General Petraeus: The spring offensive will be 'much more successful' than many think | DW News

David Petraeus is a retired four-star general and the former director of the CIA he's still well connected to the intelligent Community here in the United States and has been a very insightful interview partner for DW news General good to see you again General Petraeus a huge Soviet era Dam that actually separates Russian and Ukrainian forces in southern Ukraine was just breached so what is the impact of this incident on the War I don't know that there is a huge impact on the looming offenses there's obviously an enormous impact on the citizens of the 80 towns and villages that have been flooded by this on the livestock uh on the zoo animals who tragically perished other than the Ducks and the swans on the reduction in electrical generation and on the impact on the water supply which includes by the way that which goes to Crimea uh it's it this presumably was done by the Russians there are Public Accounts that U.S intelligence has indications that it was Russians president zielinski of course Very publicly denied any involvement and I cannot imagine that he would do that if there was Ukrainian involvement um and so the real question in my mind is was this just one more example of Russian incompetence because there were reports last week of some issues with that Dam there's so much water behind it and so forth there were cracks or what have you or did they literally blow the dam up um thinking that somehow this might delay the offensive or disrupted in some way but I don't think that that is going to be the case will the spring Offensive start in this month well we're early in this month and I think we can see again shaping operations I think we can see setting of conditions uh there are a couple of conditions that have been publicly acknowledged president zielinski noted that he had wanted some more armored systems but it seems as if over the weekend he said that they have what they need and then just having really firm ground so that tanks with tracks can go off-road get get off the roads go cross-country without getting mired that is not a trivial issue if you run your 60-ton tank or 70 tons when the m1s arrive across country and they get mired in the mud and you have to do a recovery operation and while being hammered by artillery that is obviously not the ideal condition I think that the offensive is going to be much much more successful than many of the more pessimistic analysts have been offering I think that the ukrainians are very much ready for this they'll be very distinctive because they will be using employing Western tanks Western infantry fighting vehicles uh Western wheeled armored vehicles and so forth in large measure for the first time in this war certainly in this number I think the Russians will prove to be more brittle than the expectation is keep in mind these units have been in combat for over a year many of them they have not been pulled offline to reconstitute by being having forces replaced equipment replaced and repaired and then doing training before they go back they just get individual Replacements to fill the Gap they're not well trained they're not well equipped they're not well LED and I think that these Ukrainian forces which are well trained are well equipped we are going to break through and then you might see a real dynamism to the battlefield that could get real opportunities to the ukrainians to exploit how is the situation for the Russians when it comes to to their tanks and to to their Stakes of ammunition well they've sustained enormous losses um you know in today's day and age of Open Source media and intelligence there's a website that actually tracks absolutely confirmed verified uh destructions of say tanks immature fighting Vehicles just the tanks alone confirmed and again this is confirmed by photograph with metadata that so you just you ensure that you don't double count Etc just confirmed well over 2 000 tanks lost I'm sure that there's probably another many many hundreds if not another thousand that just aren't aren't confirmed in the way that they have it's called oryx.com by the way for those that want to visit I think it's a Dutch firm as a Dutch America I'm very proud of that so the losses that have sustained have been enormous they're bringing old tanks out of mothballs essentially out of storage refurbishing them pushing them into the battlefield their reports are actually t-55 tanks which really are a just a post-world War II tank um that does not bode well for the Russians and they've depleted some stocks of ammunition they're certainly still hammering away at Kiev every night that I was there there were multiple air raid alerts and Sirens but the ukrainians have really perfected their air defenses they're taking down every drone and every cruise missile it doesn't mean there can't be damage if the debris hits someone which it did tragically one night alone there were three individuals killed but they're very impressively protecting their capital and a number of the other critical locations of Ukraine so do you think there's a chance that the war will be ended by the end of this year I think it's unlikely um again you can't rule out anything or rule in anything it's possible that the dynamic on the battlefield could be so transformed that you might have an opportunity for True negotiations and perhaps a true negotiated resolution again both sides need to bring this war to an end the Russians are the sheer loss of life that is just not sustainable over the longer terms we all know that Putin is kind of speculating about the dwindling support for Ukraine and we experience that also here in the S we are entering another presidential race and maybe we can talk a little bit about the Republican candidates Randy Santos for example already has changed his mind and is referring to the war as a regional conflict well first of all that election won't provide a president who's inaugurated until January of 2025. so it is a long way away um second there is very strong Republican support for the War uh in the Senate a little bit less so in the house certainly that's where you find some of those that are uh again questioning it but again there's very strong bipartisan support on Capitol Hill and the president in the White House is going to continue to support uh Ukraine and to provide everything we possibly can to them albeit occasionally with some decisions that in my view have taken a bit longer than they might have but still um General Petraeus there is Donald Trump he might become the president again for the United States and we all remember uh how he threatened to leave NATO so so how can the world prepare for a situation like that or is there any way to prepare for that well first of all I just remind people that um and I used to say then you know read the tweets um but then follow the troops follow the money and follow the policy and the policy actually was that we returned to tank Brigade to European soil for the first time since we had removed it a decade or so earlier uh we pushed forces further east into Poland augmented the forces that were in the Baltic states augmented our commitment to Europe Etc et cetera so again that's the first comment I'd say the second is again we are a long way from this election I normally leave domestic politics to those who actually love to get involved in that and I don't I Am a Man Without a party I don't even register to vote I advise members of either party actually and truly nonpartisan um so again I'll leave that to the to the pundits here it is way premature uh to be speculating about what ifs uh about an election that is still a good um I guess nearly 18 months away in an inauguration that's another two months after that is there a good chance that the war will be over by then by January 2025. a lot depends on the success of this offensive um and you could feel this when I was meeting with again when we met with president zielinski when we met with the other other of the military leaders the other uh ministers um even again business people um you can feel a degree of anxiety about this operation as there should be there is a huge discussion about uh Ukraine uh joining NATO did you have a chance to talk with President zelensky about it and what's your your stand on believe that we should have a as firm a path to Nato membership as is absolutely possible I think this is hugely important important um it's all it's important for the Ukrainian people too they need to be reassured even Henry Kissinger who used to caution about extending NATO membership to former Soviet republics now says that Ukraine should be made a member of NATO given that for all intents and purposes given all that we have provided to Ukraine NATO's security is at the border between Ukraine and Russia now and we need to ensure that there will not be a repeat of this once this is said and done so certainly not making a NATO membership while the war is still going on I think that there's an understandable uh concern about that but there should be a very solid path uh to Nato membership that's provided at the villenea summit on 11 July but in the meantime the focus should be on enabling Ukraine to the greatest extent that we possibly can so that the ukrainians can prove to to Putin that the Russians will not be able to outsuffer the ukrainians and also we prove they won't be able to outsuffer the Europeans and the Americans as well does this include F-16 Jets oh absolutely we should have made the decision to transition to Western aircraft long ago again this was inevitable there are no more mig-29s in the NATO Arsenal to provide to Ukraine with scoured all the NATO countries that used to have those kinds of systems or had them they refurbished them some are still being refurbished and provided but we're basically out of that system they have to transition to a western aircraft now you can argue about whether it should be the F-16 the FNA 18 the grip and again take your pick I think the F-16 has a huge Advantage because it's so ubiquitous and because there are indeed at least two countries that reportedly are willing to provide their f-16s to Ukraine um especially if they can then transition to either a more capable F-16 or the F-35 but the f-16s that are in offer they're block 52. that's a Beyond fourth generation aircraft it's not the fifth generation but it's a very capable aircraft General as always thank you very much for your time and your insights and we talk soon again thank you you bet bye-bye

Channel: DW News

Views: 635,595

Keywords: DW News, Ukraine, Russia, War, counter offensive, Karkhova dam, Kherson, Kyiv, Luhansk, ukraine war, war in ukraine, david petraeus, ukraine news

Id: L3qCYIPaPqU

Length: 11min 52sec (712 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023