just over 24 hours of fighting hundreds of casualties have already been reported, with tens of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing the country — mostly moving west towards neighboring countries like Poland and Romania.
The reaction in financial markets has been interesting. Despite weeks and weeks of troop movement and build-up, markets and investors were relatively sanguine about the prospects of an actual Russian ground invasion. They, and many others, got that wrong.
Once the invasion began, markets were sent into turmoil. The Russian MOEX index, which tracks 43 of Russia's biggest public companies, fell by one-third — by far the biggest one-day fall in the country's history. The scale of that move suggests that even investors thought Putin was still unlikely to invade despite the obvious troop build-up. Elsewhere, oil prices spiked and Russia's currency — the Ruble — slid to record lows against both the US Dollar and Euro.
In recent days few words have been used as much as "sanctions". As one of the easiest ways to deter Russia, without risking escalation, the list of announced sanctions has been getting longer and longer. The hardest hitting sanctions would be to boycott Russian gas or oil exports, or cut them out of key financial infrastructure like SWIFT.
The issue for some countries in Europe is their reliance on Russian gas and oil. In 2020 Russia accounted for more than 40% of all of the European Union's gas imports, and more than one-quarter of the petroleum oil imports (source). That dependence may impact the willingness of certain European countries to impose harsher sanctions on Russia, for fear of retaliation.
Of the larger economies, most exposed are Hungary, Czech Republic, Italy and Germany — each of which relies on Russian gas significantly (per this great chart from The Economist).
One interesting chart we've seen, originally in the NYTimes, was of Ukrainian public opinion towards Russia. As shown above, before Russia's annexation of Crimea — the peninsula in the south — Ukrainian public opinion towards Russia was overwhelmingly positive.
Respondents to surveys from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed that more than 80% of Ukrainians polled had mostly positive views towards Russia. After the annexation that figure dropped dramatically, and hadn't recovered even prior to Russia's latest invasion.
Regional variation
Not every region of Ukraine feels the same. Residents of western Ukraine are a lot less likely to have a positive view of Russia (21% of respondents) than their counterparts in the east — where 53% had a positive view.
1) Americans are moving house less than ever before.
2) The SEC is looking into whether recent Tesla stock sales worth $108m by Elon Musk and his brother may have violated insider trading rules.
3) A Ukrainian NGO, Come Back Alive, had set up a Patreon page to collect money to directly support the country’s military in response to Russian aggression. The page was shutdown by Patreon for violating its terms of service.
4) TikTok has published a series of reports for marketers on the trends that are shaping the platform.
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6) Shares in Block, formerly known as Square, are up ~23% this morning after reporting a rosier outlook at its latest set of results. The news helps to unwind some of the ~45% loss in value the shares had seen in the year-to-date.
7) A map of Ukraine's degrading internet infrastructure.
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