Soros Warned that War in Ukraine May Lead to World War III

Lionel Woodhouse
Journalist

Financier and philanthropist, founder and chair of the Open Society Foundations, George Soros, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has warned that the Russian invasion of Ukraine may be the beginning of the third world war and that our civilisation may not survive this war. He said that the war has changed the world irreversibly. He praised US and European support for Ukraine and remarked that the EU’s dependence on fossil fuels remains excessive. In his view, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel bears the main responsibility for it. Moreover, he appreciated Ukraine’s application for membership in the EU. It represents a response in the right direction to the invasion of the Russian army, and Europe reacted “with greater speed, unity and vigor than ever before” in its history. According to European leaders, the lesson to be learnt by the invasion of Ukraine is the need of a closer European Union. Soros mentioned favorably the plan proposed by Enrico Letta, leader of the Italian Democratic Party, for a European Confederation, the largest of several concentric circles, which the institutional organization of Europe would be made up of. This largest circle is fit for the inclusion of Ukraine in the European institutional architecture. This plan was endorsed by Emmanuel Macron in a speech delivered at the European Parliament.

Contrary to Putin’s expectations, who hoped to be welcomed in Ukraine as a liberator, the Russian army is meeting a resolute resistance. According to Soros, Putin seems to have recognized that the invasion of Ukraine was “a terrible mistake”. As a matter of fact, “the weaker Putin gets, the more unpredictable he becomes”, Soros said. This sentence overshadows the specter of the use of nuclear weapons.

He asserted that the international community has been increasingly engaged in a battle between two systems of governance that are diametrically opposed to each other: “open society” and “closed society.” He defined open society as one in which a government works to protect individual freedoms, and closed society as one where the individual’s role is to serve the state. The attack against open societies started after the 9/11 terrorist assault on the New York Twin Towers in 2001. While the autocratic regimes are on the rise, democracies are retreating.

Soros also recollected that Putin and Xi, who met on February 4 at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, issued a long statement announcing that the cooperation between them has "no limits”. The meaning of this statement, according to Soros, is that Putin might have gained Xi’s agreement to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  

Soros addressed the problem of EU’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels, which makes the transition to renewable energy even more urgent. Gas and oil prices have soared and world energy markets have been severely destabilized. He defined “particularly frightening” the prospect of irreversible climate change. We all know that we must eventually die, he said, but we take it for granted that life on our planet will continue. This is not true any longer. And yet, the war has obliged us to relegate climate change and ecological transition to second place. Soros said the world must mobilise all resources to bring the war to an early end, and “the best and perhaps only way to preserve our civilisation is to defeat Putin” as soon as possible.