During an interview on CNN’s “New Day” on Monday, retired Gen. David Petraeus said that the consequences for Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine will become all too apparent to Russia this week as the war continues to drag on and claimed that Russian officials might be looking for an “off-ramp” in the conflict. He also claimed that Russia cannot afford a confrontation with NATO countries because they don’t have enough forces and are running out of supplies.
P{atraeus said that the “the fact is that negotiations are still taking place and the fact that the economic consequences of this are going to start come home to roost in Moscow probably this week,” is an indication that Russia could be looking for a way out of the conflict.
“At some point, the [Russian] people are going to realize the stock market is never going to reopen, we aren’t getting much for our ruble anymore. Various products that they used to take for granted are just not going to be on the shelves in stores,” the former military officer and CIA director told host Brianna Keilar.
“Again, this is starting to happen and it will escalate in the weeks that lie ahead. McDonald’s is closed, for example. That’s a real penalty, to be clear. So people will be unemployed, the jobs they previously had won’t be available because businesses are decoupling from the Russian economy. As this continues, again, the pressure on Putin is going to build. He will not show it. He’s going to try to appear to dismiss it and so forth, but I think that’s a reality that he’s going to have to confront. These are unprecedented sanctions; we’ve never seen anything like that,” he added.
Asked about the risk of the war of spilling over into NATO member countries after Russian forces attacked an airbase just miles from Poland, Petraeus said Russia can’t afford a confrontation with NATO.
“Article Five in attack on one is an attack on all that’s the bedrock the Keystone commitment of NATO. It’s only been invoked once by the way, which is after the attacks on the US and 911. If this does happen, there does have to be a response.”
“Do you think there was a high chance or that it’s even inevitable that Russia ends up in a conflict with NATO?” Keilar asked.
“It’s certainly a possibility, but I don’t think that it is inevitable. I don’t think Russia wants to open another front in a war that’s already going for it,” the retired general replied.
“They already don’t have enough forces. They already apparently don’t have enough supply. That’s why they had that request to China, for resupplies and for various systems that we thought they had in their arsenal as part of this massive rebuilding the military has occurred so much about undertaken by Putin over the last decade or so, which turns out not to have been quite so massive and not as much modern as we thought.”
“So, again, it is possible but I don’t think that he wants to bring further involvement of NATO countries into this. I suspect that at some point in the near future, Russia will start to seriously consider what kind of off-ramps might be possible and I suspect that in addition to discussing the Russian request to China for resupply something that China can’t welcome and they may literally just sidestep it, you know, they don’t want to be on the wrong side of history, and join what is clearly becoming the evil empire,” Petraeus concluded.
Watch the entire interview below from CNN:
