Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine will remake our world. How it will do so remains uncertain. Both the war’s outcome and, even more, its wider ramifications, including those for the global economy, are largely unknown. But certain points are already all too evident. Coming just two years after the start of the pandemic, this is yet another economic shock, catastrophic for Ukraine, bad for Russia and significant for the rest of Europe and much of the wider world.
As usual, the impact of refugees is mostly local. Poland already houses the second-largest refugee population in the world, after Turkey. Refugees are also pouring into other eastern European countries. More will come. Many will also wish to stay near their homeland, hoping for an early return. They need to be fed and housed.
Yet the ramifications go far beyond eastern Europe or even Europe as a whole, as an excellent interim economic outlook from the OECD shows. Russia and Ukraine account for only 2 per cent of global output and a similar proportion of world trade. Stocks of foreign direct investment in Russia and by Russia elsewhere are also only 1-1.5 per cent of the global total. These countries’ wider role in global finance is also trivial. Yet they matter to the world economy, all the same, mainly because they are important suppliers of essential commodities, notably cereals, fertilisers, gas, oil and vital metals, whose prices in world markets have all soared.