Former CIA director and former commander of the international coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, believes that the Ukrainians "could not achieve the breakthrough that everyone was hoping for" in the offensive in the summer of 2023 due to insufficient supplies of weapons, especially American ones, to Kyiv.
Source. This was reported by the BBC.
"There have been delays in providing Ukrainians with military equipment, our (American – ed.) tanks have only recently reached them," he said at the presentation of the book "Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine," which he co-authored.
"There was a delay in making decisions on Abrams M1 tanks, delays in approving Leopard tanks, we delayed decisions on cluster munitions that could have been very useful, longer-range missile systems for multiple launch rocket systems, and finally Western-style aircraft," the general said.
"Our [military] doctrine says that to break through the defenses that we saw in the south (and I don't think anyone really realized or estimated the depth of the minefields, and that Russia had built the defenses correctly, in several lines, etc.), you need air superiority, and a lot of other things. We did not give this to the Ukrainians," Petraeus emphasized.
He also noted the mistakes of the West that partially led to the war in Ukraine.
"I think one of the reasons why Vladimir Putin thought he could get away with invading Ukraine was because we did not take sufficient action after the occupation of Crimea," the former CIA chief said.
Background. In early June, former CIA Director David Petraeus said that the Ukrainian counteroffensive would be "very impressive."