The U.S. and Western allies need to provide enough military assistance to Ukraine to make Russian President Vladimir Putin realize the war is no longer worth fighting, retired U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus told Newsmax on Thursday night.
"I think [Putin] looks in the mirror right now and he doesn't see what a lot of us see, which is a leader who's made a catastrophically bad decision for his country that is incurring enormous losses on the battlefield again," Petraeus told "The Record With Greta Van Susteren."
"The estimates are 100,000 of his soldiers [have been] lost in the battlefield compared with 13,300 or so in nine, 10 years of [the Soviet Union's] war in Afghanistan. And then what it's doing on the homefront to the economy, the financial system, his inner circle, his industries and so forth."
Petraeus said Putin believes he's the leader of a proud nation whose militaries defeated the armies of Napoleon and Hitler and can outlast the Ukrainians and their Western allies.
"I think he's wrong on that, but we need to prove that," said Petraeus, a former CIA director under Barack Obama.
To make Putin realize the war is a losing effort, Western allies must continue to supply Ukraine with the vast military weaponry and munitions that they have through the first 11 months of the war. The United Kingdom and Poland reportedly will be supplying battle tanks to Ukraine's military.
Germany, France, and the U.S. have supplied infantry fighting vehicles, and Ukraine soldiers will be training in the U.S. to operate the Patriot antimissile system. More high-end weaponry, such as the Predator drone, could be on the way.
"I think that most of those capabilities will be provided in addition to again further extraordinary quantities of particularly artillery ammunition, way over a million rounds so far," Petraeus said.
He said it's important to beef up Ukraine's military now so it will be ready to launch an offensive this spring, when warmer weather will make conditions more accommodating.
"What we need to see Greta is in mid-March or so when the weather gets a bit more hospitable for offensive operations, will the Ukrainians have the additional capacity and capability to carry out new counteroffensives to liberate further of their territory, especially if the Russians expend so many of their additional recruits?"
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