by Angeline Tan, The New American:
Globalist billionaire financier George Soros said on Thursday that Russia’s defeat in the Ukraine conflict would lead to a collapse of what he termed the “Russian empire,” adding that such an outcome would be welcomed by former Soviet republics.
The Ukraine crisis that broke out in full force last year has catalyzed one of the bloodiest European conflicts since World War II as well as the greatest stand-off between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
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Without revealing the source of his information, Soros claimed that while the United States would back Ukraine, President Joe Biden had cautioned Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky that World War III had to be avoided. Nonetheless, as the past months have revealed, Zelensky has been demanding more weapons from the West to arm forces in Ukraine to combat the Russians.
Previously a hedge-fund manager, the American-Jewish mogul said that although the Russian army was poorly led, ill-equipped, and demoralized, President Vladimir Putin had relied on the Wagner mercenary group to fight the Ukrainian military in certain areas of the Donbas.
“The countries of the former Soviet Union can hardly wait to see the Russians defeated in Ukraine because they want to assert their independence,” Soros told the Munich Security Conference, based on a text of his speech released by his office.
“This means that a Ukrainian victory would result in the dissolution of the Russian empire. Russia would no longer pose a threat to Europe and the world,” he said. “That would be a big change for the better.”
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the nuclear-armed superpower broke down into 15 independent republics, Russia being by far the largest and most powerful of them.
Putin claimed that the conflict in Ukraine is an existential battle with a pugilistic West, and declared that Russia would shield itself and its people against any attack by all means.
In turn, the United States dismissed Kremlin claims that it hopes to ruin Russia, one of the world’s biggest commodities producers.
Furthermore, Soros said that Putin’s dependence on the Wagner mercenary group, founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, seemed to have been successful in the short term.
“The gamble worked,” Soros said. “Ukraine faced a strategic choice: either get bogged down in holding Wagner at bay or hand Russia a propaganda victory and preserve its limited resources for a counterattack.”
Ukraine, he added, had a small window of opportunity in Spring after obtaining weapons from the West.
Moreover, Soros, when speaking of China, said that President Xi Jinping’s “zero-COVID” strategy had undermined trust in the Communist Party.
“The current situation fulfills all the preconditions for regime change or revolution,” Soros said of China. “But this is only the beginning of an opaque process, whose repercussions will be felt over a longer period of time.”
“In the short term Xi is likely to remain in power because he is in firm control of all the instruments of repression,” Soros said.
“But I am convinced that Xi will not remain in office for life, and while he is in office, China will not become the dominant military and political force that Xi is aiming for.”
Soros portrayed Russia, by far the world’s largest country by territory, and China, the world’s second-largest economy, as the dominating members of a group of ascendant “closed societies” where the state triumphed over individual rights.
Additionally, while most of the Western world has boycotted Russia, Beijing has strengthened its ties with Moscow, much to the chagrin of its neighbors, who view the two countries in alignment. Xi lauded “record high” levels of trade and other cooperation in a call with Putin, as a testament to cozy ties.
Soros, the founder of the Open Society Foundations, also labeled Xi and Putin as “dictators” whose countries represent “the biggest threat to open society.”
“They are tied together in an alliance that has no limits. They also have a lot in common. They rule by intimidation, and as a consequence they make mind-boggling mistakes,” he stated.
“Putin expected to be welcomed in Ukraine as a liberator. Xi Jinping is sticking to a zero-Covid policy that can’t possibly be sustained,” Soros indicated, referring to China’s draconian lockdowns that eventually ended after unprecedented nationwide protests last year.
Last year, Soros warned that “civilisation may not survive” Russia’s incursions in Ukraine, but said Europe could adopt a stronger stance against Putin when it came to energy policy.
In his traditional dinner speech on the margins of the globalist World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss mountain town of Davos, Soros claimed that the crisis had “shaken Europe to its core.”
“The invasion may have been the beginning of the Third World War and our civilization may not survive it,” Soros said.
“We must mobilize all our resources to bring the war to an early end. The best and perhaps only way to preserve our civilization is to defeat Putin as soon as possible,” he said.
Besides, he lauded U.S. and European support for Ukraine but lamented Europe’s “excessive” reliance on Russian fossil fuels.
The European Union (EU) had hoped to decrease its use of Russian gas by two-thirds last year amid the heavy dependence of some nations such as Germany on Moscow’s products. Due to Hungary’s protests, the EU experienced challenges agreeing to an oil ban on Russia.
“I think Putin has been very clever in sort of blackmailing Europe, threatening to cut off the gas, but actually his case is much less strong than he pretends,” Soros said.
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