Former CIA director David Petraeus has described the Russian military as being 'surprisingly unprofessional' amid their occupation of Ukraine.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin sent troops across the border on February 24, but despite fighting against a much smaller military the Russians have so far appeared to struggle in their mission, with soldiers being captured and major cities remaining under Ukrainian control.
Retired general David Petraeus, who commanded US forces in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, shared his thoughts on the invasion earlier this week, as fighting entered its 18th and 19th day.
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Speaking to CNN, Petraeus said Russia's military performance has so far been 'somewhat surprising, but not entirely'. He described the performance as 'abysmal' and claimed this was for 'many reasons', one of which is that they are fighting against 'a very determined, quite capable Ukrainian force that is composed of special ops, conventional forces, territorial forces and even private citizens, all of whom are determined not to allow Russia to achieve its objectives.'
Opposition aside, though, Petraeus said the Russians are 'just surprisingly unprofessional', expressing belief they have 'very poor standards when it comes to performing basic tactical tasks such as achieving combined arms operations, involving armour, infantry, engineers, artillery and mortars'.
'They are very poor at maintaining their vehicles and weapon systems and have abandoned many of them. They are also poor at resupply and logistical tasks,' he continued.
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Other reasons for Russia's lack of immediate success in Ukraine lie in their difficulty to 'go off-road', with their wheeled vehicles becoming 'mired in mud very quickly' as the ground is 'not frozen the way they had hoped it would be', and their failure to perform 'sufficient preventive maintenance on their equipment', the former director said.
In fact, he described their equipment as 'relatively unimpressive' in general, especially 'given the investment supposedly made over the past decade or so'.
Petraeus drew on the forces' failure to 'crater the runways in Ukraine in the first hour of combat' and their 'problems in very basic tasks such as staying dispersed', as well as taking issue with Russian cyberwarfare and 'an unimpressive campaign design by the Russians that clearly was based on very flawed assumptions about how quickly they could take Kyiv and particularly how quickly they could topple the government and replace it with a pro-Russian government'.
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Overall, then, Petraeus said that 'in every single area of evaluation', Russian troops have 'proved woefully inadequate'.
If you would like to donate to the Red Cross Emergency Appeal, which will help provide food, medicines and basic medical supplies, shelter and water to those in Ukraine, click here for more information.
Emily Brown