Oil price nears $100 as Russia orders troops into Ukraine

Oil prices have hit the highest in eight years as tensions between Russia and Ukraine escalated after Moscow ordered troops into two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine.

Brent crude, already up 25% this year due to a surge in demand, rallied, approaching the $100 mark, the first time since 2014.

European Union (EU) foreign ministers will be meeting in Paris on Tuesday to decide the sanctions to be imposed on Russia. "Spoke with president Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to express the EU's full solidarity with Ukraine. The EU stands by you firmly and fully supports Ukraine's territorial integrity. Russia's move is an attack against international law and the rules-based international order," European Council President Charles Michel tweeted.

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed decrees recognising separatist territories in Ukraine as independent and deploying its troops as "peacekeepers".

In response, the US and its allies called for an emergency UNSC meeting. UK PM Boris Johnson had conducted an emergency COBRA (Cabinet Office Briefing Room A) meeting to discuss the sanctions to be imposed against Russia.

While announcing sanctions against Russia, the PM said, "He (President Vladimir Putin) believes that Ukraine has no real right to exist as a sovereign, independent country. But that goes against everything that we struggled to achieve at the end of the Cold War, it goes against the aspirations of the Ukrainian people. "The most difficult thing now for Vladimir Putin in prosecuting this war... he will come up against something that I think will be very hard for him to beat, and that is the Ukrainian sense of national pride and their determination to defend their country and to fight for it."

He said an "immediate package of international sanctions" will be imposed on Russia. The sanctions will include some "in Russia itself, targeting Russian economic interests as hard as we can" and will hit the "economic interests that have been supporting Russia's war machine", Sky news reported.

He said, "(The sanctions) will hit Russia very hard and there is a lot more that we are going to do in the event of an invasion. "Be in no doubt that if Russian companies are prevented from raising capital on the UK financial markets, if we unpeel the facade of Russian ownership of companies, of property, it will start to hurt."

In a tweet, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said, "This morning I attended a COBR, chaired by the Prime Minister, to discuss the latest developments in Ukraine. "We agreed a significant package of sanctions, to be announced to Commons today. Remember - the Govt advises against ALL travel to Ukraine and any Brits there should leave." (Inputs from UNI)