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Ukraine has been at war with Russia, officially since Thursday, February 24, 2022, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement of a military operation. Since then, the forty-four million Ukrainians have been living through a human drama of brutality and scale unprecedented in Europe since the war in the former Yugoslavia. A drama in the light of which the economic repercussions may seem derisory. And yet, the world quickly understood, this conflict is shaking up countries, markets, and plunging entire nations into uncertainty.
From African banana producers, to Ukrainian wheat consumers in Egypt or Algeria, for example, via Europe of gas and oil, metals, mines and banks. No sector is immune to the geopolitical repercussions engendered by this conflict.
The crisis is taking on the appearance of “total economic war” to use the expression of the French Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire. Because the reaction of Westerners and especially Europeans was not long in coming. An economic blockade of Russia has been put in place. Europe and the United States reacted with unprecedented vigor to the invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions, closure of the skies, freezing of the assets of the oligarchs, exclusion of certain banks from global payment services. The Russian financial system is on the brink of collapse.
Will these sanctions be effective? Will the economic weapon be able to bend Moscow? Will the price to be paid for Europe be bearable? These are some of the questions raised by this crisis. It is already certain that the world that will emerge from this Ukrainian crisis will no longer be the one we know.
To talk about it and discuss the economic upheavals caused by the adventurism of Vladimir Putin, we welcome three renowned experts.
– Sylvie Matelly, deputy director of IRIS, the Institute for International and Strategic Relations (IRIS).
– Julien Vercueil, vice-president of Inalco, the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations, economist and specialist in the post-Soviet world, but also in emerging countries.
– Didier JulienneNatural Resources strategist, professor at the School of Economic Warfare, former trader in strategic metals.