London and Moscow markets in the green after Putin orders troops into Ukraine

Having started the day down heavily, the main Russian indexes bounced back and had gained ground by the end of trading, despite the decision of Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.

By the end of the day, the FTSE 100 in London was also in the green, but other indexes around Europe and the US had dropped back.

“After last night’s laying down of the gauntlet by Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his recognition of the sovereignty of the disputed Luhansk and Donbas regions of Ukraine, markets in Europe opened sharply lower, as Putin ordered his troops into the region,” said CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson.

“These declines rather surprisingly proved fairly short-lived, with the lack of follow through on the downside appearing to speak to a reluctance on the part of Western leaders to call last night’s move an outright invasion, as well as go all in, on a full range of sanctions.

“The verbal gymnastics and procrastination are no better illustrated with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz saying that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline can’t be certified for operation at this time, which while welcome, and is rightly being lauded as the right thing to do, does leave room for a retreat if the situation were to change, which seems unlikely.

“The weak nature of the sanctions announced by the UK government merely added to the recovery in stock markets.”

The UK sanctioned five banks, three of them relatively small, and three billionaires, for their roles in Crimea. Most of them had already been sanctioned by the US years ago.

Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at online trading platform IG, said: “Some short positions will have been closed out and some dip buyers might even be thinking about chancing their arm in the market after the recent losses.

“But such swift bounces are a feature of declining markets, and with further developments in the crisis inevitable, the likelihood is that a headline will come along sooner or later and prompt another leg lower.”

The FTSE 100 gained 0.1%, or 9.88 points, ending the day at 7,494.21.

In Germany, the Dax closed down 0.3%, while France’s Cac was flat. Coming back after a long weekend, shares also fell on Wall Street.

The S&P 500 was down 0.6%, while the Dow Jones had given back 0.8% by the time markets closed in Europe.

Moscow’s Moex index gained 1.6% after initially trading heavily down, a result mirrored by its neighbour, RTS.

Sterling gained 0.07% against the dollar, buying 1.36 by the end of the day, against the euro it dipped 0.04% to 1.1984.

In company news, InterContinental Hotels brought back dividends for shareholders as it saw a 40% jump in revenues after a bruising pandemic.

The business said that the amount of revenue it had made per room was 70% of where it had been before the pandemic last year, reaching 83% in the last three months of the year.

Shares in the company rose 4.3%.

HSBC said that it had seen pre-tax profit more than double to nearly 19 billion dollars (£14 billion), and unveiled a plan to hand 3.5 billion dollars (£2.6 billion) to its staff in bonuses.

Shares closed up by 0.8%.

The biggest risers on the FTSE 100 were Smith & Nephew, up 88.5p to 1,267.5p, Evraz, up 14.3p to 281.3p, IHG, up 206p to 5,094p, Legal & General, up 9.3p to 281p, and Pershing Square, up 3.3p to 336.6p.

The biggest fallers on the FTSE 100 were Hargreaves Lansdown, down 203p to 1,095p, CocaCola HBC, down 128p to 2,187p, Abrdn, down 11p to 222.9p, Kingfisher, down 11p to 313.2p, and Royal Mail, down 12p to 402.2p.