Billionaire investor and major political donor George Soros has compared the Ukraine conflict to the Soviet army’s 1944 siege of Nazi-held Budapest.
In a post published on his website on Saturday, Soros urged the world to “stand with Ukraine, as they stand with us,” before drawing parallels between the Russian military action in Ukraine and the Soviet siege of Budapest, then a Nazi-held city.
“Brave Ukrainians are now on the frontline and risking their lives in an onslaught that reminds me of the siege of Budapest in 1944 and the siege of Sarajevo in 1993,” the billionaire noted.
The message was also posted on Soros’ Twitter account, but it was later removed after some users pointed out the uncanny similarities. As of Monday morning, the blog post was still available on Soros’ website.
“It is important that both the transatlantic alliance (the United States, Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom) but also other nations do whatever is in their power to support Ukraine in its time of existential threat,” the Open Society Foundations founder wrote, accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering “a direct attack on the sovereignty of all States that were once in the Soviet Union, and beyond.”
The siege of Budapest in 1944 saw the Hungarian city, which was occupied by the Nazi military at the time, surrounded by Soviet troops for months of gruelling house-to-house fighting. Soros, who was 14 at the time and of Jewish origin, later claimed that he was only able to survive the Nazi occupation of his city because his family was able to obtain Christian IDs.
