JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says Ukraine war is the ‘most serious geopolitical thing since WWII’

“This is much more serious than the economic vibrations we have to deal with on a day-to-day basis,” he said.

Dimon said he read recently that wars that continue past the one-year mark are likely to last a decade.

“This is a major land war in Europe in a free and democratic nation” that has seen hundreds of thousands of casualties, Dimon said. “We don’t know how this is going to end … or what direction it’s going to take.”

Dimon said he doubts JPMorgan Chase JPM, -0.22% will move into Russia any time soon. It’s possible some time in the distant future, he said, but maybe not for decades.

The bank does have dealings with China, which is reportedly aiding Russia in the war, but he said that it’s taking a back seat to official U.S. government channels.

Dimon made the comments at the JPMorgan High Yield and Leveraged Finance Conference in Miami.

In January, Dimon gave some candid comments about another topic, telling CNBC-TV that bitcoin BTCUSD, -0.03% amounts to a “hyped-up fraud” and a “pet rock.”

“Blockchain is a technology-ledger system that we use to move information … we use it to move money. So that is a ledger that we think will be deployable,” Dimon said in the CNBC interview.

He added that it’s no surprise that cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed into bankruptcy in November.

JPMorgan’s stock is up 7.2% so far in 2023, compared with a 6% rise by the S&P 500 SPX, +0.34% and a 1% increase by the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.20%.

Also read: Risk of ‘wrathful Old Testament–style’ reaction from central banks is rising, JPMorgan says