Niall Ferguson: Ukraine is fighting an empire in decline and is bound to win

10 September 2022

According to Niall Ferguson, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Ukraine is fighting against an empire in decline and will certainly win.

 "Russia is 28 times larger than Ukraine in terms of territory, its GDP is many times higher than that of Ukraine, and its population is 3.5 times larger. There are huge reserves of minerals beneath these square kilometers; the empire does business selling these minerals and earns colossal amounts of money. However, if it were numbers that are crucial in wars, the USA would not have lost in Vietnam, and the USSR would not have lost in Afghanistan. The peculiarity inherent to empires is that they decline," he said at the 17th Yalta European Strategy (YES) Annual Meeting «Ukraine: Defending All Our Freedom», organised by YES in partnership with the Victor Pinchuk Foundation.

Ferguson said that despite colossal losses on both sides, Ukraine can win this bloody war.

“We have to believe that Ukraine can win this war. The war is likely to become a successful example of a struggle for national liberation as the nation pulls together against a rotten empire and self-actualizes. We are observing it right now,” he concluded. 

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Kersti Kaljulaid
Kersti Kaljulaid
President of Estonia , 15th YES Annual Meeting, 2018
«I think that new technologies will make the situation easier for countries that have problems with inequality in their school system… Technology allows you to teach regardless of where children live or how much their parents earn. Everyone has the right to quality education.»