LONDON—The dollar jumped to a new two-decade high on Wednesday, as a decision by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to mobilize more troops for the conflict in Ukraine rattled markets just before another expected aggressive U.S. Federal Reserve rate hike.
Putin on Wednesday called up 300,000 reservists to fight in Ukraine and said Moscow would respond with the might of all its vast arsenal if the West pursued what he called its “nuclear blackmail” over the conflict there.
The news propelled the dollar index, which measures the greenback’s value against other major currencies, more than 0.5 percent higher to 110.87—its highest level since 2002….