Michael McFaul, a former Obama-era US ambassador to Russia, on Tuesday confessed his shock at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “evil” in Ukraine.

“I need to admit, I did not expect him to be as evil in the way he is fighting this war as he has been,” McFaul told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.

Let’s also remember. They could have cleared up Bucha. They could have hid that. They didn’t do that,” he said, referencing the massacre by Russian troops that has been uncovered in the commuter town close to Ukraine’s capital Kyiv. “They left those bodies on purpose as a way to terrorize the Ukrainian people.”

McFaul, now a professor of political science at Stanford University who said he penned his first piece calling Putin an autocrat in 2000, also issued a blunt reminder about how Putin’s planned takeover of the country has gone awry as he launched a full-scale offensive in the east.

“Remember, Putin has lost the war for Ukraine,” McFaul said, noting the “original intention to swallow up all of Ukraine because Ukrainians are just Russians with accents” had been unsuccessful.

Putin has “failed to take Kyiv” or any other major Ukrainian cities and had “failed at his major objectives” in the war, McFaul added.

Watch the full interview here: