Twenty ways the Ukraine war has changed our world

1 Weakened Putin — and Russia

On the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Vladimir Putin seemed at the top of his game. Ten months later, the Russian president is trapped in a war that has gone disastrously wrong — with no exit strategy. The cancellation last week of his traditional marathon end-of-year press conference suggested he is concerned about the growing unpopularity of the conflict, and even fuelled rumours that he may be terminally ill and planning to flee. “The increasingly untenable Ukraine war is undermining Putin’s popular legitimacy and his standing with a ruthlessly pragmatic elite that wonders whether he is still the ruler they need,” argues Mark Galeotti, the author of more than 20 books on Russia, Ukraine and the Soviet Union. “Paradoxically, though, this also makes him more dangerous — repression is having to replace genuine authority.” Not everything has gone wrong for the Kremlin leader, however. Though a pariah in the West, he has found an unexpected new status in the developing world as “an anti-colonial warrior”, Galeotti believes. “Countries with experience of western imperialism are susceptible to Putin’s claims to be pushing back against an arrogant United States using Ukraine as a proxy,” he says.

2 Brought back fears of nuclear war

For the first time since the height of the Cold War in the early 1980s, there has been alarming talk in recent months of the possibility of nuclear war. This time, though, the speculation is not so much about a doomsday exchange of intercontinental ballistic missiles between Washington and Moscow but about the circumstances in which Putin could order a limited strike with a “tactical” nuclear weapon — perhaps if Ukraine tried to take back Crimea, considered by the president to be Russian territory since he seized it in 2014. “We are certainly not yet in the situation when such weapons might be used,” says Andrew Monaghan, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. “But one of the most dramatic things we’ve found over the year is quite how close we potentially could be to a nuclear war.” Fear of such an escalation, he believes, has made Nato rule out attempting to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which could have led to clashes between western and Russian planes.

3 Put a spotlight on Taiwan

The war has highlighted concerns, especially in the US, about China’s designs on Taiwan. Has it made it more or less likely that Xi Jinping will use force to seize what Beijing sees as a “renegade province”? The fierce resistance put up by the Ukrainians will undoubtedly have given the Chinese leader pause for thought before launching any potential invasion of his neighbour. One benefit for Xi, however, is that Russia’s estrangement from the West has made Putin increasingly dependent on China — underlining the extent to which the balance of power has changed over the decades.

4 Fuelled inflation — and industrial unrest in the UK

The war has pushed inflation in Britain and many other countries to its highest level in four decades, driving up the cost of almost everything we buy — and the interest charged on our mortgages. “Household energy costs are up by 88 per cent over the past 12 months, and at least half of the UK’s current inflation rate of nearly 11 per cent is due to higher energy costs and related increases in food and other prices,” says David Smith, Economics Editor of The Sunday Times. “In the absence of the Russian invasion, forecasters expected inflation to be about 4 per cent now.” Inflation has in turn fuelled a massive wave of industrial disputes this winter. Nurses and ambulance drivers have gone on strike and action by rail unions threatens Christmas travel chaos.

5 Driven more than 14 million Ukrainians from their homes

More than 100,000 Ukrainians have been accommodated in Britain under the government’s Homes for Ukraine initiative, but they are only a small proportion of the total number who have fled the war. About 14 million Ukrainians have left their homes in “the fastest, largest displacement witnessed in decades”, Filippo Grandi, the UN’s high commissioner for refugees, said last month. More than 7.8 million Ukrainians have fled to European countries — including at least 1.5 million in Poland and one million in Germany (though there are also an estimated 2.8 million in Russia). The World Health Organisation has warned that a further two to three million could be displaced in the coming month as Russia attempts to “weaponise winter” by attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, trying to freeze its enemy into submission.

6 Created a new Russian diaspora

Russians are also on the move: over the past ten months, more are thought to have left the country than in the aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, mostly to neighbouring Georgia, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Turkey. Tens of thousands departed soon after the outbreak of the war, when Putin forbade any questioning of the wisdom of what he insisted on calling a “special military operation”. This initial exodus was dwarfed by the estimated 700,000 men of military age thought to have fled to avoid conscription after Putin announced a “partial” mobilisation on September 21. The loss of predominantly young, often highly educated people threatens Russia with a damaging brain drain.

7 Added to fears of famine in Africa

The breadbasket of Europe, Ukraine has long been a major grain exporter: last year it is estimated to have provided food for 400 million people around the world. For the first five months of the war it was unable to export grain through its primary shipping routes through the Black Sea. This worsened the famine that was already beginning to afflict Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia — which traditionally have obtained 90 per cent of their wheat from Ukraine and Russia. A deal done in July to allow Ukraine to resume exports (subsequently suspended but resumed last month) has provided some relief, but east Africa, along with much of the developing world, has been hard-hit by sharp rises in the price of food, fertiliser and fuel caused by the conflict.

8 Isolated the Russian economy

Surging energy prices since the invasion have helped fund Moscow’s war machine, though revenues will drop because of a $60-a-barrel price cap imposed this month by the EU on its oil exports. Overall, sanctions mean the country’s economy is set to shrink by up to 4.5 per cent this year. It is decoupling from the West, reversing three decades of economic integration that followed the collapse of communism.

Most US and European companies have shut down or sold their subsidiaries in Russia. Import bans aim to cut off supplies of western technology usable in weapons systems, while Russian airlines are stripping planes for spare parts they can no longer buy abroad. Yet supplies of semi-conductors have still been getting through, thanks to smuggling networks or importers in Turkey, Hong Kong or other trading hubs that have not imposed sanctions.

9 Made it harder to know what’s going on inside the world’s largest nation

Russia, famously described by Sir Winston Churchill as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” has become even more difficult to read after many British and other western correspondents left for neighbouring countries. One of the few remaining is Steve Rosenberg, the BBC’s Russia editor. Independent Russian media have been muzzled. Ukraine, meanwhile, has been flooded with journalists from all over the world.

10 Made us think greener

On the brighter side, higher energy prices are providing a greater incentive to install solar panels and heat pumps and to insulate our lofts. The UK and European governments have been quick to find alternatives to energy once piped from Russia, buying more liquefied gas from Qatar and the US. They are also lookin

g again at nuclear power — including in the form of small modular reactors — and investing in wind power. Such projects take time to implement: if this winter is especially harsh, some people could suffer power cuts.

11 Strengthened Nato

Just a few years ago, some were questioning the point of Nato. Not any longer. The war has provided the 73-year-old alliance with the sense of purpose it lacked after the end of Cold War. Nato forces stationed in Poland, the Baltic states and other countries on its eastern front line have been bolstered. Both Sweden and Finland have also asked to become members — though their applications are being held up by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, who is using the issue to persuade Stockholm to take a tougher line against Sweden-based Kurdish groups that oppose his regime.

12 Given us a glimpse of the future of warfare

This war, which has featured Elon Musk’s 2,000 Starlink satellites and old-style trench warfare, is being studied closely by military strategists. It offers a taste of the kind of conflict we should be prepared to wage in the future, argues Michael Clarke, visiting professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. “The Ukrainians are already doing what the British know we have got to learn to do in the future,” he says. “We’re training the Ukrainian soldiers on a regular basis. But quite soon they will be training us.”

The Russians, by contrast, are fighting largely like a late-20th-century army. But for Sir Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor at King’s, it is a “pretty old-fashioned war in many ways”, with an important role played by artillery bombardments and relatively little cyberwarfare. The sheer extent of Russia’s military incompetence has surprised him. “It also failed to take advantage of its air power, which I had assumed would be critical to its success,” Freedman adds. Drones, often cheap and expendable, are being used extensively by both sides.

13 Showed the importance of charismatic leadership

Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, has become one of the world’s leading figures. Often clad in a khaki T-shirt, he has made nightly morale-boosting broadcasts to the nation and popped up on video everywhere from the House of Commons to the Academy Awards. “The most important thing he has done is to press foreign governments to support him,” says Freedman. Zelensky’s wife, Olena Zelenska, has also proved an effective ambassador, while Ukrainians have easily won the propaganda battle on social media. The contrast could not be greater with Putin, who has been seen browbeating underlings from the far end of a very long table.

14 Ended the military taboo in Germany

The war exposed the embarrassing extent to which Germany’s growth in recent years has been fuelled by cheap Russian oil and gas, making the country dangerously dependent on Moscow. Within days of the invasion, Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, announced major reforms of defence and energy policy. He called it a Zeitenwende (watershed moment). One of its main elements is a promised €100 billion (£87 billion) makeover of the military.

15 Brought a bonanza for arms manufacturers

Germany is not the only one rearming: countries as far from the conflict as Japan and South Korea are also raising defence spending. This is giving a boost to US and European arms-makers, for whom the war in Ukraine is also providing a showcase for their wares. “The Russians had been flogging weapons all over the world and the rest of the world can see they’re not very good and that western weapons are far, far better,” Clarke says. Shares in America’s Lockheed Martin, which makes the F-35 fighter jet, as well as the Himars missile systems used to deadly effect by Ukrainian forces, have surged by a quarter since the invasion. Shares in BAE Systems are up by almost 40 per cent.

16 Strengthened Ukrainian identity

To anyone not familiar with that part of the world, Ukraine and Russia seemed almost indistinguishable before the war. Woe betide anyone who confuses the two today. The conflict has focused attention on their long and tangled history over the centuries — including the Holodomor, the 1932-33 famine that killed millions of Ukrainians. The Sunday Times, along with most other media, now refers to cities by their Ukrainian rather than Russian names: Kyiv, rather than Kiev; Kharkiv instead of Kharkov; and Odesa with a single “s”.

Inside Ukraine, the war has sharply accentuated national pride and forced millions of Ukrainians with family or cultural ties to Russia to reassess their perception of their giant neighbour.

17 Broken ties in sport, science and the arts

Russia hosted the 2018 World Cup but was ejected from the qualifying rounds for Qatar. Other sports have also banned the country’s athletes, though tennis and cycling have let them compete as “neutral” participants. Co-operation in some — but not all — international science projects has also ended. The arts have been presented with a dilemma: Valery Gergiev, Putin’s favourite conductor, has been declared persona non grata by several European concert halls but other Russian musicians still play. Some have called for Russian music and plays to be removed from repertoires. La Scala nevertheless opened its season this month with Modest Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov, ignoring objections from the Ukrainian consul in Milan.

18 Threatened a cold war in the Arctic

A serious blow has been dealt to relations between Russia and its Arctic neighbours, ending three decades of co-operation begun in 1996 with the establishment of the eight-member Arctic Council. The council’s activities were put on hold in March when its seven western members suspended work with Russia, which held its rotating chairmanship. This could impede work on environmental protection and sustainable development in a highly sensitive area and have a negative impact on the Inuit and other indigenous peoples living in the region.

19 Made plane journeys longer

British and European airlines flying to and from Asia have been obliged to take costly detours because they are not allowed to fly across Russian airspace. The ban was imposed after Russian carriers were barred from serving Britain and other European countries. “Prior to the war, the flight from London to Tokyo was about 12 hours and now it takes almost 14, as airlines fly south to Istanbul, across Kazakhstan and onwards over China to Tokyo,” says Mike Arnot, an airline industry commentator. “The added costs of fuel burn are enormous, and passengers have paid for it with higher fares.”

20 Given Chelsea a new owner

After 19 years under the ownership of Roman Abramovich, Chelsea Football Club was bought in May for £4.25 billion by a consortium headed by Todd Boehly, a billionaire American businessman and investor. Abramovich announced he was selling a few days after the outbreak of the war “in the best interest of the club, the fans, the employees, as well as the club’s sponsors and partners”.