(Bloomberg) — Equities fell across Asia as risk-off sentiment took hold following tensions between the US and Ukraine. The yen strengthened.

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A gauge of Asian shares dropped 0.8% and an index of Chinese technology shares in Hong Kong slumped by more than 2% after rallying to a three-year high. Treasuries edged higher in Asian trading and gold held near a record high.

Geopolitical tensions are flaring up with President Donald Trump turning against Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy just as he proposes tariffs on friends and allies alike. Trump denounced the Ukraine leader as a “dictator” after excluding the Eastern European nation from the talks between top US and Russian officials.

“We are in a very fractured world,” Ben Powell, chief APAC and Middle East investment strategist at BlackRock Investment Institute, said in a Bloomberg TV interview. “It is not just a risk on world.”

US equity index futures declined after the S&P 500 closed up 0.2%. A gauge of dollar strength dropped and the yen gained after a Bank of Japan board member signaled more rate hikes are in the offing.

Meanwhile, Fed minutes Wednesday showed policymakers in January expressed a readiness to hold interest rates steady amid stubborn inflation and economic-policy uncertainty. Officials also revealed pausing or slowing the balance-sheet runoff — a process known as quantitative tightening, or QT, until the government’s debt-ceiling drama is resolved.

Investors will also be focused on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., which faces a key test in its earnings presentation Thursday after a DeepSeek-sparked rally added more than $110 billion to its market value.

Chinese technology shares have staged a bull run this year, driven by optimism over DeepSeek and President Xi Jinping’s meeting with major business leaders including Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma. That rally took a pause Thursday as some investors perceived the gains as overdone, though fresh comments from Trump that a trade deal can be done with China helped ease jitters.

In commodities, oil prices steadied Thursday after gaining in the prior session against the backdrop of uncertainties about crude supplies from Russia, Kazakhstan and OPEC+.

Key events this week:

• Eurozone consumer confidence, Thursday

• US initial jobless claims, Philadelphia Fed manufacturing index, Thursday

• Fed’s Austan Goolsbee and Alberto Musalem speak, Thursday

• Eurozone HCOB manufacturing & services PMI, Friday

• US S&P Global manufacturing & services PMI, existing home sales, consumer sentiment, Friday

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