Billionaire Bill Ackman said “World War III has probably already begun” and predicted that a wider military conflict with Russia could be inevitable after Vladimir Putin launched invasion of Ukraine.
Ekman, who is adept at making alarmist forecasts, often when he bets against the markets, posted his dire forecast in an extremely lengthy series of tweets on Saturday.
“In January 2020, I had nightmares about a possible pandemic, but everyone seemed to think I was crazy. I’m having similar nightmares now,” he wrote.
Ackman famously appeared on CNBC in the early days COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and declared that “hell is coming”, calling for a 30-day national quarantine.
It was later revealed that his firm, Pershing Square Capital, made $2 billion betting against stocks that crashed when he made his doomsday predictions.
Now, however, Ackman warns: “World War III has probably already begun, but we are in no hurry to admit it.”
Billionaire Bill Ackman said “World War III has probably already started” and predicted that a wider military conflict with Russia might be imminent.
“Putin has invaded Ukraine and Russia is not doing very well,” he continued.
“Ukrainians put up significant resistance. NATO refuses to go to war, but NATO members and most of the rest of the world have started an economic war and are supplying Stingers, anti-tank weapons, other munitions, intelligence and funding.
“Putin today declared these actions acts of war against Russia. However, there is much more we can do before going into a hot war with Russia,” Ackman wrote.
Ekman called on the West to impose an embargo on Russian oil, a move the White House is now considering.
He also said the US should provide Ukraine with “our best weapons and more” and said fears of provoking Putin into a nuclear war amounted to appeasement.
“Because Russia is a nuclear power and Putin is crazy, we say that we cannot interfere in the affairs of Ukraine. What do we do when he wants more? Akman wrote.
“The nuclear threat is no different when he takes over his next country, whether it is in NATO or not, and by then our strategic position is getting worse. He publicly announced his ambitions,” he continued.
“We allowed Putin to occupy Georgia and Crimea without much resistance. And his aspirations only grew because we did nothing to stop him,” wrote Ekman.
Residents of Irpin flee heavy fighting across a destroyed bridge as Russian troops entered the city on March 7, 2022 in Irpin, Ukraine. Russia continues offensive against large cities of Ukraine
A civilian trains to throw Molotov cocktails to defend a city as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, in Zhytomyr, Ukraine.
“We allowed Putin to occupy Georgia and Crimea without much resistance. And his aspirations only increased because we did nothing to stop him, ”wrote the billionaire.
“Now we let him take Ukraine? We are at the beginning of Putin’s global aspirations. With each “victory” he gains the courage to take more. He tests us and we fail every time,” he added.
Ackman went on to call for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, a move that is met with bipartisan opposition in Washington and rejected by NATO.
Enforcement of the no-fly zone would require shooting down a Russian aircraft, and Putin has explicitly stated that he will consider any country that tries to enforce a no-fly zone as a party to the conflict.
Ackman argued that by refusing to directly defend Ukraine, which is not a member of NATO, the West is giving Putin “carte blanche” to invade and subjugate other non-NATO European countries, including Sweden, Finland, Cyprus, Ireland, Austria. , Malta and Switzerland.
The hedge fund then took its argument to the extreme, comparing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to Adolf Hitler’s systematic genocide of the Jewish people.
“What if, instead of missiles, Putin uses gas chambers to kill civilians? Will this change our willingness to intervene? Why should it matter what type of weapon is used to kill civilians when deciding to intervene? He wrote.
A woman walks in front of burned-out cars on a bridge in Irpin, March 7, 2022, Irpin, Ukraine. The Ukrainian army is currently resisting a heavy Russian siege in some of its cities.
An elderly woman is carried by an ambulance on March 7, 2022 in Irpin, Ukraine.
Ekman said the only way to avoid a wider conflict, in his opinion, is for China to intervene and mediate a peace settlement.
“It looks like China gave Putin the go-ahead to attack Ukraine. Putin respects and probably fears China. China can rise on the world stage by helping resolve this crisis,” he wrote.
Ukrainian officials said Monday that a Russian airstrike on Monday hit a bakery in northern Ukraine, killing at least 13 civilians, while talks between Kiev and Moscow have made no headway towards mitigating the conflict.
The strike at a factory in Makarov, west of the capital Kyiv, came as more than 1.7 million refugees fleeing a Russian attack on Ukraine, according to the United Nations.
Russian troops continued to besiege and bombard Ukrainian cities on the 11th day of the war. In the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, hundreds of thousands of people were left without food and water under regular shelling.
Ukrainian (left) and Russian (right) officials took part in peace talks in Brest, Belarus, this afternoon. From left to right: Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Mykola Tochytsky, Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, head of the Ukrainian Servant of the People faction David Arakhamia, adviser to the head of the President’s Office Mykhailo Podolyak. From the Russian side, from left to right, Russian Ambassador to Belarus Boris Gryzlov, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs Leonid Slutsky, Presidential Aide and Head of the Russian Delegation Vladimir Medinsky, Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin and Deputy. Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Rudenko
“They beat the life out of everything that moves,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
It was not possible to immediately verify the report of the attack on the bakery, but local emergency services reported that the bodies of at least 13 civilians were recovered from the rubble after it was shelled.
Five people were rescued out of 30 who were believed to be there at the time. Russia denies that it has targeted civilians.
Zelenskiy, on the phone with a Jewish group in the US, said: “The bakery has been liquidated. And it happens in different cities.”
In the eastern city of Kharkiv, 10 more people have been killed in the last day, police said, bringing the total death toll from Russian bombing attacks since the start of the invasion to 143. The payment could not be verified.
After a third attempt to reduce bloodshed in talks in Belarus, a Ukrainian negotiator said that while little progress had been made on agreeing on the logistics of evacuating civilians, things had remained largely unchanged.
“At the moment, there are no results that would significantly improve the situation,” Mikhail Podolyak said in a video message, while Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky told reporters that the negotiations were “not easy.”
“We hope that these corridors will finally start working from tomorrow,” he said.
The fourth round of negotiations will take place very soon, Russian negotiator Leonid Slutsky told Russian state television.