A third world war will “destroy our civilization” unless Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are “removed from power” warns billionaire Democrat megadonor George Soros.
“After receiving a green light from Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his war in Ukraine in an effort to reclaim the old Russian empire,” Soros wrote in an op-ed published by Project Syndicate on Friday.
“But both leaders appear to have misjudged the situation, raising the prospect of a global catastrophe – unless they are removed from power,” he wrote.
Putin has “gone literally mad,” cautioned the chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Foundations.
“He has decided to punish Ukraine for standing up to him, and he appears to be acting without any constraint. He is throwing the entire Russian army into the battle and ignoring all the rules of war, not least by indiscriminately bombing the civilian population.”
The Pentagon has deployed at least 12,000 troops to NATO member nations to aid in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, despite Americans overwhelmingly opposing U.S. involvement.
In addition to deploying troops, the Biden administration has sent $350 million in American taxpayer dollars to aid Ukraine, bringing “the total security assistance the United States has committed to Ukraine over the past year to more than $1 billion,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced on February 26.
According to an Associated Press-NORC poll, just 26 percent of Americans want the U.S. to have a “major role” in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, while 72 percent said the U.S. should have a “minor role” or “no role” at all.
The U.S. and its allies ought to have as much involvement in the conflict as possible, Soros contends.
“The United States and the European Union are both sending defensive weapons to Ukraine, and there are efforts to buy Russian-made MIG fighters that Ukrainian pilots know how to fly. These could make all the difference,” he wrote. “We can only hope that Putin and Xi will be removed from power before they can destroy our civilization.”
“It is important that both the transatlantic alliance (the United States, Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom) but also other nations do whatever is in their power to support Ukraine in its time of existential threat,” he wrote.