Dispatch from Kyiv

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: Dispatch from Kyiv

Joanna S Kao
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, March 23rd, and this is your FT News Briefing.

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We’ve got a dispatch from Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. The writer Tim Judah describes a strange calm even as Russian forces advance on the city’s suburbs. And as the world becomes more unpredictable, gold is becoming a hot commodity.

Claer Barrett
It’s where investors retreat to in times of trouble, particularly when interest rates and inflation are rising and our cash savings are being eroded.

Joanna S Kao
We’ll talk to Claer Barrett. She hosts the FT’s personal finance podcast Money Clinic. I’m Joanna Kao, in for Marc Filippino, and here’s the news you need to start your day.

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The US has signalled it will join European allies and escalate sanctions on Russia this week. The White House also warned the conflict in Ukraine would not end easily or rapidly. Officials offered few details, but they said President Joe Biden would announce measures during his visit to Europe. His trip begins today in Brussels. The US president will also meet with Nato and G7 partners.

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Russian forces continue to bombard Ukraine’s cities, and they’re advancing into the suburbs of the capital Kyiv. The writer Tim Judah is in Kyiv on assignment for the FT. He says despite the attacks just outside the capital, inside the city it’s strangely calm. We spoke to him yesterday so things might have changed. But here’s what Tim has told us.

Tim Judah
Well, you know, it’s really interesting how the mood has changed. So after the invasion began, people were pretty scared. And you know, there was this fuss, a vast outflow of probably hundreds of thousands of people, maybe more. You know, this is a city of 3mn people. You know, maybe 50, 60 per cent of the population is gone. And then the Russians announced that they were going to hit the SBU building. That’s the building of the security services, which is out here in the centre of town. And you know, that was a pretty nerve-racking moment where it appeared that missiles were about to target buildings, you know, right here in the central town. And then it didn’t happen. But strangely, despite these attacks, which have mostly happened in the north-western suburbs of the city, actually things have relaxed.

Joanna S Kao
That’s kind of surprising. I mean, I would have expected a lot more panic. You wrote about your visit to a town just outside Kyiv called Irpin, and at the time it was held by Ukrainian forces, while the next town over, it was held by Russians. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Tim Judah
Until about a week ago, journalists were still able to go into Irpin. So we would go across this broken bridge and there was a moment when the Russians had let people leave, and then you had hundreds of people coming out this road. It was somebody dead in the middle of the road. I don’t know if it was a soldier or not. There were three dead Russians by the road and you know, there was a woman. This will never leave me, this image in my mind of this old woman. She had a stick and she tied a piece of white cloth on it and she was waving it and people were emerging from their from their basements, and they didn’t want to leave alone. And they were getting together with their neighbours, really. And they were kind of moving out in groups and the woman was going, Oh my god, oh my god, is she? This was a moment that people were leaving, so they had to pass through various Russian checkpoints. And they came down this kind of no man’s land road approaching to the first Ukrainian position. So she was waving a white flag and then all of the others behind them, they had to white little pieces of cloth, which they tied and made into armbands. They were just to identify themselves as civilians who were escaping. And immediately they got behind a cement mixer, which was shielding the Ukrainian position. They were taking them off and just chucking them in a pile of, you know, white strips of cloth. And then all of the men were having their ID documents checked because what the Ukrainians were very frightened of, or are very frightened of, is, you know, Russian soldiers or reconnaissance groups, as they call them, infiltrating behind Ukrainian lines.

Joanna S Kao
So in the last couple of days, Irpin has come under heavy attack, so we don’t know what’s going to happen there. But I want to ask you, Tim, you’ve covered many wars. Is there anything that strikes you about this conflict in particular?

Tim Judah
So the Ukrainians have been super organised. You know, I was here beginning of the Maidan revolution 2014, 15, 16, which was the first part of the war. Please don’t forget this is part two of the war. We’ve had, you know, the war began in Donbas and in 2014. At that point, the Ukrainians were very chaotic and disorganised. And, you know, the government had been gutted and the armed forces were a shell of what they should have been. And what strikes me is how super disciplined and organised the Ukrainians are now, and I’m not just talking militarily. You know, what strikes me is that after every, every time we’ve been to a residential building which has been hit, there are municipal clean-up teams and local residents, you know, all out with brooms sweeping up.

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There have kind of municipal officials taking statements from people who had their flats blown out, there are municipal officials who have arrived with, you know, big rolls of plastic and people are queueing up patiently for their rolls of plastic to put over their shattered windows.

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That’s the sound of drilling to put the boards in to cover up shattered windows of a school. I’ve never seen that level of organisation and discipline in a conflict before.

Joanna S Kao
So it sounds like they were ready for this.

Tim Judah
They were absolutely ready for this. I mean, I spoke to, let’s say, a senior security official the other day and he said, you know, yes, they were ready for it. But he said what we were not ready for was the scale of it. They hadn’t really expected to be this 100 per cent all-out attack over the whole of Ukraine. They thought it was going to be a much more limited thing. But it also means that since 2014, you know, they haven’t been wasting their time. They’ve learned the lessons and they’ve acted upon it. And, you know, now we can see the results.

Joanna S Kao
Tim, thanks so much. We look forward to speaking with you again.

Tim Judah
Great.

Joanna S Kao
The writer Tim Judah is on assignment in Ukraine for the FT.

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Russia’s war in Ukraine has created enormous uncertainty for investors, and uncertainty usually means a rush into safe assets like gold. There’s been such a rush to gold over the past few weeks. The price has shot up to about $2000 an ounce. Many readers and listeners have also contacted the FT’s Claer Barrett. Claer hosts the FT’s personal finance podcast Money Clinic.

Claer Barrett
The whole of the personal finance section has been carrying lots of stories showing how more people are turning to gold. It’s seen as a store of value, a safe haven that will perform well when everything else in the stock market is going down. It’s where investors retreat to in times of trouble, and particularly when interest rates and inflation are rising and our cash savings are being eroded.

Joanna S Kao
Gold is the subject of the latest episode of Money Clinic. Claer joins me now to talk more. Hi, Claer.

Claer Barrett
Hi, Joanna.

Joanna S Kao
So gold offers no yield, no dividend, as you point out on your show. Its key value is safety and diversification for a portfolio. So right now at the current price, is gold a good investment?

Claer Barrett
Well, put it this way, Joanna, it would have been a very wise investment about six months ago. The benefit of hindsight is always a wonderful thing when it comes to investing. Now, there are lots of people who will have gold as part of a balanced portfolio, but some people may be thinking about allocating more of their portfolio to gold in times of trouble. Now, I’m not a financial adviser, but if, like many of our listeners, you want to do that, there are various different ways you can do it. You can buy an ETF, an exchange traded fund that just simply tracks the gold price. You can buy physical gold. Lots of investors buy gold sovereigns, sovereigns, the special coins, if you buy English monarchs, technically the legal tender, if you spend them, they’re only worth a pound. They’ve got a nominal value. But at the moment, if you want to buy one, it will cost you about £370.

Joanna S Kao
And speaking of gold sovereigns, I understand you got your hands on some. You visited the London gold shop, Sharps Pixley, and you spoke to a dealer named Giles Maber.

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Claer Barrett
You keep sovereigns in a tube like steroids and tablets.

Giles Maber
Sovereigns come in tubes of 25 directly from the mint.

Claer Barrett
It’s kind of like a coppery gold colour.

Giles Maber
It is. So a sovereign is actually 22 carat, so it contains about 8.3 per cent copper, which just makes it a little bit more durable.

Joanna S Kao
And you also recorded a little experiment with a heavy gold bar

Claer Barrett
Just to give you an idea of how incredibly heavy this 44,000 pounds worth of gold actually is. I’m going to drop it on to Giles’ beautiful leather velvet lined tray from a height of about 10 centimetres.

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Joanna S Kao
That sounds like a solid investment.

Claer Barrett
So there are lots of reasons that gold is attractive. But I think at the moment for a lot of investors who are very nervous, having something that you can hold in your hand or store under the mattress has got a lot of appeal.

Joanna S Kao
It certainly would make me sleep better at night if I knew I had gold bars underneath my pillow.

Claer Barrett
We can all dream.

Joanna S Kao
All right. Thanks so much, Claer.

Claer Barrett
Thank you for getting me on.

Joanna S Kao
Claer Barrett is the host of the FT’s personal finance podcast Money Clinic. The new episode on gold dropped this week.

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Before we go. Have you found yourself getting through bags of Doritos more quickly than ever before? If it feels like there are fewer in the bag or less chocolate bar inside the wrapper, you’re not imagining it. You’re experiencing shrinkflation. And this is when companies provide less product for the same price to offset higher costs. Many companies are still raising prices, but others fear consumers will flee, so they keep prices the same. Just like it is on the 24-ounce bottle of Dove Body Wash, which is now just 22 ounces.

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You can read more about all these stories at FT.com. If you aren’t a subscriber yet, you can read our key Ukraine coverage for free. Just visit FT.com/freetoread. Again, that’s FT.com/freetoread. We also have a link to that in the show notes. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back tomorrow for the latest business news.

This transcript has been automatically generated. If by any chance there is an error please send the details for a correction to: typo@ft.com. We will do our best to make the amendment as soon as possible.