Poroshenko Flummoxes Investors With About-Face on Truce
Ukraine’s leader sent financial markets into turbulence as he backtracked on talk of an end to five months of violence in his nation’s east.
President Petro Poroshenko announced yesterday that he’d hammered out a deal with Vladimir Putin to end the deadly unrest, sending global stocks and emerging-market currencies surging. When he later removed the word “permanent” from his cease-fire statement and Putin’s spokesman said there had been no deal, markets gave back some of the gains.
“Confusion prevails over an alleged cease-fire agreement,” Otilia Dhand, an analyst at Teneo Intelligence in London who specializes in eastern Europe, said in an e-mailed research note.
Attempts to obtain clarification of his comments were didn’t yield results. Repeated calls and text messages to the mobile phones of Poroshenko’s spokesmen, Svyatoslav Tsegolko and Irina Friz, went unanswered.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that while the two leaders mostly agreed on steps needed for a truce, Russia can’t reach such an accord as it’s not party to the conflict.
“There remains some confusion over whether the cease-fire is now in place and, indeed, whether it will be implemented at all,” Michal Dybula, a Warsaw-based economist at BNP Paribas SA, said yesterday in an e-mailed report. “The risks of renewed flare-up remain.”
Source: bloomberg
