Vladimir Putin will go down as a mass murderer: Harvard professor Kenneth Rogoff

Brian Sozzi
·Executive Editor
·3 min read
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

Prominent economist and Harvard professor Kenneth Rogoff offered a biting take on how the world will remember Russian president Vladimir Putin.

"Putin is a pariah. I have many Ukrainian friends and Russian friends who are utterly distraught. They look at being cut off from the world for a long time," the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund said on Yahoo Finance Live. "He is going to be looked at as a mass murder. People are going to be looking at again genocide charges. They are suddenly trading in North Korea. He has painted himself into this corner. It's a very dark place for where we are. I am not sure how we get to an end of it until Putin and his cronies go."

The West cranked up pressure on Russia over the weekend, penalizing the country for Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Western allies moved to block "selected" Russian banks from the SWIFT payment system. The decision essentially denies Russia access to financial markets globally and opens its economy up to a potentially severe decline.

TOPSHOT - People queue outside a branch of Russian state-owned bank Sberbank to withdraw their savings and close their accounts in Prague on February 25, 2022, before Sberbank will close all its branches in the Czech Republic later in the day. - US President Biden was the first to announce sanctions, hours after Russian President Putin declared a

Large multinational corporations are responding, too. BP (BP) said it would divest its 19.75% stake in Russian energy producer Rosneft, incurring a $25 billion charge to do so. Intel and AMD are reportedly halting chip shipments to Russia.

"Intel (INTC) complies with all applicable export regulations and sanctions in the countries in which it operates, including the new sanctions issued by OFAC (the Office of Foreign Assets Control within the US Department of the Treasury) and the regulations issued by BIS (the Bureau of Industry and Security within the US Commerce Department)," an Intel spokesperson told Yahoo Finance on the reports.

AMD (AMD) had no comment when contacted by Yahoo Finance.

JPMorgan estimated Monday the Russian economy will plunge into a deep recession as it becomes further isolated from the rest of the world.

Stock markets around the world flirted with heavy selling pressure.

"The real concern is just the uncertainty that this is bringing," Rogoff added, pointing to the potential for new instability in the Russia/West relationship for the first time post Cold War.

Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance. Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn.

Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard, LinkedIn, YouTube, and reddit