Aurelia Butler

Investors are growing worried that if the European Central Bank signals too aggressive a tightening in monetary policy, it could trigger the type of bond market tumult that worsened the eurozone debt crisis a decade ago. Government debt across the currency bloc has tumbled since last week’s ECB meeting, when President Christine Lagarde declined to rule out the possibility of a rise in interest rates this year as the central bank battles record high inflation. For bond investors, that prospect is particularly concerning because the ECB has repeatedly stressed that it will wind down its vast bond purchasing programmes before lifting rates. “The ECB is the only thing that’s been keeping the bond market at bay and it is being forced into retreat,” said James Athey, a portfolio manager at Aberdeen Standard Investments. Crucially, the sell-off has hit highly-indebted countries — whose bonds have benefited disproportionately from ECB buying — hardest, widening the gap in borrowing costs between eurozone members. If the central bank hurries to the exit, investors may once again choose to focus on the daunting debt loads of Italy and Greece, worth around 160 per cent and 200 per cent of gross domestic product respectively.Greece’s 10-year spread — the extra yield Athens needs to pay relative to ultra-safe German borrowing costs over a decade — surged above 2 percentage points this week, from 1.4 percentage points at the beginning of the year and doubling since last August. Italy’s 10-year spread, an important gauge of risk in eurozone bond markets owing to the vast scale of Italian debt, widened to more than 1.6 percentage points, the most since July 2020.These levels remain well below those reached during a powerful jolt of volatility in the early stages of the pandemic, let alone the heights scaled during the region’s debt crisis, when Greece, Ireland and Portugal had to restructure their debts and Italy and Spain came close to being shut out of bond markets. Even so, the speed of market moves in recent days carries an uncomfortable echo of the upward spiral in yields seen a decade ago, when rising borrowing costs fed concerns about debt sustainability, leading to further selling of sovereign bonds.“I think if the ECB rushes through the end of asset purchases spreads could blow out further from here,” said Athey. “At some point, as we saw in the [eurozone debt crisis], that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”The ECB last raised interest rates in 2011, a move which has to be swiftly undone as the eurozone headed into the most acute phase of its debt crisis. Some investors are hoping such experiences will remind Lagarde and her colleagues to move slowly.“Exiting net asset purchases and raising policy rates increases the risk of financial accidents, especially as debt levels have surged during the pandemic and as many other central banks are tightening policy at the same time,” said Joachim Fels, global economic adviser at bond investing group Pimco. “Given these risks, and mindful of the 2008 and 2011 episodes of ill-timed ECB tightening, cool heads and steady hands are still likely to prevail at the ECB. However, the risks of yet another policy mistake have clearly increased.”Lagarde helped to stem the widening in spreads when she told the European parliament on Monday that the ECB’s tightening would be “gradual”. She hinted that reinvestments of maturing bonds held under the central bank’s €1.85tn pandemic era bond-buying programme could help to counter any move higher in borrowing costs. While the ECB president’s tacit acknowledgment of the recent rise in bond yields is reassuring, such a policy is unlikely to be sufficient to counter a concerted sell-off in Italian or Spanish debt, said Antoine Bouvet, a rates strategist at ING. “The tools offered to guard against further spread widening lack in firepower,” he added.Some investors stress that Italian borrowing costs remain a long way below levels where debt sustainability would once again become a concern. Italy’s average interest bill on its outstanding debt is about 2.5 per cent. With 10-year yields currently at 1.87 per cent, Rome can continue to cut its average debt costs as it borrows, said Iain Stealey, international chief investment officer for fixed income at JPMorgan Asset Management.With high nominal growth, a market-friendly prime minister in the form of former ECB chief Mario Draghi, and support from the EU’s €800bn recovery fund, the country can withstand higher yields than it could a decade ago, according to Stealey.“Italy is in a hugely different position,” he said. “Once the dust has settled you might say 2 per cent on the 10-year looked attractive.”Still, the selling in bonds of Italy and its peers has been a painful one for many investors who had parked their cash in riskier debt to earn a little extra yield, safe in the knowledge that the ECB would only very slowly unwind its massive stimulus programme. “The ECB has had many plans to create inflation, but zero plans of what to do if they succeeded,” said Ludovic Colin, a senior portfolio manager at Vontobel Asset Management. “The euro area as a whole can withstand higher yields. The problem we have is how fast you get to it. For the ECB, this is going to be like trying to land a massive jumbo jet in a storm without crashing.” More

Cutting gas flows to Europe is Moscow’s trump economic card if the west imposes tougher sanctions in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. But the EU’s vulnerability to countermeasures by the Kremlin extends well beyond energy.Policymakers fear the bloc is less prepared than Moscow, where President Vladimir Putin’s “Fortress Russia” strategy is aimed at helping the country weather any deeper sanctions.From technology suppliers and lenders to goods exporters and manufacturers dependent on raw materials, disrupted trading links would increase inflationary pressures and curb activity for a wide range of European businesses.“The geopolitical clouds that we have over Europe, if they were to materialise, would certainly have an impact on energy prices . . . but [they] would also impact growth as a result of reduced income and possibly as a result of reduced consumption and deferred investment,” said European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde last week.Energy dependenceRussia is the EU’s largest energy supplier. About 40 per cent of the bloc’s natural gas imports and nearly one-third of its crude oil imports come from Russia. The US, a net energy exporter, and EU are discussing the possibility of securing alternative energy supplies.Gas reserves are below historical levels and prices have soared in recent months, giving Russia increased leverage. “The truth is, Europe has no substitute for Russian gas,” said Ronald Smith, senior oil and gas analyst at BCS Global Markets.In the event of a conflict, natural gas prices “could easily regain the [December 2021] peak of €180 per MWh”, said Andrew Kenningham, chief Europe economist at Capital Economics. “Electricity rationing could push the economy into a recession,” he added.The EU would need “difficult and costly decisions” around curbing industrial and consumer demand to survive large-scale disruption to gas supplies until the summer, according to Brussels think-tank Bruegel. Moreover, countries such as Germany have limited scope to switch to other sources of energy in the short term, having moved away from nuclear power and coal.

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The Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany could also have sanctions imposed on it, while the UK and EU are discussing curtailing new Russian gas projects. However, as in 2014, when sanctions were imposed on Russia after it annexed Crimea, most economists do not expect gas flows to dry up entirely, as Russia wants to be seen as a reliable energy supplier. “The ‘Russia gas weapon’ is too powerful to ever be used or, for that matter, to even be mentioned directly in negotiations over this or that disagreement between countries,” said Smith. Meanwhile, European oil groups such as BP, Total and Shell could see their joint ventures in Russia disrupted if new sanctions were introduced.Raw material supplies at risk Russia is a leading commodities exporter and features in the European Commission’s list of suppliers of critical raw materials.Russia supplies about 40 per cent of the world’s palladium, which is needed in the catalytic converters used in vehicles to limit harmful emissions, and about 30 per cent of titanium, which is crucial for the aerospace industry.Europe’s Airbus, which sources about half of its titanium from Russia, and US rival Boeing both use large amounts of the metal in the manufacture of aircraft. Airbus has said it would “rigorously comply with any sanctions and export control regulations”.EU officials have also discussed imposing tough export controls on western technology. Warren Patterson, head of commodities strategy at ING, said sanctions imposed on Russian banks or industries were likely to have “a far-reaching impact on the commodities complex” that could spread across markets in which the country is a leading exporter, including aluminium, nickel, copper and platinum. Anxious lenders, investors and marketsRussia-Ukraine tensions have fuelled volatility in stock markets this year. Companies with interests in the region, such as Finnish tyremaker Nokian Renkaat or Danish beer producer Carlsberg, have seen their share prices dip in recent weeks. Last month, Italian bank UniCredit pulled out of a potential bid for Russian lender Otkritie.“Investor nervousness can spread quickly into sectors that should be relatively safer,” said Angel Talavera at Oxford Economics.Lenders are also at risk, as the ECB has warned. About $60bn is owed to EU banks by Russian entities, nearly four times more than the amount they owe to US banks, according to the Bank for International Settlements. Large amounts deposited in EU banks by Russian entities could be frozen.Ukraine’s government owes about $23bn to holders of its sovereign bonds. Bondholders have grown increasingly nervous about a possible default or restructuring. The cost of insuring against default has doubled since September.Investors have said a full-blown invasion of Ukraine would trigger a flight to safety in global markets, away from stocks and into government bonds or other traditional havens such as the Swiss franc, yen and gold.Shutting Russia out of international payment systems or obstructing its access to US dollars would also hit counterparties in Europe.Trade and investment downturn From Polish chemicals to Latvian spirits, trade ties between Russia and eastern EU states are particularly strong in some sectors. Russia is the biggest export market for Latvian goods and the second-biggest for Lithuanian products. Overall, Russia is the bloc’s fifth largest export market, accounting for 4 per cent of its goods exports in 2020. But trade from large EU economies to Russia has been in decline since its annexation of Crimea. Less than 2 per cent of goods exports from Germany, Italy or France go to Russia.“Direct trade links between Russia and Europe are limited and have been reduced since the Crimea crisis,” said Nadia Gharbi, senior economist at Pictet Wealth Management.The EU remains the largest investor in Russia, driven by Germany, but last year its foreign direct investment in the country was less than half the figure of a decade earlier at $6bn, according to fDi Markets.Though analysts said most businesses with Russian interests were resilient enough to cope with disruption, Lagarde warned that heightened tensions could lead to “increased costs throughout the whole structure of prices” in the eurozone economy. “Peace is a lot better than any kind of war from an economic point of view,” she added.Additional reporting by Katie Martin and Jonathan Wheatley More

What is possibly the world’s most popular savings product, has four legs, produces milk and, as every child knows, says “moo”?In many rural areas those without much access to formal banking use cattle to preserve their surplus funds. Like a savings account, cows provide a regular income, although in the form of milk (or dung for fuel) rather than interest payments. While you might not be able to withdraw your money from a cow, you can always sell or eat it. This is nothing new. What is probably humanity’s oldest economic model was based on cows. A roughly 4,000-year-old Sumerian tablet discovered at Drehem in modern-day Iraq describes the growth of an idealised herd over 10 years. Like many models, it relies on unrealistic assumptions: no cows ever die and each pair always has a calf. Nevertheless, the Sumerian accountants likely used this tablet to forecast the value (in terms of silver) of the milk and cheese produced by such a herd over 10 years. Archaeologists believe the Drehem tablet was probably an investment plan. The initial number of cows increases exponentially in the same way as adding interest to savings compounds the value over time.Why should this matter to a modern investor? One who faces not a choice of whether to eat or keep their cows but choosing between stocks, bonds, cash or even just spending their nest egg? Well, it helps illuminate how central bankers see the world.Critical to their decisions is the economic theory of the “natural interest” rate — the principle that, even in a world without money, our savings should still produce a return. Indeed, the idea of a herd of livestock naturally growing in number may be where the Sumerians got the idea to charge each other interest.If a farmer lends a neighbour his herd, not only would he expect to get back what he lent — the principal — but also the income produced by the assets, in this case calves. The Sumerian word for interest is mash, which also means “calves”.The English word “capital” has a similar origin. In medieval Europe, livestock was an economic keystone and it was counted by heads of cattle. The Latin for head, capita, then gradually started to refer to wealth more generally and, eventually, to funds of money used by merchants.These days, economists draw a distinction between capital goods and financial capital. Actual things — a business’s premises, software and equipment — are all capital goods. They are commodities used to produce other commodities — an oil rig gives you oil; a cow gives you milk. This physical capital can be lent to a business, just as money is. Following the lead of the 19th century Swedish economist Knut Wicksell — a birth control-advocating iconoclast who was imprisoned for blasphemy — central bankers think the natural interest rate matches the supply and demand for investment funds.Wicksell knew that the commercial banks — not the central banks — created the vast majority of modern money and he wanted to know where the limits were to this process. His answer was that when the interest rate on money — the cost of borrowing — matched the return on “real” assets, the natural interest rate, there would be some sort of stability as the costs and benefits of creating new debt were equal. Otherwise, prices would surge out of control, leading to hyperinflation, or, if rates were set too low, a deflationary spiral. This theory is why central bankers often do not believe they really set interest rates. The long-term natural rate of interest ought to be independent of the short-term rates at which a central bank lends — changes in the money supply will not make cows breed faster or any other investment more productive. So, as central bankers target a particular rate of inflation, they will have to adjust their policy rate.So what does this mean for monetary tightening? Central banks are now engaged in a programme of withdrawing their pandemic support: the Bank of England raised interest rates at its February meeting, in only the second consecutive rise in base rate since 1997.But where will rates end up? Before the pandemic, central bankers argued that lower productivity growth — akin to cows breeding more slowly — would mean that rates would need to be lower for longer. The returns on offer from investing in real assets were lower so more needed to be done to push investors out of cash. It now seems clear that the pandemic has shaken something loose in the global economy: the emergency low interest rates adopted after the 2008 financial crisis seem, after years of not doing very much, to be finally generating inflation.Yet almost two years into the experiment of mass working from home, it also seems hard to believe that the pandemic will, on its own, unleash more than marginal productivity improvements. Indeed, a 2020 economics paper argues that the historical record shows that pandemics typically lead to a 1.5 percentage point fall — not rise — in the natural interest rate. Possibly, the authors argue, this is because there was less need for investment as the death toll meant fewer surviving labourers for each unit of capital.

That would be an argument for inflation to fade swiftly as the central bank’s short-term interest rates increase: monetary policy will soon become disinflationary rather than stimulative. Interest rates will rise a bit and then stop.There is another half to this mainstream theory of interest rates, however. The natural rate is not determined only by how productive investment is but also society’s willingness to save and that includes governments and companies. This time things may be different: unlike during historic pandemics the government has been willing to spend to protect jobs.Pressure to keep spending, for better or worse, looks unlikely to fade any time soon, whether that is in the drive to reduce carbon emissions, repairing supply chains, or just satisfying largesse-loving voters.On the other hand, it may be that there is nothing “natural” about the natural interest rate. The mid-20th century British economist John Maynard Keynes, for instance, argued that it was a misleading idea as “interest” had to be a purely financial phenomenon, one that depended not on the return on capital but the desire to hold money and, therefore, our uncertainty about the future. Vaccines may have removed many of the darkest clouds on the horizon — since the central banks began the latest iteration of extraordinary policies — but many investors would be forgiven for thinking that there is still too much to worry about to abandon cash just yet. Gavin Jackson’s book Money In One Lesson was published by PanMacmillan on January 22. RRP: £18.99. More

“We could have it be worse before it gets better but it is definitely going to get better,” Daly told CNN, adding that even so she doesn’t expect inflation to have fallen to 2% by the end of the year. Consumer prices rose 7% last year, eating into American paychecks.The Fed is expected to begin raising interest rates from near-zero levels next month, a move Daly said she supports. When it does, Daly said, the Fed should do neither too little nor be “overly aggressive,” mindful that the Fed alone cannot cure inflation that’s caused in large part by ongoing pandemic disruption. More

As the Federal Reserve prepares to start raising interest rates as soon as next month, leading emerging economies such as Brazil and Russia are so far ahead of the US central bank they could be nearing the end of the rate-raising cycles they embarked on last year.It is an unusual situation for emerging market central banks, which typically follow the Fed’s lead. But the danger posed by sharp increases in consumer price inflation prompted some policymakers to act early and aggressively — so much so, analysts warn, that high interest rates at a time of slow growth and high debt levels are jeopardising their recovery from the coronavirus crisis.“Hiking early was the right decision for most emerging market central bankers to make,” said Adam Wolfe, EM economist at Absolute Strategy Research, a consultancy in London. But he warned some monetary policymakers might have overreacted to temporary factors such as supply chain disruption and rising food prices, slamming the brakes on growth while economies were still in need of stimulus.In Brazil, Wolfe noted, short-term market lending rates rose above long-term rates at the end of last year, often a sign of a coming recession. “It’s easy to make the case that that’s the direction Brazil is headed.” Brazil’s central bank began tightening in March last year when its rate was 2 per cent. Last week, after eight steps up, it reached 10.75 per cent. A survey of local economists has predicted rates will peak at 12 per cent in May before paring back to 11.75 per cent in December. The same survey showed economic growth slowing to just 0.3 per cent this year, from an estimated 4.7 per cent in 2021.Brazil is far from alone. The Czech Republic increased its rate to 4.5 per cent last week — a steep rise from 0.25 per cent when tightening began last June. The central bank said the rate would peak at about 5 per cent this spring.Russia has doubled its policy rate to 8.5 per cent over the past year and expects to complete its cycle in the coming months. Chile’s rate went from 0.5 per cent in July to 5.5 per cent last month and is expected to peak at 7.5 per cent by mid-year. Not counting Zimbabwe, which raised its policy rate 25 percentage points to 60 per cent in 2021, 33 developing countries have raised rates since the start of last year by a combined total of 84.55 percentage points, according to the website Central Bank News. Among wealthy countries, only Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and the UK have raised rates in the same period, by a combined 2.65 points.EM central banks have got ahead of the Fed before, and it has tended to end badly. They were raising rates as the 2008-09 financial crisis neared, and before the 2011 eurozone currency crisis and the 2013 “taper tantrum” — the unexpected tightening of Fed policy that led to a heavy sell-off across EM stock and bond markets.This time round, the Fed has signalled well in advance its intention to tighten policy not only by raising rates but by ending and then reversing its bond-buying programme. Better communication, analysts say, makes a repeat of the taper tantrum unlikely.But EM policymakers have much more to worry about. The pandemic is far from over. In many countries, debts have risen beyond sustainable levels, threatening a wave of defaults. The difference between the rate of growth in emerging and developed economies — the justification for investing in EM assets — has fallen to its lowest level this century. High and rising interest rates will put an additional brake on growth. Nevertheless, policymakers may have done well to take their medicine today rather than postponing it for tomorrow. “If you let inflation get out of control, the consequences [for economic growth] will be far worse,” said Peter West, economic adviser to EM Funding, a boutique advisory company in London. This is especially true in Latin America and beyond, where memories of high and even hyperinflation mean rising prices can quickly feed into an escalation of inflation expectations, setting off a spiral of wage and price increases. The danger is acute in places such as Argentina and Chile, which still use index mechanisms to link financial contracts and wages to inflation.Not all emerging economies have needed to control inflation. In many countries in Asia — in part because the price of rice, the staple food, has advanced much less than the price of wheat, the staple elsewhere — inflation is low and central banks have held firm. Indonesia cut its policy rate 0.25 points to 3.5 per cent a year ago. Malaysia cut the same amount to 1.75 per cent in July 2020, as did the Philippines to 2 per cent in November that year.For those that have raised rates aggressively, there may even be some short-term pay-off. Foreign investors fled EM stocks and bonds last year as the risks of high inflation and stagnating growth outweighed the gains from higher interest rates. This year, as Brazil nears the end of its tightening cycle, its stock market has been among the world’s best performers as investors return.The threat for these countries is that investors may soon turn their attention back to weaknesses in the real economy.“I don’t see many undertaking the type of structural reforms that would unlock the potential for faster growth,” said Wolfe, the EM economist. “The outlook is really unclear.” More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill on Tuesday to provide the Postal Service (USPS) with about $50 billion in financial relief over a decade and requiring future retirees to enroll in a government health insurance plan.The House voted 342-92 for what House Oversight Committee chair Carolyn Maloney said would “preserve and strengthen the Postal Service for future generations.”Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he plans to ask the Senate to approve the bill by Feb. 18. “This postal reform legislation has been over a decade in the making,” Schumer said. USPS has reported net losses of more than $90 billion since 2007 and Tuesday reported a net loss of $1.5 billion for the quarter ending Dec. 31.One reason is 2006 legislation mandating it pre-fund more than $120 billion in retiree healthcare and pension liabilities.Senator Gary Peters, who chairs the committee overseeing USPS, said the bill will “help the Postal Service overcome unfair and burdensome financial requirements, provide more transparency and accountability to the American people, and continue its nearly 250-year tradition of service.”Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in March 2021 proposed cutting $160 billion in predicted losses over the next decade, which included https://about.usps.com/what/strategic-plans/delivering-for-america/assets/USPS_Delivering-For-America.pdf#:~:text=The%20Plan%E2%80%99s%20strategic%20initiatives%20are%20designed%20to%20reverse,next%20ten%20years%20by%20achieving%20break-even%20operating%20performance financial reforms in the House bill. USPS also adopted new delivery standards in October https://www.reuters.com/world/us/slower-us-mail-standards-take-effect-friday-2021-09-29 that slow some first-class mail deliveries. DeJoy called the legislation “vital to the United States Postal Service and the American People.”The bill eliminates requirements USPS pre-fund retiree health benefits for current and retired employees for 75 years, a requirement no business or other federal entity faces. USPS projects it would sharply reduce its pre-funding liability and save it roughly $27 billion over 10 years.It requires future retirees to enroll in Medicare. About 25% of postal retirees do not enroll in Medicare even though they are eligible, which results in USPS paying higher premiums than other employers. USPS estimates the change could save it about $22.6 billion over 10 years.The White House and postal unions support the bill as does the Greeting Card Association, Hallmark and Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN).The bill requires USPS to maintain six-day a week mail deliveries and develop an online weekly performance data dashboard by ZIP code, and expands special rates for local newspaper distribution.USPS generally does not receive taxpayer funding but Congress gave it a $10 billion loan in 2020 to address COVID-19 expenses that it opted to forgive. More

FRANKFURT/LONDON (Reuters) – The European Central Bank is preparing banks for a possible Russian-sponsored cyber attack as tensions with Ukraine mount, two people with knowledge of the matter said, as the region braces for the financial fallout of any conflict.The stand-off between Russia and Ukraine has rattled Europe’s political and business leaders, who fear an invasion that would inflict damage on the entire region.Earlier this week, French President Emmanuel Macron shuttled from Moscow to Kyiv in a bid to act as a mediator after Russia massed troops near Ukraine.Now the European Central Bank, led by former French minister Christine Lagarde and which has oversight of Europe’s biggest lenders, is on alert for the threat of cyber attacks on banks launched from Russia, the people said.While the regulator had been focused on ordinary scams that boomed during the pandemic, the Ukraine crisis has diverted its attention to cyber attacks launched from Russia, said one of the people, adding that the ECB has questioned banks about their defences.Banks were conducting cyber war games to test their ability to fend off an attack, the person said.The ECB, which has singled out addressing cybersecurity https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ecb-cyber-tests-idINKBN1I31H5 vulnerability as one of its priorities, declined to comment. Its concerns are mirrored around the world.The New York Department of Financial Services issued an alert to financial institutions in late January, warning of retaliatory cyber attacks should Russia invade Ukraine and trigger U.S. sanctions, according to Thomson Reuters (NYSE:TRI)’ Regulatory Intelligence.HIGH ALERTThe United States, the European Union and Britain have repeatedly warned Putin against attacking Ukraine after Russia deployed around 100,000 troops near the border with its former Soviet neighbour.Earlier this year, multiple Ukrainian websites were hit by a cyber strike that left a warning to “be afraid and expect the worst”, as Russia had amassed troops near Ukraine’s borders.Ukraine’s state security service SBU said it saw signs the attack was linked to hacker groups associated with Russian intelligence services.Russian officials say the West is gripped by Russophobia and has no right to lecture Moscow on how to act after it expanded the NATO military alliance eastwards since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.The Kremlin has also repeatedly denied the Russian state has anything to do with hacking around the world and said it is ready to cooperate with the United States and others to crack down on cyber crime.Nonetheless, regulators in Europe are on high alert.Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre warned large organisations to bolster their cyber security resilience amid the deepening tensions over Ukraine.On Tuesday, Mark Branson, the head of German supervisor BaFin, told an online conference that cyberwarfare was interconnected with geopolitics and security.The White House https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/white-house-official-discuss-ukraine-cyber-security-with-european-allies-2022-02-01 has also blamed Russia for the devastating ‘NotPetya’ cyber attack in 2017, when a virus crippled parts of Ukraine’s infrastructure, taking down thousands of computers in dozens of countries.The vulnerability was underscored again last year, when one of the globe’s largest-yet hacking campaigns used a U.S. tech company as a springboard to compromise a raft of U.S. government agencies, an attack the White House blamed on Russia’s foreign intelligence services.The attack breached software made by SolarWinds Corp, giving hackers access to thousands of companies using its products, rippling through Europe, where Denmark’s central bank said that the country’s “financial infrastructure” had been hit.Some, however, believe the Ukraine crisis has been blown out of proportion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-looking-actions-not-words-putin-zelenskiy-says-2022-02-08 accused Washington and media of fuelling panic. (Writing By John O’Donnell; additional reporting by Pete Schroeder in Washington, Tom Sims in Frankfurt and Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen) More