Russia 'Losing' in Ukraine, Putin's Failures 'Irreversible': Gen. Petraeus

Retired U.S. Army general and former CIA director David Petraeus said Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin is "losing" in Ukraine and that "the battlefield reality he faces" is "irreversible."

Petraeus' comments come after Moscow withdrew troops from a key city in Ukraine's Donetsk region—Lyman—on Saturday, just days after the Russian leader announced he was illegally annexing four areas of the Eastern European country, including Donetsk.

Earlier in the week, Kremlin-backed referendum votes to join Russia were held in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, which Ukrainian officials blasted as a "propaganda show."

In an interview on ABC's This Week, host Jonathan Karl asked Petraeus: "How significant, how big was Putin's move here? I mean on one hand he's announcing this annexation, but he's doing it literally as Russian forces were retreating."

"It is significant, but it's also desperate," Petraeus said. "He is losing. And the battlefield reality he faces is, I think irreversible."

The retired general added that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian army "have mobilized vastly better than Russia" and "recruited, trained, equipped, organized and employed forces incomparably better than Russia has."

"And the reality facing Russia now is that Ukraine—a country a third the size of Russia— has a bigger, much more effective army on the ground," Petraeus said. "So he faces a situation that I think again is irreversible. There's no amount of shambolic mobilization, which is the only way to describe it, no amount of annexation, no amount of even veiled nuclear threats, can actually get him out of this particular situation."

Petraeus continued: "He announced the annexation, he's already lost a really critical element in that critical city that would have been a very key supply hub had they been able to go farther and that's just going to continue. He's going to continue to lose on the battlefield."

Last month, Putin announced a "partial mobilization" amid the ongoing war, saying the step was necessary "to protect our Motherland," with officials later detailing that the move could mean up to 300,000 reservists are called to the battlefield. The Russian president also issued a nuclear threat over Ukraine, stating in a televised speech that if "Russia feels its territorial integrity is threatened, we will use all defense methods at our disposal."

Newsweek has reached out to the Russian and Ukrainian defense ministries for comment.

In a separate interview on Sunday, on the WABC 770 AM's show Cats Roundtable, Petraeus said that "ironically," in "setting out to make Russia great again [Putin] has really made NATO great again," adding that two countries—Finland and Sweden—joined the alliance since the invasion.

On Friday, Ukraine announced that it will be signing an application to accelerate its bid to join NATO.

"De facto, we have already completed our path to NATO. De facto, we have already proven interoperability with the alliance's standards, they are real for Ukraine—real on the battlefield and in all aspects of our interaction....Today, Ukraine is applying to make it de jure. Under a procedure consistent with our significance for the protection of our entire community. Under an accelerated procedure," Zelensky said.