Soros Warns Europe about Russian Threat

George Soros has warned that Russia’s expansionism poses an existential threat to the EU and called for greater material support for Ukraine.

The investor and philanthropist argues that Vladimir Putin’s mix of authoritarianism and aggressive nationalism represents an alternative model to western liberal democracies, referring to the admiration for the Russian president expressed by the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, the president of France’s Front National, Marine Le Pen, and Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbn.

“Europe is facing a challenge from Russia to its very existence. Neither the European leaders nor their citizens are fully aware of this challenge or know how best to deal with it,” Soros writes in an article published in the New York Review of Books.

“Now Russia is presenting an alternative that poses a fundamental challenge to the values and principles on which the European Union was originally founded. It is based on the use of force that manifests itself in repression at home and aggression abroad, as opposed to the rule of law.”

Soros told the Guardian: “There is a general dissatisfaction with the EU as a result of the euro crisis, which has perverted the initial impetus for forming a union of like-minded democratic states. The euro crisis was mishandled and lasted a long time, and it turned a voluntary union of equals into something quite different.”

via The Guardian