Hungarian-born US investor and philanthropist George Soros.
Fabrice Coffrini | AFP | Getty Images
A Ukrainian victory within the war with Russia would lead to the collapse of Moscow’s empire, billionaire fund manager George Soros told the Munich Security Conference on Thursday.
In a prepared speech, the Hungarian-born investor and founding father of the Open Society Foundations advocacy network said that a Third World War have to be “avoided in any respect costs” and that “Europe’s support for Ukraine have to be preserved.”
He noted that U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is supplying Ukraine with weapons reminiscent of missiles, tanks and ammunition needed to resist a Russian assault, but found that opposition from the now Republican-led House of Representatives “makes one other large bipartisan funding package from the U.S. unlikely.”
Russian private paramilitary contractor Wagner Group has been energetic on the bottom in Ukraine, but its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin recently said current efforts to surround Ukrainian forces within the town of Bakhmut were being impeded by Moscow’s “monstrous bureaucracy,” furthering fissures between Wagner and the Kremlin.
Prigozhin took a two-to-three yr outlook on Russia securing control of the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas and said of Bakhmut in a recent interview that “there are various roads out and fewer roads in.”
“It is feasible that he [Prigozhin] will succeed, but I consider it unlikely, since the Ukrainian army is putting up strong resistance and once Ukraine can use the weapons it has been promised, the tables shall be turned,” Soros said.
“This provides Ukraine a narrow window of opportunity later this Spring, when it receives the promised armaments, to mount a counterattack which might determine the fate of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
Soros also suggested that the countries of the previous Soviet Union “can hardly wait” to see Russia defeated in Ukraine, as they need to “assert their independence.”
“Which means that a Ukrainian victory would lead to the dissolution of the Russian empire. Russia would not pose a threat to Europe and the world,” he said.
“That will be an enormous change for the higher. It will bring huge relief to open societies and create tremendous problems for closed ones.”
Soros acknowledged warnings from Moldovan President Maia Sandu that Russian President Vladimir Putin may very well be planning an imminent coup d’etat against her country and likewise warned that this threat “may very well be executed before the anniversary” of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.
