Retired Gen. David Petraeus, the former CIA director and former head of U.S. Central Command, on Sunday said he thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin has no intention of agreeing to a peace deal “unless he’s given additional territory.”
In an interview on ABC News’s “This Week,” Petraeus said he was not optimistic about the prospects of a meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — for which President Trump has been pushing — and said he does not see reason to believe such a meeting would prove successful, even if it did materialize.
“Out of the last two weeks, really, Jonathan, I think what should be clear to all, and I think it is even clear to President Trump, is that despite all of his efforts — again, which we applaud, to end the war, to stop the killing — Vladimir Putin clearly has no intention of doing that unless he’s given additional territory,” Petraeus told ABC News’s Jonathan Karl.
The former CIA director noted that the additional Ukrainian territory that Putin wants “is heavily fortified, and Russian forces would have to fight for years at the pace that they’re going” to capture it.
According to media reports, Putin wants all of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the Donbas, including areas Russia does not currently occupy, and is willing to freeze the front lines in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — marking a slight retreat from Putin’s previous demand for all four regions outright.
Despite Trump’s claims of progress in peace talks, Russia has not shifted its core demands for Ukraine’s complete political and military capitulation, as Putin reiterated in his public remarks following the high-stakes summit with Trump in Alaska.
“He wants to displace President Zelensky, replace him with a pro-Russian figure, and frankly, to demilitarize Ukraine,” Petraeus said, “none of which can be acceptable to Ukraine nor to the European countries and the United States.”
“In fact, by the way, President Zelensky, under the Ukrainian constitution, doesn’t even have the authority to declare that certain territory would be controlled by the Russians. That would have to go to a national referendum,” Petraeus continued.
The former CENTCOM commander made clear that Putin remains the roadblock to peace and urged the U.S. and Ukrainian allies to push negotiations along by increasing aid to Ukraine.
“I think it should be clear: The obstacle to peace at this point in time is President Putin,” Petraeus said.
“And what we need to do is change those dynamics by helping Ukraine far more than we have so far: lifting restrictions on them, seizing the $300 billion of frozen reserve in European countries of Russian money, giving it to Ukraine, more sanctions on Russia, even including the Gazprom Bank and curtailing the export of oil further than we have already.”
