Case Study: How the Russia Ukraine War Reshaped Global Commodity Markets

When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the shock did not stay in one market. Russia was a top exporter of natural gas, coal, wheat, fertiliser, nickel, aluminium and palladium, and Ukraine was a major supplier of wheat, corn and sunflower oil. Within weeks European gas prices went up roughly tenfold from their 2021 levels, the London Metal Exchange suspended nickel trading after prices doubled in a day, wheat hit record highs and Indian households paid sharply more for cooking oil. India was hit and helped at the same time: it banned wheat exports in May 2022, put a duty on steel exports, saw its fertiliser subsidy bill balloon, and bought discounted Russian coal and fertiliser. This case study goes through the episode one commodity at a time. It starts with what Russia and Ukraine actually supply and why the market was already tight in late 2021, then works through energy beyond crude, food and fertiliser, and metals, using real Indian policy decisions and NSE sector moves at each step. It closes by mapping how sanctions and price caps split commodity trade into competing blocs, and gives macro-minded investors a practical playbook for reading the next multi-commodity supply shock.