Despite holding steady in the opening months of the Ukraine crisis, Russian-focused ETFs have seen ten straight weeks of net outflows.

The recent harsh measures on high-ranking Russian officials mixed with far ranging sanctions and no sign of swift resolution, investor sentiment has deteriorated.

“These outflows have only intensified with the attack on Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, whose downing marked the largest weekly outflow out of Russian ETFs in over six months,” said Andrew Laird, analyst at Markit.

The large outflows out of Russian assets over the last two months have now topped $400m, wiping out the inflows seen in April and May when investors saw the falling value of Russian assets as a buying opportunity.

Leading the way in outflows over the last few weeks has been the Source RDX Ucit which has lost over $100m of assets in July, essentially halving the fund’s aggregate AuM in the last eight weeks.

Sanctions could see a further breakdown in business relationships between the west and Russia.

“This looks set to put companies domiciled in the UK with large operations in Russia in an uncomfortable situation. As a result, we’ve seen large jumps in shorting activity in Petropavlovsk and Evraz over the last few days,” said Laird.

Petropavlovsk saw the largest amount of shorting as demand to borrow shares more than doubled to 16% of shares outstanding, up from 6% a week ago.

Steel firm Evraz has also seen a resurgence in demand to borrow with the percentage of its shares out on loan jumping by 50% in the last week, reaching its highest level since the start of the conflict.

Short sellers have so far steered clear of internet search provider, Yandex, which have seen a decline in short interest over the last couple of weeks. Demand to borrow shares in the firm is down by nearly two thirds in the last week to less than 1% of shares outstanding.