Russia’s sudden economic isolation is choking off a major global source of energy, metals and crops
It’s threatening the country’s very foundations and raising fears of something the developed world hasn’t suffered in decades -- acute inflation and real energy shortages.
Bloomberg’s gauge of raw materials was set for its biggest weekly gain since at least 1960 as sanctions on Russia scared off buyers.
Coal racked up an unprecedented 80% rally, European natural gas broke price records and oil futures swung in the widest range in three decades.
Bloomberg 5 March 2022
The world was facing a grain supply crunch even before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The United Nations food price index was already higher in real terms than at the height of the global hunger crisis a decade ago, when Tunisian bread protests set off the Arab Spring.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Food crisis looms as Ukrainian wheat shipments grind to halt
Russia and Ukraine supply almost a third of the world’s wheat exports and since the Russian assault on its neighbour, ports on the Black Sea have come to a virtual standstill.
As a result, wheat prices have soared to record highs, overtaking levels seen during the food crisis of 2007-08.
Russia also provides its Black Sea neighbour Turkey with more than 70 per cent of its wheat imports
FT 6 March 2022
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