Former CIA director and retired US Army general David Petraeus said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions had been “seriously set back” by his army’s failures in Ukraine.

Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24 after weeks of warnings from President Joe Biden and Western European leaders that an attack was imminent. The unprovoked aggression was swiftly condemned by the international community, with the vast majority of countries in the UN General Assembly voting in favor of a resolution formally condemning Russia’s actions on March 2.

While Putin believed his army would quickly take control of major Ukrainian cities and overthrow the government in kyiv, after more than a month of war Russia has failed to conquer any major metropolitan area in this European country. from the east. The military and ordinary Ukrainian citizens repelled the Russian advance, surprising even many Western analysts with their success.

“I tend to think it complicated any ambitions he [Putin] could have had very, very considerably. It’s going to set his army back for years,” Petraeus told ABC News. This week Sunday morning. He said Russia’s failures “showed the whole world” that its military was not the “wonderfully modernized force” that people believed.

“It was a huge challenge for the Russians. You know, the fact that they lost seven generals,” continued the former CIA director. “I tend to think his ambitions are going to be seriously challenged by what is happening in Ukraine, noting that this is by no means close to a conclusion.”

Despite Russia’s apparent failure to take control of major cities or overthrow the government in kyiv, Moscow has insisted it is succeeding. The Russian Defense Ministry said last week that the “first stage of the operation” had been “largely completed”. He argued that Ukraine’s military capabilities had been “significantly reduced”.

Newsweek contacted the Russian Embassy for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.

On March 19, the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, said Russia had “failed” in its first military campaign in Ukraine.

“Ukrainian forces defeated the first Russian campaign of this war. This campaign aimed to conduct airborne and mechanized operations to seize kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa and other major Ukrainian cities in order to force a change of government in Ukraine “, explains the report. “This campaign has reached its climax. Russian forces continue to make limited advances in parts of the theater, but are highly unlikely to be able to seize their objectives in this manner.”

While the Kremlin has been tight-lipped about its troop losses, NATO has reportedly estimated that some 7,000 to 15,000 Russian troops have been killed in the war over the past month, The Washington Post reported last week. To put that number into perspective, the United States lost less than 2,500 troops in the two decades of war in Afghanistan. The now-defunct Soviet Union, of which Russia is the remnant, lost around 15,000 soldiers in its decade-long war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

However, Russia said on March 25 that only 1,351 of its soldiers had died in the war so far.