Russia just invaded Ukraine. What that could mean for
energy prices, global security and more
In the trenches of eastern Ukraine, Ivan Skuratovskyi's calm verges on numbness — even
after a sniper's bullet recently killed one of the 50 or so men under his command. AP
Domestic
Story HighlightsU.S. officials estimate the invasion could cause major loss of life and
injury.
Concerns that Russia's invasion will prompt a refugee crisis have worried world leaders
for months.
Russia's incursion could make other NATO countries nervous, especially former Soviet
Baltic states.
President Vladimir Putin ignored months of intensifying warnings by President Joe Biden
and other Western leaders that Moscow would face "swift and severe costs" if Russia
invaded Ukraine.
Now, as the Kremlin reaches into Ukraine, Putin's policy seems likely to come with
significant costs, chiefly for Ukraine itself.
"Peace on our continent has been shattered," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg
said Thursday. "This is a deliberate, cold-blooded and long-planned invasion. Russia is
using force to try to rewrite history."
While predicting the consequences of conflict is notoriously difficult, here are some
probable outcomes – for U.S. and European security, for global energy flows, for a
potential wave of Ukrainian refugees and in terms of sanctions expected to target Putin
and his inner circle that could turn Russia into a pariah state in the eyes of the West.
Ukraine resists
Ukrainians inside and outside the military have told USA TODAY in recent weeks that
Putin won't take their country without a fight, even if it means prolonged street-to-street
battles and a bloody insurgency supported by ordinary citizens.

Protesters hold posters in front of the Russian Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Feb.
22, 2022.
For weeks, the U.S. and other NATO countries have been sending weapons, advisers and
troops to Baltic states, Poland, Romania and other nations close to the hostilities.
But they've sworn off direct fighting in Ukraine.
More: Biden says he has no plans to send U.S. troops into Ukraine amid standoff with
Russia
Better trained, better equipped: What you should know about Russia and Ukraine's
militaries
Much now depends on the scale and scope of Russia's invasion, which is still being
assessed. Russia on Thursday launched a wide-ranging attack on Ukraine, hitting cities
and bases with airstrikes or shelling.
In the days ahead of Moscow's assault, U.S. officials estimated the invasion could cause
major loss of life, serious injury and capture, with Ukraine suffering as estimated 5,000 to
25,000 troop casualties, while Russia's better trained and better equipped military could
see 3,000 to 10,000 casualties.
Civilian casualties could range from 25,000 to 50,000.
Oleksii Arestovich, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said
Thursday at least 40 people had been killed and dozens others wounded in the attack so
far.

'Brothers': Russians, Ukrainians wage fragile peace at Winter Olympics
"Doomsday scenarios often speculate that Russia will try to occupy the country, topple
the capital and kill tens of thousands of civilians. I do not believe that these scenarios
accord with Putin's track record," said Max Abrahms, a specialist in international security
studies at Northeastern University in Boston.
"Putin is not a strategic dunce or a martyr," Abrahms told USA TODAY. "Even when he
authorized Russian military intervention in Syria's civil war in 2015 (credited with turning
the tide in President Bashar al-Assad's favor), he did so in a way that would not lead to a
quagmire."
Russian President Vladimir Putin reacts during a joint press conference with French
President Emmanuel Macron after their talks in Moscow, on Feb. 7, 2022.
Concerns that Russia's invasion will prompt a refugee crisis across Europe have had
world leaders worried for months.
British, Ukrainian and U.S. officials have all warned of a "humanitarian disaster"; 3
million to 5 million Ukrainians could try to flee their homes, and many are likely to try to
escape via neighboring Poland, which is starting to see people cross the border.
According to figures from Ukraine's interior ministry, about 1.5 million Ukrainians are
already internally displaced after fleeing the 8-year-old Russia-backed conflict in
Ukraine's Donbas region and after Moscow's annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces, the military reserve of the Ukrainian Armed
Forces, take part in a military drill outside Kyiv on February 19, 2022.
"It is frightening to imagine what scale the refugee crisis could reach in the event of
escalating hostilities in Ukraine," said Agnès Callamard, human rights group Amnesty
International's secretary-general. "It will be a continent-wide humanitarian disaster with
millions of refugees seeking protection in neighboring European countries."
Reporter's notebook: Walking with migrants during Europe's refugee crisis
A refugee crisis in Europe beginning in 2015 triggered by Syria's civil war roiled the
continent for years as European capitals either struggled to offer protection and security to
those who needed it, were accused of letting too many asylum-seekers in, or evaded
public calls to do more for refugees fleeing war zones across the Middle East.
The crisis is widely blamed by political scientists for being one of the catalysts that led to
a rise in right-wing, anti-immigration political populism which saw the United Kingdom
vote to leave the European Union in 2016, the same year President Donald Trump was
elected.
Security order tumult
Washington and its allies have repeatedly publicly committed to an "ironclad commitment
to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity," though that commitment does not
extend to fighting side by side with Ukrainians, only equipping and training its military
and imposing financial and economic sanctions on Moscow.

Still, Russia's incursion could make other NATO countries in Europe nervous, especially
the former Soviet Baltic states that joined the military alliance in the past two decades, as
Russia possibly looks to consolidate its military and cultural sphere of influence around
its borders, said Andris Banka, a Latvian-born professor of international politics at the
University of Greifswald in Germany.
"The Baltics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) are stuck in unfavorable geography as they
are almost completely cut off from their NATO peers and share considerable borders with
what they perceive to be a threatening revanchist power," Banka said.
Flags flutter in the wind outside NATO headquarters in Brussels prior to a visit by
Poland's President Andrej Duda on Feb. 7, 2022.
Putin 'won't stop' with Ukraine: Why Americans should care about Russia does
The invasion also could lead to an increase in defense spending by the U.S. and NATO,
effectively bolstering an alliance whose eastward expansion has long troubled Putin. The
Pentagon has already announced it put 8,500 forces on "heightened alert" in the event
they are needed as part of a 40,000-strong NATO Response Force and Biden has sent
3,000 soldiers to Poland to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank.
NATO will hold an emergency meeting Friday after countries closest to the conflict
–Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland – requested consultations under Article 4 of
NATO’s founding treaty, which can be launched when "the territorial integrity, political
independence or security of any of the (NATO) parties is threatened."

"A Russian invasion of Ukraine will come as a shock to leaders in the West who believed
the post-Cold War European security architecture was a permanent state of affairs," said
Daniel DePetris, a fellow at Defense Priorities, a think tank in Washington dedicated to
introducing more military restraint in U.S. foreign policy.
Maps and more: Where is Ukraine? Where are NATO members? A guide to post-Soviet
eastern Europe
"Unfortunately, Russia never bought into this order and indeed felt excluded from it," he
said. "NATO itself will survive and indeed has taken appropriate defensive measures over
the last few months to strengthen deterrence."
Abrahms, the Northeastern University security expert, said Russia's invasion of Ukraine
"has given the NATO alliance its clearest raison d'etre since the Cold War."
Ukraine map
Russia is one of the world's largest suppliers of energy, and it could seek to withhold
supplies to Europe while attacking Ukraine or in retaliation for sanctions.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has already put a halt to its Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline,
designed to pump Russia's natural gas under the Black Sea to Europe.
The Biden administration has said it has been working with its European partners and the
region's energy suppliers to come up with contingency plans for alternative energy
supplies. A number of countries including South Korea and Japan have signaled they may
be willing to help.

The U.S. does import Russian oil and gas but has large strategic reserves. But higher
global energy prices could impact gas prices at the pump. Both oil and gas prices soared
Thursday.
Cristian-Dan Tataru, an expert on Russia at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think
tank, wrote in a recent research paper that in addition to energy supplies, the conflict
could result in a potentially worrying food crisis for places such as Lebanon and Libya,
which get half of their wheat imports from Ukraine.
Sanctioned: Putin's inner circle
Western powers have threatened "unprecedented" sanctions on Moscow.
Biden said Tuesday that the “first tranche” of sanctions would cut off Russia from
Western financial institutions, and beginning on Wednesday the U.S. imposed sanctions
against individual Russian “elites” and their family members.
Sanctions from European leaders have targeted Russian lawmakers, financial institutions,
Russia's airline industry and some wealthy associates of Putin.
The U.S. president said the sanctions are designed to "cut off" Russia from international
loans and other forms of financial assistance they rely on. Penalties also target Russian
"elites" and their family members who profit from its military adventurism.
This is not unprecedented. Scores of Putin's former and current political associates have
been sanctioned by Washington and it allies. Heads of state such as Syria's Assad and
Zimbabwe's late leader Robert Mugabe have also seen their riches, foreign assets and
ability to travel sanctioned.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of separatist regions in
eastern Ukraine and paved the way to provide the separatists with military support. (Feb.
22) AP Domestic
But sanctions extending to Putin himself would be a first, though their effectiveness
would be unclear. Independent reporting in Russia has appeared to establish that Putin is
one of Russia's wealthiest individuals, but no one knows where he keeps his money.
Putin's official annual salary is about $150,000, a relatively modest sum for a man
routinely seen wearing $60,000 watches. Various watchdogs, investigation groups and
anti-corruption campaigners have estimated his actual personal wealth to be somewhere
between $70 billion and $200 billion.
'Putin is turning his main threat into a martyr': Will the Russia president's attack on
Navalny, journalists and 5,700 detained Russians backfire?
"The Kremlin is well positioned to survive (any targeted sanctions). Russia's foreign
currency reserves and history of fiscal discipline, combined with continued high prices

for the commodities Russia exports, will likely be sufficient to cushion the blow," said
Sam Greene, director of the Russia Institute at King's College London.
"If sanctions are more of the kind we've seen imposed on Iran or North Korea, that would
be a very different story," he said. "The U.S. and Europe have been careful since 2014 to
impose sanctions on people and companies close to the Kremlin, but to minimize the
direct impact on ordinary Russians and on the Russian economy as a whole."
Best way to study https://www.socialpilot.co?fp_ref=asintha65
side effects of the war between Russia and Ukraine.