On 24 February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The event did not make geography important again. Geography had never stopped being important.
What changed was that businesses and internationally mobile people could no longer plausibly treat geopolitical location as a secondary variable in decisions about residence, capital, banking, energy and supply chains.
A risk that had often appeared remote became operational overnight.
Key takeaways
- War and geopolitics can change the viability of an international structure without changing its tax rate.
- Sanctions, military risk, banking restrictions and supply-chain disruption are different mechanisms and should be analysed separately.
- Jurisdictional diversification is useful only when it reduces real concentration risk rather than creating a complicated map on paper.
What happened then
The invasion began on 24 February 2022.
On 2 March, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution deploring Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and demanding withdrawal.
The immediate consequences included armed conflict, displacement and severe physical disruption. Governments then expanded sanctions and other restrictive measures. Companies changed logistics and counterparties. Energy security became a central European economic question.
These were related developments, but they were not the same thing.
War is not a sanction. A sanction is not private bank de-risking. A disrupted supply chain is not automatically the legal consequence of a designation.
Interpretation: geography was always inside the structure
Before 2022, the language of globalisation often encouraged an abstraction: capital was mobile, digital businesses served global customers and jurisdictions could be compared as though they were interchangeable service platforms.
Ukraine exposed the weakness of that abstraction.
Companies require payment rails. Goods travel through ports and borders. People have passports and physical homes. Energy comes through infrastructure. Banks are licensed inside legal systems. Governments can prohibit transactions.
The world may be globally connected, but the connections remain territorial.
The mechanism
physical conflict → security and logistics risk
government response → sanctions, export controls and other legal restrictions
private response → bank, insurer and corporate risk decisions
market response → energy, freight, capital and supply-chain repricing
Different businesses can experience the same event through completely different mechanisms.
The strongest countercase
Globalisation did not end.
Trade continued. Supply chains adapted. Capital moved. Companies found alternative suppliers and markets.
The lesson of 2022 is not “globalisation is over”.
It is that globalisation operates through political and physical infrastructure whose availability cannot be assumed.
What changed since then?
By July 2026, the European Union had adopted a twenty-first package of restrictive measures against Russia.
At the same time, the private sector learned to distinguish legal prohibition from broader risk appetite. A transaction can be legally permissible yet commercially difficult because a bank, insurer, supplier or correspondent institution does not want the exposure.
Scenarios, not forecasts
A normalisation scenario would reduce some risk premiums and potentially lead to selective relaxation of restrictive measures.
A prolonged-fragmentation scenario would preserve sanctions, duplicated supply chains and political screening even after active fighting diminishes.
A wider-fragmentation scenario would extend the same logic to more sectors and rivalries.
Practical consequences
International planning should include a geopolitical concentration map alongside the tax and corporate map.
Where are the owners resident? Which nationalities create additional compliance questions? Which banks and currencies are essential? Where are key suppliers? Which customers depend on controlled technologies? Which assets cannot be moved if a border or payment rail closes?
Not every business needs multiple residences, banks or supply chains.
But every international business should understand what fails if one country, one bank, one route or one political relationship becomes unavailable.
Geography is not the opposite of globalisation.
It is the infrastructure underneath it.
Sources
- United Nations, General Assembly resolution on the aggression against Ukraine, 2 March 2022: https://press.un.org/en/2022/ga12407.doc.htm
- Council of the European Union, 21st package of sanctions against Russia, 23 July 2026: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2026/07/23/21st-package-of-sanctions-eu-hits-russian-energy-financial-services-and-crypto-hard/
Disclaimer
This Insight provides general geopolitical and international-business analysis. It is not sanctions, legal, tax, investment or security advice. Current restrictions and risks depend on the persons, goods, services, countries and legal nexus involved and can change quickly.
