President Vladimir Putin is 'out of moves' when it comes to turning round the fortunes of Russian forces fighting in Ukraine, says an ex-CIA director.
David Petraeus, who is also a retired US army general, said that Russian forces are looking increasingly desperate but also warned that Russia could still be unpredictable.
Ukraine's counter-offensives in the east and south of the country is making significant gains despite mass mobilisation across Russia to bring more troops into the fight.
Petraeus said: “He’s trying all these different desperate actions. But the fact is the reality that confronts Russia on the battlefield is that Ukraine has a vastly more capable and larger force than the country [Russia] that is more than three times their size.
"The reality on the battlefield now is desperate for Putin.”
Saying that Putin is “literally out of moves.” he continued: “There’s literally nothing he can do. It is irreversible”.
This comes just a day after Putin formally annexed four regions of Ukraine, in defiance of international condemnation.
The upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, voted on Tuesday to ratify treaties making Donetsk and Luhansk, in the east and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, in the south, part of Russia.
The city of Lyman has recently been reclaimed by Ukrainian forces.
Horrific evidence of the battle for the city, in the east, was left as Moscow’s forces were driven back by dozens of miles by Kyiv’s counter-offensive.
Victories along the front have liberated Ukrainian communities and President Zelensky declared negotiations with Russian despot Vladimir Putin “impossible”.
Residents emerged from basements in Lyman where they had hidden during the battle and built bonfires for cooking - the city has had no water, electricity or gas since May.
As Ukraine pressed forward in the east and Ukraine’s soldiers continued their new breakthrough in Kherson, in the south, Russian forces launched fresh missile strikes.
Several hit Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv, damaging its infrastructure and causing power cuts, killing three and wounding a nine-year-old girl.
Ukrainian forces have scored huge gains in the south, raising flags over the villages of Arkhanhelske, Myroliubivka, Khreshchenivka, Mykhalivka and Novovorontsovka.
Despite Ukrainian advances, the former CIA chief Petraeus warned against getting carried away.
He said: “Don’t misinterpret this, there’s still an enormous amount of damage and destruction that Russia can do, they can punish.
"And they will continue to punish Ukraine on a daily basis with missiles and rockets and bombs and so forth.
"But at the end of the day, they cannot reverse the situation on the battlefield, which is going to see Ukraine, taking back the territory that Russia has taken since February 24, and perhaps taking back everything that Russia has taken from them since 2014."
