The cost of possible war

Oil races to prices not seen since 2014

The markets globally have been volatile, driven by a rapid flow of information from the crisis in Eastern Europe. Stock markets in Asia and then in Europe fell sharply; and then, after a Russian general announced some troops would be withdrawing from the Ukrainian frontier, revived as sharply. The tensions between the Russian Federation and its southern neighbour — once a junior partner in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and still linked to Russia by economic and cultural ties — worsened conditions in stock markets already rattled by the spectre of global inflation. In India, the volatility index rose