Ways the world has changed since Russia invaded Ukraine

Day 9 of the war in Ukraine: dead civilians add up to 331 1:07

(CNN) — The Russian invasion of Ukraine it has claimed hundreds of lives on the battlefield and in bombed-out Ukrainian cities. But internationally, it is also affecting everything from food security in Cairo to gasoline prices in California. It has brought important geopolitical changes to the fore and changed the way some of the world’s most prominent institutions function.

Here are four ways the world has changed in the 10 days since war returned to Europe.

A changing world order

The invasion of Ukraine did not usher in a new era of great power politics. It was the violent exclamation point confirming one of the most significant changes in the geopolitical world order since 9/11.

In the years that followed, global terrorism consumed much of the attention of Western leaders. Al Qaeda and ISIS were the enemies that needed to be countered. The Kremlin was no longer seen as the same threat it once was, so much so that, in 2012, President Barack Obama mocked then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney for calling Russia America’s number one geopolitical enemy.

People form a human chain to transfer supplies Thursday in Kyiv, Ukraine.

By this time, Putin had already shown that he was willing to change the post-Cold War order.

The former KGB intelligence officer took office in the 2000 promising to restore Russia’s former glory, sometimes through military force. As prime minister in 1999, he launched an offensive in the Russian republic of Chechnya once morest separatist guerrillas. In 2008, the Kremlin invaded Georgia and recognized two breakaway republics in the country, which at the time was moving closer to Europe.

Later, Putin’s support for the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad — ostensibly an ally in the war on terror — did not garner favor with Western democracies, largely due to credible reports of the Syrian dictator’s decision to attack his own people with chemical weapons. Putin’s decision to annex Crimea in 2014 and back separatists in eastern Ukraine prompted sanctions and was roundly condemned. So were the Russia’s alleged attempts to assassinate its enemies on foreign soil.

But Putin remained an important, if unpalatable, player and partner for leaders from Washington to Warsaw throughout the 2010s. Russia was a major factor in the fight once morest ISIS; Europe’s leading energy provider; and helped broker major diplomatic deals like the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Last week’s invasion may have ended that. After a quarter of a century in the Western world dealing with Putin, he may have finally pushed the limits and become an outcast.

In response, the Western world has hit Russia with unprecedented sanctions who have crippled its financial institutions, sending its economy and the ruble into a tailspin, and even personally targeting Putin and some of his inner circle.

“Putin is now more isolated from the world than ever before,” US President Joe Biden said in his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

A more unified Europe

The Russian invasion has also led the European Union (EU) to make security decisions that were unthinkable a few weeks ago.

Although the bloc has been one of the world’s most powerful economic players for years, it has failed to turn that strength into an equivalent geopolitical power.

The EU has historically been divided over exactly how much central control Brussels should have over foreign policy. This has stood in the way of the EU’s lofty global ambitions, as political proposals were watered down in negotiations or simply vetoed.

European thinking on defence, security and foreign affairs has evolved light years in a matter of a few days. Now it is waking up from a decades-long dream in which the stability provided by an interconnected world would prevent war from breaking out and that, should the worst happen, the United States would solve it.

The impact of war returning to Europe has unified the 27 member states of the EU. The bloc is now wielding its economic power for geopolitical ends, targeting Russia with the strongest sanctions package it has ever imposed.

The bloc, for the first time in history, provided financing to buy weapons for Ukraine. Germany, which for decades has opposed a militarized approach to foreign policy, is now involved in arming Ukraine and increasing its own military spending in response to the invasion.

“The crisis in Ukraine has shattered the illusion that security and stability in Europe are free.” a senior European diplomat told CNN this week. “When there was no real threat, geopolitics seemed remote. Now there is a war on our border. Now we know we have to pay up and act together.”

A million people on the move

One million people fled from their homes in the first seven days since Russia invaded Ukraine, one of the fastest and largest migrations of humanity in recent memory. To put that in context, it took a million refugees three months to leave Syria in 2013, when outflows were at their highest.

If the fighting continues and, as a French source close to President Emmanuel Macron said, the worst is yet to come, Europe might face an unprecedented refugee crisis.

“I have worked in refugee emergencies for almost 40 years and I have rarely seen an exodus as fast as this one,” said Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees.

There have also been multiple reports of racism once morest people of colory not Ukrainians at the border.

The future of the refugees remains unclear. If Russia overthrows the democratically elected Ukrainian government, will these people want to go home? What if, following the fighting, they no longer have homes to return to?

Poland receives most of the refugees from Ukraine 3:01

food and fuel

The gasoline prices In the United States they have registered their biggest increases since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Experts worry that food prices might rise following already rising “sharply” last year. And Moody’s warns that global supply chains, already hit by the covid-19 pandemic, might be plunged further into chaos. Stocks around the world fell on Friday, with Europe taking a particularly hard beating.

The fighting in Ukraine has had economic and human costs around the world, especially when it comes to energy.

Although Europe has said for years that it needs to ditch Russian energy, Moscow is the EU’s biggest supplier of oil and natural gas.

Europe might survive if Russia cut off supplies, but it wouldn’t be easy or cheap.

The conflict is also a pocket issue that might determine whether families can put food on the table. In Ukraine alone, three to five million people will need immediate food support, World Food Program (WFP) Executive Director David Beasley said.

But Russia and Ukraine are also some of the world’s top wheat producers. Together, they account for 23% of all world exports, according to S&P Global.

“Fears of conflict hanging over two of the world’s leading suppliers are clearly going to have some impact on prices, when there is already a sense of scarcity,” said Julien Barnes-Dacey, director of the Middle East and Africa program at the North at the European Council on Foreign Affairs.

Although Ukraine is known as the breadbasket of Europe, concerns are particularly acute in the Middle East, the third largest buyer of wheat from Kyiv in the 2020/2021 marketing year, according to the US Department of Agriculture. More than 40% of the country’s recent wheat exports went only to the Middle East or Africa.

CNN’s Luke McGee, Matt Egan, Chris Isidore, Nadeen Ebrahim and Eoin McSweeney contributed to this report.