Ukraine will win the war

The below is an edited transcript of David Petraeus’s interview with CNN’s Jim Sciutto.

On the war’s momentum: It has fundamentally shifted, and I’m normally fairly guarded and cautious about this, but the tide clearly has turned because the success of this offensive, as important as it is itself on the ground, is that it reflects a hugely important development: Ukraine has been incomparably better than Russia in recruiting, training, equipping, organising and employing additional forces. Russia has been struggling to do just that, literally running out of soldiers, ammunition tanks, fighting vehicles and so forth. Ukraine is supported superbly by the US and Nato, whereas Russia, even if it declared mobilisation today, could not reverse this fundamental reality. So the implications are stark. They’re very, very clear. Ukraine will over time experience tough fighting, more casualties, more punishing Russian strikes on civilian infrastructure. But Ukraine will over time, I think, retake the territory that Russia has seized since 24 February.