Billionaire financier George Soros said on Tuesday that Russia's invasion of Ukraine may have been the beginning of World War Three so the best way to preserve free civilization was for the West to defeat President Vladimir Putin's forces.
Soros, 91, a legendary hedge fund manager who earned fame by betting against the pound in 1992, cast the Ukraine war as part of a broader struggle between open societies and closed societies such as China and Russia which were in the ascent.
"The invasion may have been the beginning of the Third World War and our civilization may not survive it," Soros told Davos, according to a text of his speech released by his office.
"The best and perhaps the only way to preserve our civilization is to defeat Putin as soon as possible. That's the bottom line."
Soros said that Putin, who says the "special operation" in Ukraine is going to plan and will achieve all the Kremlin's aims, now believed the invasion was a mistake and was preparing to negotiate a ceasefire.
"But the ceasefire is unattainable because he cannot be trusted," Soros said. "The weaker Putin gets the more unpredictable he becomes."
Soros said the European Union had to understand that Putin could turn off Russian natural gas, which currently accounts for about 40% of Europe's needs, "while it really hurts."
Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands of people, displaced millions more and raised fears of the most serious confrontation between Russia and the United States since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Putin says the United States was using Ukraine to threaten Russia through NATO enlargement and Moscow had to defend against the persecution of Russian-speaking people. Ukraine and its Western allies reject these as baseless pretexts to invade a sovereign country.
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