Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the UK (2019-2022), commented that: “The great advantage Putin has, and always has had, is clarity of purpose. He knows what he wants out of this thing. He wants to stop Ukraine ending up in the Western camp, one way or the other, and we’re failing to be clear ourselves. Only clarity will fix this thing.”
“(Putin) is a creep, added Johnson. “He’s a thug. He’s a KGB man and he’s a bully. This is fundamentally an imperial war. It’s about Russia’s sense that there’s no possibility of a Russian future, or a Russian empire, or Russian dignity without Ukraine, and that is an absolute disaster.”
Johnson advises Bia Advisory as Principal and Petraeus holds lots of titles with KKR, the first of which is partner.
David Petraeus, Partner, KKR: “ His (Putin) theory of victory is fundamentally that time favours him. He thinks that he can out-suffer the Ukrainians and the West. He is hoping for the exhaustion of Ukraine and the West, and he wants to see political change in Europe and the United States so that elements start to question whether to continue to support Ukraine.”
“I am very confident that Ukraine can withstand this winter,” added Petraeus “The question is: how painful will it be? The entire society of Ukraine is stepping up to meet this, but the question is whether there are knock-on effects that start to undermine the national resilience that has been on display so impressively until now.”I doubt many people in this room have issues staying warm and fed this winter.
Other private equity underwriters (PEU) and TechGods attended (see picture at the top of this post). Former Army Chief and Flex Capital COO Dan Driscoll was there, as was Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO turned high tech military supplier.
White House special envoy Jared Kushner, himself a PEU with Affinity Partners, reached out to Petraeus' KKR and Apollo (of Jeffrey Epstein fame) for recovery funds.
Will they change the country's name to U-KKR-aine?
I'm sure CNN's Fareed Zakharia will let us know. He has a long history of fawning over global tamperers of the PEU variety.
As for Ukrainians staying warm this winter that will depend on their natural gas supplies, increasingly PEU owned. It turns out the greed and leverage boys love carbon emissions. Only four large countries stand in front of them in carbon emissions.
Politicians Red & Blue love PEU and their new TechGod brethren. Increasingly, more are one and for that the little people suffer.