Former CIA director and commander of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, believes the West has two key moves available to force Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.
According to him, using frozen Russian assets to help Kiev and destroying the Russian war economy with additional sanctions would simply mean that Moscow would simply not be able to continue its aggression, writes the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
The first is for Europe to use $200 billion to $250 billion in frozen Russian reserves as collateral for bond issuance and funnel the resulting money into Ukraine. “With weapons and munitions systems that they can’t produce themselves, such as ballistic missile defense and the Patriot system, this could also double drone production from 3.5 million to 7 million a year. And they could overcome their financial and economic problems in two to three years,” Petraeus says.
Step two: the Russian economy is more fragile than you think: the national welfare fund will run out of money next year because it has been diverted to the military industry. We need to crack down on those who support the Russian war economy by buying oil and gas and chips, motors, magnets, most of which come from China.