Liam Halligan: The Russia-Ukraine conflict shows no sign of easing and will cause your family's bills to skyrocket

This Russia-Ukraine conflict shows no sign of easing. The parallel economic war between Russia and the West is also intensifying – and that affects you and your family.

The US Congress is debating a draft law blocking Russia from Western oil markets, That has sent UK petrol and diesel prices soaring, with Russia pumping over 10pc of the world’s entire oil use - 11 million barrels each day.

Prices on the forecourt went above £1.70 a litre in some parts of Britain, up from less than £1.50 before this Russian invasion.

And now Moscow says if Russia is blocked from selling oil in the West, it may retaliate by closing one of the 12-hundred-kilometre Nordstream gas pipe-lines.

Nordstream I running from Russia to Germany opened in 2011 – and is still pumping gas across the Baltic Sea bed. Nordstream II alongside it has just been completed – but Germany stopped it opening after Putin's Ukraine invasion.

The Kremlin says blocking Russia’s oil exports would be “catastrophic” for the world, with prices more than doubling to over $300 a barrel – which would surely send petrol above £3 a litre.

And now Moscow is threatening to close Nordstream I – cutting off a big chunk of Western Europe’s gas.

This is a big escalation in East-West economic conflict. Even during the Cold War, the Soviet Union kept pumping gas to the West.

Wholesale European gas prices, up 73pc this week, are now an astonishing sixteen times higher than this time last year. Utility bills,. already set to increase sharply in April, could soon be rising again.

Leading freight shipping lines have meanwhile banned the handling Russian cargo. That includes millions of tons of Russian-mined industrial metals - like aluminium, palladium and titanium – vital to Western firms.

Why should we care? Because nickel is used to make stainless steel, turbines, plumbing components and much more.

And the fastest-growing use of nickel is for batteries in electric vehicles. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk says soaring nickel prices will make EVs more expensive, so fewer of us buy them.

Russia and Ukraine are major exporters of corn, maize and barley - so food prices are also soaring. The head of the World Food Programme this morning spoke of a “perfect storm” of conflict, climate change and coronavirus pushing up food prices.

“Just when you think hell on earth can't get any worse, it does,” he said.

As sanctions bite, and Russia retaliates, politicians tell us “we may need to pay a little more in the shops". That's a massive understatement in my view.

Russia is a smaller economy than Britain, but is a superpower when it comes to exports of necessities – which is why prices for food, fuel and much else are set to skyrocket.