The Ukrainian government and eastern militants accused each other of opening fire, worsening the situation on the ground and sending the three major U.S. stock indexes down on Thursday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 200 points at the opening, and then the decline expanded and closed more than 600 points, the largest decline this year.
Both the benchmark and Nasdaq fell more than 2 percent.
The Dow Jones closed at 34,312 points, down 622 points or 1.78%; the S&P 500 closed at 4,380 points, down 94 points or 2.12%; the Nasdaq closed at 13,716 points, down 407 points or 2.88%.
Industrial equipment stocks fell sharply, with Caterpillar down 4.37% and 3M down 3.57%.
Bank stocks were also under pressure, with Goldman Sachs down 3.05%, American Express down 1.35% and Morgan Stanley down 2.3%.
Major technology stocks generally fell, Apple fell 2.13%, Microsoft fell 2.93%, Amazon fell 2.18%, NVIDIA fell 7.56%, Tesla fell 5.09%, Alphabet fell 3.77%, Meta fell 4.08%.
Wal-Mart's performance beat expectations, bucking the trend and rising 4.01%.
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Bank of America: The S&P 500 falls below 3,700 points before there is a chance for large fund holders to hold a list of US stocks. Note that the most optimistic about Chinese e-commerce companies is not Alibaba, Goldman Sachs, the target of the S&P 500 index to 4,900 points. Reason: rising inflation affects the economic recovery. Ali and Bilibili U.S. stocks make major adjustments to new energy vehicle stocks