The Russia–Ukraine military conflict has entailed geopolitical risks and disruptions in financial intermediation and international trade, limiting economic growth and accelerating inflation worldwide. The food and tourism industries are intrinsically related, influencing each other and contributing to regional economic development. This justifies the objective of this article, which consists of analysing the impact of this extreme event on 25 equity markets concerning the food industry in countries that were former members of the USSR and countries close to the belligerents. Using the event study methodology, underlying the market model, slight positive post-conflict abnormal returns were found. The persistence of this performance for approximately a week after the event constitutes evidence against the semi-strong form of efficiency of the analysed markets. The conclusions are useful for corporate and institutional decision-makers because they suggest the importance of investment diversification strategies to mitigate the risk associated with crisis events. This work contributes to a current field of financial research, on which empirical evidence is still scarce.