A Ukrainian victory in the war with Russia would result in the "dissolution of the Russian empire," billionaire fund manager George Soros told the Munich Security Conference on Thursday. In a prepared speech, the Hungarian-born investor and founder of the Open Society Foundations advocacy network said that a Third World War must be "avoided at all costs" and that "Europe's support for Ukraine must be preserved." He noted that U.S. President Joe Biden's administration is supplying Ukraine with weapons such as missiles, tanks and ammunition needed to withstand a Russian assault, but found that opposition from the now Republican-led House of Representatives "makes another large bipartisan funding package from the U.S. Russian private paramilitary contractor Wagner Group has been active on the ground in Ukraine, but its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin recently said current efforts to surround Ukrainian forces in the town of Bakhmut were being impeded by Moscow's "monstrous bureaucracy," furthering fissures between Wagner and the Kremlin. Prigozhin took a two-to-three year outlook on Russia securing control of the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas and said of Bakhmut in a recent interview that "there are many roads out and fewer roads in."

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