Retired US general and former CIA chief says Putin’s Ukraine invasion has ‘made NATO great again’

• David Petraeus told CNN that Putin’s invasion was a “catastrophically bad decision for his country.”
• “He set out to make Russia great again, and really has made NATO great again,” Petraeus said.
• The retired general had led US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan before serving as CIA director.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has “made NATO great again,” said a former CIA director.

“Putin, of course, is still in denial. He doesn’t look in the mirror yet and see a leader who made a catastrophically bad decision for his country — that he set out to make Russia great again, and really has made NATO great again,” former CIA director David Petraeus told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday. 

Petraeus’ sentiments about Putin and NATO have been echoed by other officials and experts, too. For one, in March 2022, former NATO supreme allied commander James Stavridis told MSNBC that Putin “may be the best thing that ever happened to the NATO alliance.” Stavridis cited the boost in German defense spending just days after Putin declared the invasion of Ukraine — something that the country hesitated to do for years. 

Petraeus had a long career in the US Army, where he led US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The retired general also served as CIA director between 2011 and 2012.

He has long been skeptical of the likelihood of a Russian victory over Ukraine and deeply critical of Russia’s military. Petraeus told CNN in March 2022 — a month after the invasion — that he thinks the Russian army “clearly have very poor standards when it comes to performing basic tactical tasks.”

And in February, Petraeus told CNN that it’s now clear Putin is waging a ruthless war of attrition in Ukraine. 

“He still believes that Russia can ‘out-suffer’ the Ukrainians, Europeans, and Americans in the same way that Russians out-suffered Napoleon’s army and Hitler’s Nazis,” Petraeus said of Putin. 

The Russia-Ukraine war has been raging for nearly 17 months since the invasion began on February 24, 2022. The US and its allies on Wednesday concluded a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where the alliance promised additional security assurances to Ukraine but stopped short of extending NATO membership to it.

Representatives for Petraeus did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.