Russia's invasion of Ukraine and global energy crisis

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, prompting the US, EU, UK, and allies to impose the most sweeping sanctions regime in decades, including freezing much of the Russian central bank's foreign reserves and removing major Russian banks from the SWIFT payment system. European natural gas prices spiked to more than ten times pre-crisis levels after Russia cut pipeline supply through 2022, forcing governments to spend heavily on household energy subsidies and accelerating a shift toward LNG imports and renewables. Ukraine and Russia together had accounted for a large share of global wheat, corn, and sunflower-oil exports, and the disruption to Black Sea shipping routes contributed to a spike in global food prices that hit import-dependent developing economies especially hard until a UN-brokered grain corridor partially eased the pressure later in 2022.