World bank sees Russian capital flight, hit to GDP if Crimea crisis deepens

The Russian economy may contract markedly this year and the country could see record capital outflow of $150 billion if the crisis over Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea deepens, the World Bank warned on Wednesday, according to Reuters.In the first estimate by a leading international institution of the likely economic damage from the Kremlin's standoff with the West over Ukraine, the bank said Russia's gross domestic product (GDP) might shrink by 1.8 percent in 2014."We assume that political risks will be prominent in the short-term," the bank said in a report on the Russian economy. "If the Russia-Ukraine conflict escalates, uncertainty could rise around sanctions from the West and Russia's response to them."