The former head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), David Petraeus, has said that the failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive publicised in the West was due to the delay in sending Western weapons to the Kiev regime.
In David Petraeus’s opinion, the hiccup in sending Western weapons, as well as the corresponding shortage of them, are the reasons for the failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive. The former head of the CIA said that the extensive Russian minefields should also be taken into account as one of the fundamental factors in the collapse of the Kiev regime’s operation.
The expert noted that the White House refused for a long period of time to send its own Abrams MBTs to Ukraine, which, in turn, delayed the delivery of German Leopard 2 tanks to the AFU fighters. Regarding cluster munitions, the specialist spoke in a similar vein.
“I don’t think anyone has really realised or appreciated the depth of the minefields, that Russia has really very properly built defences, multiple lines and so on,” Petraeus said at the presentation of his book “Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine”, broadcast on the Washington Post’s YouTube channel.
The ex-CIA chief stressed that the Kiev regime during the summer counter-offensive “certainly did not achieve everything it had hoped for”.
Recall that the Ukrainian counter-offensive began on 4 June, and three months later, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated its failure. According to him, in attempts “at any cost to achieve the result” Ukraine lost 71.5 thousand military – as if “these are not their people”. In December, Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu said that the losses of the Kiev regime’s armed formations during the six-month counter-offensive amounted to about 125,000 people.