Ex-CIA director details the biggest single issue' Putin faces

Let's get some more in all of these dramatic develop that are unfolding right now. I want to bring in retired U.S. General David Petraeus. He's the former CIA director, th commander of the U.S. military's Central Command. General Petraeus, thank you so much for joining us As we see these devastating imag from this latest deadly Russian strike on Ukraine How do you expect the Wagner mutiny will

influence Putin as Putin's approach to this war in Ukraine? Well, Wolf, I think the central issue is that Putin and his military have lost quite a capable force. Keep in mind that the only succe in the winter offensive that was concluded a couple of months ago was that achieved by the Wagner when they took terrible losses in doing so. But again, they did actually achieve the

objectives set out for them. And that force has now been with from the battlefield. And now it's no longer an option of bringing it back into the fol And depending on how large you a that that was, the numbers go as high as 25,000 Some also good bit lower than th Those forces are no longer avail Prigozhin himself is no longer available for all o thuggish

acts and so forth. He was on the front lines. He was with his soldiers. And by the way, that thuggish ap had some appeal to those in the And also, frankly, to some throughout Russia. So again, that's the biggest sin right now. The question beyond this is does this undermine Russian m promotions, criticisms of the minister of defense, chief of the general staff, the decision to

launch the war, the way the war was being conduc all of which, of course, enraged In the end, when this gets to the soldiers, will it cause them to question what it is that they're doing and then can the Ukrainians capitalize on this? They've been conducting all of t probing attacks, reconnaissance and force positioning, these new armored b that are full of the western tan and

up his hold on but he also admitted that the Russian state funded the Wagner group to the t he said, of about $1,000,000,000 just in the last year. How significant is that and could it actually wind up backfiring on Putin? Well, I'm sure he mentioned that again, as Dimitri suggested, this could be grounds for an investigation. By the way I'm not sure that that was neces

necessarily funding for the Volga group per se in entirety. I think some of it also is liter that the vulgar group that Prigozhin himself had contr for life support for the Russian So this denies him that part of his revenue. Of course, the decision by the minister of defense to force the larger group soldiers to sign contracts with the ministry rather than to stay under the

larger group. That was another essentially existential threat to Prigozhin that angered him and forced him that led him to impulsively decide to conduct this mutiny until, of course, he was 2 hours away from Moscow with his forces and realized this wasn't going to turn out very we And he took the deal that was offered to go into exil in Belarus. One additional point here, I'm sure

that there's a lot of uncertainty in Putin's about whether he still wants Pri to be the head of the group, albeit outside Russia. And Ukrai The actions of Wagner, as you know, have been very help in Syria to a degree in North Africa, certainly in West Africa. It's also enriched, again, Prigozhin and enable him to fund the popular group. But I don't think that without a

succession plan that they necessary only want to take Prigozhin out for fear that that would undermine those particular activ which are part in the sense of the Russian Federation's foreign policy Very important points indeed. General David Petraeus, thanks so much for joining us. Will, of course, continue this conversation down