Page 13 - RusRPTFeb24

An estimated 30% of the world’s traded consumer goods are shipped through the Suez route. Shipping costs usually make up a small fraction of total sourcing costs per product. For lower valued or voluminous products this could, for instance, make up around 5%. If prices double or triple, this raises total costs by 5 or 10%.
2.4 The war in Ukraine has become a peripheral concern for the West
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
What seemed at first to be the start of a Third World War has turned out to be more akin to a Second Yugoslav War: a local conflict on the edge of Europe triggered by a slow-motion imperial collapse.
By Alexander Baunov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
Throughout 2022, Europe was in shock. It turned out that Russia, owner of the continent’s most powerful armed forces, really was capable of sending tanks, missiles, and jets across its borders, bombing cities and seizing territory for no apparent reason, just as today’s adults were warned it might when they were children, and all while its politicians increasingly spoke in the language of tinpot dictators.
A feeling that everyone had been attacked swept Europe. Ukrainian flags were raised over buildings where even national flags had never been seen, and borders were flung open for Ukrainians in an unprecedented move.
Europe encountered a new type of refugee: one accustomed to going to cafes and the theater, one who may have arrived in a decent European car and is
13 RUSSIA Country Report February 2024 www.intellinews.com