Hawks and Doves: Financial market perception of Western support for Ukraine

Abstract

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the West has been intensively discussing its support strategy. Hawkish positions of strengthening Ukraine via armaments, financial resources, and sanctions against Russia compete with dovish views of avoiding further escalation of the military and geopolitical conflict. We analyse how international financial markets perceived this news. We create a comprehensive data set of news related to the early phase of the war and measure reactions of five key financial markets. The results show that stronger support for Ukraine had a positive impact after the first weeks of the war when the Ukrainian position in the war improved, but a negative (or at least less positive) influence before. Thus, financial markets seem to have perceived support as a risk of further escalation threatening business prospects in the first phase. However, a hawkish line was a positive signal for financial markets after the change in perceptions.