‘Putin still has a lot left to lose’: Niall Ferguson and David Petraeus in conversation

David Petraeus is a former CIA director who, as a four-star general, led US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. He speaks to the historian Niall Ferguson about the war in Ukraine.

NIALL FERGUSON: General, I wanted to ask you to give your assessments of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. If you were grading Russia’s military performance and Ukraine’s, what grades would you give?

DAVID PETRAEUS: Clearly Russia has failed. That’s the only way to describe the campaign thus far. And the Ukrainians, gosh, I think you have to give them an A at least and perhaps even more for just the sheer determination.

But it’s much more than fighting for their very survival. They have done it very, very impressively. The entire nation has been galvanised by a leader who has been positively Churchillian. There are four tasks of strategic leadership, and President Zelensky has performed each of these brilliantly. First, he has got the overarching big ideas right. Second, he has communicated the big ideas effectively throughout Ukraine and around the world. Third, he has overseen the implementation of the big ideas relentlessly. And, fourth, he has determined how he needs to refine the big ideas again and again. I think you give an A-plus since we’re using Harvard and Stanford grades.

Even on that scale, you can’t give Russia anything but a failing grade. Russia has realised that by attacking everything they attack nothing, and therefore have achieved very little so far. They appear to have withdrawn just about everything that they had in the north and north-east. The Russian command, control and communications have failed, too. That’s why generals have to go up to the front, where they get killed by these very skilful Ukrainian snipers. I’d give an ‘incomplete’ grade on what Russia is seeking to accomplish now: shifting focus to the south-east, trying to reinforce the one area in which they’ve had a modest degree of success.