NYT’s Friedman: Not Sure How Russia Attack Ends ‘Other Than with the Russian People Finding a Way to Remove Putin’

On Friday, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman suggested that the only way to stop Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine was “the Russian people finding a way to remove” President Vladimir Putin.

Friedman, in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” warned that Russia went from having “bad boy Putin” who would never quite cross the line to “war criminal Putin.”

“We’ve gone from bad boy [Vladimir] Putin to war criminal Putin,” Friedman declared. “Now, when the head of Russia is a war criminal, when Russia becomes a pariah state, Russia that spans 11 time zones, Russia that has more nuclear warheads than any country in the world, Russia that is the biggest oil exporter in the world, Russia, which is the biggest wheat and fertilizer exporter in the world, what kind of world are we living in? That’s a very different world when Russia is a pariah state, not North Korea.”

“And frankly … I don’t know how this ends other than with the Russian people finding a way to remove Putin,” he continued. “Now, if they remove Putin, one of three things can happen. You can get someone worse. That’s very possible. You can get chaos and disintegration in Russia. And you can get someone better. If you get someone better, someone NBA-league decent, you know, minimum as the leader of Russia, Becky, you have a different world. You have a whole different world. You can actually then go back and re-imagine what George H.W. Bush first talked about: a Europe holding free from Ireland to Vladivostok. But there are those other alternatives out there, too, so be afraid. But we’re in completely uncharted waters when you move from bad boy Putin to war criminal Putin. That’s a different Russia.”

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