What's up guys and welcome back to wall street millennial on this channel, we cover everything related to stocks, and investing investors have had a lot to worry about since the beginning of 2022, with the new omicron, coveted variant, inflation and fears about the fed. Turning off the money printer with all of these headlines, many people are ignoring a potentially far more serious issue. Currently more than 100 000 russian troops are on standby. On the border of neighboring ukraine, they're just waiting for the go-ahead from putin to stage a full-scale invasion.

Ukraine is far smaller and their military is less capable than that of russia. If putin does decide to invade the war would be over in a matter of weeks, if not days, the us as well as some european countries are already sending military supplies to ukraine to help them defend against the imminent russian invasion. But it's highly unlikely that this will be enough to make a difference in this video. We'll look at why russia wants to take over ukraine and what will be the implications for the global economy.

Ukraine is the second largest country in europe by land mass and is home to 40 million people. While it borders russia, they speak their own language and have their own cultural identity. Its relationship with russia comes from its inclusion in the soviet union in the 1920s. In the 1930s, the ussr was struggling to feed its people, so they expropriated vast amounts of grain from ukraine to feed the people in russia.

This led to a massive famine, killing more than 3 million ukrainians when the soviet union finally collapsed. In 1991, most of the ukrainian people were relieved to finally have independence and what had nothing to do with russia. In 2008, ukrainian president viktor yushenko applied to join nato. A us-led alliance of western countries, nato rejected the application saying that ukraine still had too much corruption in its government, but they importantly said they want to admit ukraine as a member.

Eventually, russian president vladimir putin was not happy about this decision at all. Nato is russia's arch enemy. If ukraine joined them, russia would face the prospect of western military forces right across their border. Putin got a huge break in 2010 when ukraine elected viktor yanukovych as their new president.

This new victor was very pro-russian and even campaigned on making russian an official language in the country. There are many russian speakers in eastern ukraine who moved there during the soviet era. Prior to his election, ukraine was negotiating with the european union to become a member. Such a move would increase their ties to the west and further distance themselves from russia, victor ditched the efforts to join the eu and instead signed agreements increasing ukraine's economic ties with russia.

The ukrainian people started viewing him as a russian puppet and large-scale protests broke out in 2014. These protests escalated into a full-scale uprising with dissidents and police, exchanging live ammunition in the capital city of kiev. Putin sent special forces into ukraine to help victor escape to russia. An act which victor credits for saving his life after the 2014 uprising, ukraine elected the anti-russia candidate, petro poroshenko.

With this putin's worst fears were realized with a pro-western president in charge of ukraine. The prospects of a nato member across their border was looking more and more likely. He had to do something to change the situation. Crimea is a small island which was part of ukraine during the soviet era.

Many ethnic russians moved to the island, and russians now make up 65 of the population because of their cultural ties to russia. Many crimeans have long wanted to rejoin russia. This made it the lowest hanging fruit for annexation. In fact, russia sent intelligence operatives into crimea to conduct secret opinion polls, which showed overwhelming support for russian annexation.

In early 2014, russia sent special forces units to take over the crimean parliament. They replaced the existing leader with sergey axionov, a crimean political figure who was long in favor of unification with russia, local crimean separatists, with the help of russian special forces, strong-armed crimean members of parliament to vote in favor of a referendum. The central ukrainian government said that this referendum was illegal, but they went along with it. Anyway, 95.5 percent of prime minister voted in favor of annexation, while the election was probably rigged, there's no denying that a significant portion of the crimean populace supported annexation.

When the russian military started rolling in after the referendum results, they were largely met with cheering crowds. Part of the reason for the popularity is that russia is far richer than ukraine and thus has more money for public infrastructure projects and other development programs. Shortly after the annexation, russia started a multi-billion dollar project to build a bridge connecting the island to the russian mainland. At 10 miles long, it is the largest bridge in europe and helped crimea's economy by increasing tourism.

In addition to crimea. There are a few other provinces in eastern ukraine which have a high population of ethnic russians right after the crimea, annexation happened, pro-russian protests started taking over government buildings in some of these eastern provinces. Russia started supplying military equipment and allegedly sent over undercover military personnel to aid the pro-russian militants from 2014 to today, the ukrainian military has been trying to take back control of these eastern provinces with no success. They've been stuck in a stalemate with each side hiding out in world war, 1 style trenches.

In some cases, the opposing side's trenches are less than 100 meters away from each other. The six years of fighting has devastated eastern ukraine. It used to be a hub for heavy industry, but much of this has been destroyed. So far, 14 000 people have died and millions have been displaced from their homes.

The biggest victims are the civilians who wanted nothing to do with the conflict, but ended up in the crossfire. Anyway. Now russia has amassed 100 000 troops on its border ready to invade at any time. Ukraine has an army roughly 280 000 strong, but their equipment and training is far inferior to the more experienced russian military, seeing as the ukrainian military hasn't even been able to subdue the rebels for six years.

If the real russian army invades, they likely won't stand a chance. Most western european nations have voiced support for the ukrainian government with the u.s and uk supplying military weapons, but if russia does invade it's highly unlikely that the us or nato troops would come to the rescue engaging russia directly would risk starting world war iii. The u.s has promised harsh economic sanctions against russia if they invade ukraine, but it's unclear how much of a determinant this will be. Russia's economy is dominated by oil and natural gas.

These are commodities with global markets. If western nations ban imports of russian oil and natural gas they'll just sell it to asia, instead, many european nations are dependent on russian natural gas. Prices are already at record highs. If they cut off imports from russia.

This would hurt europe far more than it hurts. Russia, because of this germany, has been reluctant to send military aid to ukraine and instead wants to remain at least somewhat neutral. The fact of the matter is: if putin really wants to invade ukraine, nobody would realistically stop him. Eastern ukraine has been stuck in a bloody stalemate for the past 6 years and just like crimea, a large portion of the population would welcome russian rule.

If you conducted a referendum in the contested eastern provinces, there's a good chance that the people would vote to declare independence from ukraine. Ukraine is the poorest country in europe, with its government plagued by corruption, while the russian government is also corrupt. Their vast natural gas and oil resources have allowed them to become 2.5 times richer than ukraine on a per capita basis after the annexation. Crimea has also benefited from increased trade and tourism with russia, while it's unclear how much economic support rituals apply to eastern ukraine after a potential annexation, at least the civil war would end, and they can start the long process of building back six years worth of collateral Damage, so if russia does invade ukraine, what will be the impact on the us when russia invaded crimea in 2014, it had no discernible impact on the u.s stock market.

As long as the current crisis doesn't devolve into world war 3, it probably won't impact u.s equity markets, either it's having a much greater impact on the russian stock market with the ishares russia etf down almost 30 percent over the past few months. The stock market is pricing in a risk of western sanctions against russia, which could negatively impact their economy, but it's unlikely to affect the rest of the world. Alright, guys that wraps it up for this video. Do you think russia will invade ukraine or is putin just bluffing? Let us know in the comments section below as always.

Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next one wall, street millennial, signing out.