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.
