03-13-2022, 06:27 PM
- The Russians have sustained more casualties than expected, but are still “advancing steadily,” said Niall Ferguson of the Hoover Institution.
- “The assumption that this is going to drag out, that the United States can sit back and watch the economic sanctions do their work may be gravely mistaken,” Ferguson said.
- Sanctions may be able to change Putin’s behavior down the road, but cannot be used to stop the violence, said Anna Ohanyan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Quote:Peace is “urgently needed” to avoid continued bloodshed and the destruction of Ukraine, which Ferguson said seems to be the Russian plan for now.
“The goal was to prevent Ukraine being a successful democracy oriented towards the West, whether in NATO or the EU,” he said. “You can achieve that just by destroying Ukraine’s infrastructure and turning it into a smoking pile of rubble and unfortunately, every passing day allows President Putin to do more of that,” he said.
Ohanyan agreed that there has to be a diplomatic push to de-escalate, start a cease-fire and negotiate on “bigger issues.”
The strategy of sitting back and waiting for Russia’s war machine to grind to a halt because of sanctions could go “terribly wrong,” according to Niall Ferguson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
“It’s a highly risky strategy,” he said.
The Ukrainian resistance cannot hold the fort for much longer, and sanctions by the West won’t be able to stop Russia in time, he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Friday.
He said the U.S. is relying heavily on sanctions and “very belated arms deliveries” to Ukraine, but he’s concerned that those fighting for Ukraine won’t be able to defend the country for long.
Though the Russians have sustained more casualties than expected, they are still “advancing steadily,” he said.
“The assumption that this is going to drag out, that the United States can sit back and watch the economic sanctions do their work may be gravely mistaken,” Ferguson said.
- More -