Former CIA Director David Petraeus said Friday on MSNBC’s “MTP Daily” that the Russians were acting like Nazis by invading Ukraine.

Petraeus said, “What we have right now is still organized units. And, by the way, the Russians have not collapsed the Ukrainian command and control. They haven’t taken even remotely a major city yet. They are, as my great friend General Allen noted, off their timeline. This has to be unsettling to them. They could not contain control of that airfield 20 kilometers northwest of Kyiv. They had to bring more assets in today. So they are encountering more significant resistance and more determination than I think they expected.”

He continued, “This was always the question a lot of us had, will the Ukrainians fight? Will Zelensky lead his country, or will he do what others did and pack up and leave? And we’ve got answers to that. They will fight. By the way, it appears that the citizenry is determined to fight as well.”

Petraeus added, “It occurs to me you’ve heard Putin referred to denazification of Ukraine, which is a curious illusion given that President Zelensky is Jewish. You know who the Nazis are here. It’s the Russians. This is the way the Ukrainians will regard them, the way that occupied countries regarded the Nazis again during World War II with almost all the population united against them, all males expected to take up arms and so forth.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN