Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté : US Rejects Peace in Ukraine

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

Aaron Maté : US Rejects Peace in UkraineSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, June 19th, 2024. Aaron Maté joins us today. You know, I got to start by apologizing. I watched one of your podcasts the other day, and you introduced yourself, and it was Mate. And I've been saying Mate. So as we Catholics who are filled with guilt say, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault, for mispronouncing your name.

Judge, very kind of you, but not necessary. I truly don't care if people could say my name however they want to. So whatever it is. Oh, God. My first year on the bench, the official records of the New Jersey court system listed me as Anthony Napolitano. And I threatened to arrest the guy that did it. I was furious. And then I came down from the clouds

and realized anybody could make a mistake. Aaron, welcome here. I have a lot to talk to you about because you wrote a very important piece on your Substack venue about the significance of President Putin's offer of peace and the significance of the Western summary rejection of it. But before I do, we have some very, very new tape of Prime Minister Netanyahu

complaining to President Biden. It's in English. He's looking at a camera. The whole thing was staged that the weapons of slaughter are not coming fast enough. Bibi complaining, Sonia. When Secretary Blinken was recently here in Israel, we had a candid conversation. I said I deeply appreciated the support the U.S. has given Israel from the beginning of the war. But I also said something else. I said it's inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel. Israel, America's closest ally, fighting for its life, fighting against Iran and our other common enemies. Secretary Blinken assured me that the administration is working day and night to remove these bottlenecks. I certainly hope that's the case. It should be the case. During World War II, Churchill told the United States,

give us the tools, we'll do the job. And I say, give us the tools and we'll finish the job a lot faster. What is that job, Prime Minister Netanyahu, other than genocide, the slaughter of innocents, mowing the grass, turning Gaza into Donald Trump's son-in-law's new mansions. Oh, well. What do you think before we leave this mess and go to the other one?

I think I need a degree in psychiatry to try to grasp why does Benjamin Netanyahu feel compelled to go out of his way to humiliate the president and the administration that have bent over backwards to enable his mass murder campaign in Gaza? He's complaining about the pausing of one weapon shipment that Biden did in a performative gesture to pretend that he's taking action against Israel because he's facing an uproar from progressives and ordinary people who are outraged at what Israel is doing. And Netanyahu somehow can't accept that. He can't accept, I guess, just even one token effort by Biden to pretend as if he's doing something to restrain Israel. For Netanyahu, even that is inconceivable, to use his words. And therefore, he makes this video throwing Biden under the bus. And the Biden administration, of course, rather than

telling Netanyahu to take a hike, they came out and said, oh, we don't know what he's talking about. All we did was pause one weapon shipment. But by the way, we're still working on maybe getting that weapons delivery to Israel. So they're taking his humiliation on the chin. They canceled one meeting. That's what they did. They canceled one meeting. But then a U.S. official told Axios that the meeting is not even canceled. It's been postponed. So Netanyahu feels compelled for some reason to humiliate Biden. And Biden and his aides feel compelled to continue humiliating themselves. And for what? So that Israel can continue to carry out all these atrocities against defenseless people

inside Gaza. There's been more video coming out by the day of just the most unspeakable atrocities. I don't even want to describe, but anybody can go find them for themselves. The images we're seeing from Gaza of children being slaughtered, people having their limbs blown off, just unspeakable. And for Netanyahu, he's not being given enough weapons of war to commit these atrocities because Biden paused one weapon shipment. And why Biden takes this, why politicians in both parties are united behind this. Honestly, we need a psychiatrist at this point to explain it beyond, of course, the obvious reasons of the power of the Israel lobby, the fidelity to Israel because of its services to U.S. hegemony. But it's

just, you know, it's unspeakable. It has been for a long time. The Republicans have circulated the word on Capitol Hill that the last time Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress in 40 minutes or so of his speech, he was interrupted by standing ovations 55 times, and they are determined to break that record. And it will be the entire Congress without Congressman Thomas Massey and Senator Bernie Sanders. Maybe a few others will have the courage, but those are the only two of whom we know at this point. Again, before we jump to your piece on Ukraine and President Putin's offer of peace, whatever became of the Israeli three-part

ceasefire proposal? That's the one that President Biden said was the Israeli-originated. Secretary Blinken said Israeli-originated. Admiral Kirby said Israeli-originated. Jake Sullivan said Israeli-originated. And the Israelis rejected it. Exactly. Another great example of the Biden administration humiliating itself in the service of Israel. Israel can't do anything to even pretend as if they care about peace and ending this war. They're just bent on continuing to commit mass murder until they've had enough, until they feel that Hamas is completely destroyed and that enough of Gaza has been destroyed. And they won't even pay lip service to the Biden administration's pretend efforts that Israel wants to stop this war. The ceasefire proposal that Biden put forward, it sounded good, but the problem is it wasn't what he described. Israel and the U.S. still insist on this language that basically allows them to determine

that Hamas is acting in good faith. And if they decide that Hamas is not acting in good faith, then they can continue to carry out this mass murder campaign. What Hamas has said is we want binding commitments for a permanent end to the war. And because neither the U.S. or Israel will do that, because they want to reserve Israel's right to continue to carry out all these atrocities, we will not have a ceasefire in place. And Biden is pretending as if Israel has accepted a proposal that, as you said, Israel has openly rejected. Wow. Switching gears to President Putin's offer and the Western reaction,

what is your understanding, Aaron, of what President Putin offered. Putin made his most public proposal for ending this war to date. He said that, first of all, Ukraine has to commit to permanent neutrality. So not joining a military alliance, whether it's NATO or a Russian led military alliance, just permanent neutrality. Now, for those who think that's a radical demand, that happened to be previously enshrined in Ukraine's founding constitution until it was reversed under the rule of Ukrainian governments that were catering to Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and the West. But Putin is basically demanding there what Ukraine actually used to enshrine. So that's actually not a very radical demand. And it makes a lot of sense for Ukraine, a very divided country, to not be a part of a military bloc, whether it's a Russian-led there's a huge percentage of the population there that supports Russia. That's why there hasn't been very much resistance to Russian control of those territories.

So that's the demand. And then he says we can begin talking. And he threw in a hint there that actually maybe he'd be willing to actually not lay claim to all those regions because in his remarks, and I really recommend for people at the time to go read them. He said that early on in the invasion, he was speaking to a Western diplomat who he didn't name, but it's most likely Naftali Bennett, the former Israeli prime minister, who was mediating early on. And Bennett actually said famously that it was the West that blocked a peaceful settlement. Putin said that, Bennett asked him, well, you know, if you just care about the Donbass and Crimea, why are you also in other regions, including Zaporizhia? And what Putin said, he told Bennett, was that basically we're there because we want to make sure that we have a land bridge to Crimea, which Russia has claimed as its own and where the majority of the population wants to be a part of Russia.

If you believe the overwhelming majority, that's majority. If you believe U.S. government funded polls. And so basically what I heard from Putin there was that if Russia can be guaranteed a land bridge to Crimea through these regions, then possibly Russia would be willing to give up those regions, not even annex them. Now, certainly Putin was saying that was his position back then. At this point, now that there's been so much time has passed and famously Ukraine walked away from the Istanbul Accords, which could have ended all this more than two years ago. I don't know if Putin has the same

position now, but the point is we'll never know unless there's an attempt to find out. Right. And what has the West done in response to Putin's proposal? Olaf Scholz said, it's not serious. We're not even going to discuss it. So if that's the prevailing position, then that's just a recipe for, I think, Ukraine to lose not just more people, but more territory. Because you're asking basically Russia to keep this war going. And so long as the war is going, then Russia will try to take more territory and Putin will take more and Ukraine will wind up with even less. So why not even try to talk with Putin? I did not know that Naftali Bennett was a very, very interesting history in Israeli politics with which I'm sure you're more familiar than I, was involved in any of this.

How many times has the West shunned negotiations? And how can the West justify shunning these negotiations? We know about Istanbul. We know the agreement. When President Putin was interviewed by Tucker Carlson, President Putin held his fingers about an inch apart saying the agreement was this thick. That's how detailed it was. And the pages were initialed. We know about that. But were there other aspects to that or parts of it or follow-ups to it or efforts to negotiate that were also shunned by the West? Well, if you go to Putin's speech, he goes through a long list of instances where the West has shunned diplomacy going back many years. He talks about an episode I don't think he's ever spoken about

before, where during the Maidan coup of late 2013, early 2014, the protests against the government of Yanukovych that turned violent. That's Victoria Nuland and her cookies and her cookies and her killers. Exactly. Exactly. So he talks then about a conversation he had with Barack Obama, where he says Obama agreed with him on supporting a power sharing agreement that was reached to end the Maidan unrest. It would have left Yanukovych in power under a power sharing government with reduced powers and early elections. Russia supported that compromise. The Obama administration claimed to support that compromise, too. And Putin talks about how Obama promised him he would work with Russia to make sure that that power sharing agreement stuck.

But literally the next day, the radical element of the Maidan, the ultra-nationalists said, there's no way we're leaving Yanukovych in power. They carried out more violence. That led to Yanukovych's ouster. And immediately, the Obama administration went from saying, we support this power sharing agreement, to saying, Yanukovych has fled. He has no legitimacy. We welcome the new Ukrainian government. So Putin raised that as an example of how he was told by Obama, he was personally promised, we're going to support diplomacy, we're going to support compromise. And immediately, he backtracked. And Putin said, this led him to believe that the US was not just supportive of

the coup, but behind the coup. And it goes through many other examples that we've talked about many times on your show, the Minsk Accords, to end the war that began after that coup. He talked about the proposals that Russia submitted in late 2021, which the US and NATO refused to basically discuss. And then he talks about the goal of his invasion. He says the goal of the invasion was to force the diplomacy that Ukraine and its allies refused leading up to it. And the evidence for that is actually pretty strong because right after Russia invades, diplomacy begins. So if Putin is really hell-bent on taking over all of Ukraine, as his Western detractors claim, why then is he immediately

holding negotiations with Ukraine to try to end the war? And those negotiations culminate in the Istanbul agreement, which then, which as Putin talked about, was very detailed. And a lot of things were worked out. Putin basically got Ukraine to agree to permanent neutrality, which according to Ukraine's top negotiator was Russia's key priority. But then those accords were suddenly abandoned. And we know the reason why Boris Johnson came and told Ukraine to keep fighting. Even though another Ukrainian negotiator said we had a real compromise, that compromise wasn't in line with the U.S. agenda of basically using Ukraine to weaken Russia. And that's why there couldn't be peace. I know that you and Max have had your

battles with the New York Times, but did the New York Times finally admit the existence and legitimacy of the Istanbul Accord? And did the New York Times articulate some new excuse for the Ukrainians to walk away from it? Yes, they did. So the Times has basically taken a vow of silence when it comes to the Istanbul talks, which is pretty extraordinary because you have this, you know, consequential war, this proxy war between the world's two nuclear powers. There were these negotiations very early on that could have ended it. And the Times has basically been silent about it. Why has the Times said almost nothing about the Istanbul talks. Well, I think the reason is because the Biden administration sabotaged those talks. And because outlets like The Times do the bidding of the Biden administration on issues like this, they pretty much ignored the contents of those talks and the implications of the fact that they were undermined. But finally, The Times, after more than two years, has broken its vow of silence. For the first time, for example, they've printed the words of a top Ukrainian negotiator

who said that we found a real compromise in Istanbul. And they printed documents showing how detailed these agreements were. So it's actually some important journalism that's finally come out,

albeit, of course, way too late. Now, they have some important omissions. So, for example, they don't mention that Boris Johnson went to Kiev immediately and said to Ukraine, don't make this agreement, keep fighting Russia. They don't mention that. Maybe we'll get that from the Times in another two years, who knows, if we're lucky. But the Times, I think, does importantly have a few things. First of all, the Times does interview

American officials who confirm that they were opposed to the deal reached in Istanbul. So that's important because the Biden administration has said very, very little about those talks, which is revealing itself. Did the American officials, whoever they were, we can guess who they are, tell the Times why they opposed it if both the Russians and the Ukrainians agreed to it? Yeah, they were opposed to it because Ukraine would commit to permanent neutrality, to not joining NATO. And there's one official who says that this basically means that Ukraine is committing to disarming itself. No, it's not, actually. All it's doing is Ukraine's committing to being neutral so that it can't be used as a

pawn in a very dangerous geopolitical game between the world's top nuclear powers. So in the eyes of the US, though, that's Ukraine disarming itself because they only see Ukraine as basically a proxy that can be used against Russia. So from the point of view of the U.S., Ukraine committing to neutrality is Ukraine undermining its own defense. When meanwhile, it's the best thing for Ukraine's defense because it can no longer be exploited by anybody for a proxy war. Including the U.S. Now, I may have interrupted your train of thought by asking if they gave reasons. Does the Times reveal anything else that's of interest to us? Yes. They offer up a brand new excuse for why those talks failed. So there have been a few rounds of excuses before. Initially, Ukraine said that we couldn't reach this peace deal in Istanbul because of Bucha.

These allegations of Russian atrocities surfaced in Bucha, and therefore we had to walk away because we can't make peace with these people who commit such unspeakable crimes. Now, we know that's not true because despite the claims that Ukraine couldn't reach a deal with Russia over the Bucha allegations, and I'm not going to weigh in on what was true or not, I'm going to assume for a second that all the allegations against Russia and Bucha were true. OK, but we know that the Ukrainian excuse is not true because the negotiations continued well after Bucha. What happened after Bucha was that Boris Johnson came to Ukraine and said, don't make this deal. And that's what did it. Because if Bucha really was the reason, then there was then the Ukraine would have stopped the negotiations immediately. They didn't. They kept talking. Zelensky even said that we have to keep talking to Russia to make sure that

these atrocities don't happen ever again in Bucha, which is right. If you care about atrocities, you'd want to stop the war immediately so that more atrocities don't happen. I know many people have questioned whether Russia was responsible for the Bucha atrocities to begin with. But regardless, if you care about stopping atrocities, you'll have any interest in stopping the war. So the Bucha excuse was not true because they kept talking. Then we got another excuse. The head Ukrainian negotiator said that, yes, Russia just wanted permanent neutrality for Ukraine, but we couldn't trust them. We couldn't trust Russia. So therefore we couldn't make a deal with them. Okay. So that was the other excuse. Now we get a new excuse. Now we were told by Ukrainians that at the last minute, Russia tried to insert a clause

that basically said that, okay, Ukraine is going to have guarantor states, including the US and Russia. And Russia tried to now claim that in the event of an attack on Ukraine again, if any of the guarantor states are going to come to Ukraine's defense, then they all have to agree on their response. And so this was Russia's last minute clause that any act of military defense of Ukraine by the guarantor states requires unanimous consent. And the Ukrainian argument here, which is parroted by the Times, is that what Russia was trying to do there is say that if Russia attacks Ukraine again,

Russia will have a veto over any multilateral response because any response would require Russia's assent. So basically, Russia will be able to veto any future response to Russia's own aggression, which doesn't make any sense because earlier in the proposed agreement, Article 2, it says very clearly that basically Russia was committing to not attack Ukraine again. So imagine Russia attacking Ukraine again and then saying, no, nobody else can respond

because we can veto that under this later clause. Well, if Russia is already attacking Ukraine again, then they've already violated the agreement. So therefore, Russia would have no grounds to turn around and say, sorry, nobody else can come to Ukraine's defense because we vetoed that. They can't do that if they've already violated the agreement by attacking Ukraine. Well, this is almost ridiculous. Wow. What happened at Bucha? Well, you know, Ukraine claims that Russian forces committed atrocities against Bucha, and they discovered this after Russia withdrew, which happened right as the negotiations were happening. The timing is very odd because right before that, Russia had pulled back from Kiev in what Russia said was a sign of goodwill for achieving peace in Istanbul.

Putin said he did that at the request of Western states. He didn't name them. I presume it was Russia and it was Germany and France. And right then, just as these talks are gaining steam, as Ukrainians are saying we're reaching a real compromise with Russia, all of a sudden these claims of the Russian atrocities in Bucha surface. I don't know what happened in Bucha. I don't know. There should be an independent investigation.

I do know that the Pentagon very interestingly came out and said we can't confirm any of these claims of Russian atrocities. But again, I'm assuming even if all the allegations against Russia are true, why then would you sabotage negotiations that can ensure that no further atrocities would take place? Because by walking away from that peace deal with Russia, you were ensuring that many more people would get killed, which is exactly what has happened. How can there possibly be a negotiation here when the Russians don't even recognize the legal, the lawful authority or even the moral legitimacy of President Zelensky? I mean, of what value is the agreement he signed with President Biden, even assuming Biden's reelected and the agreement has a lifespan of another of another four years? Of what value is it? He's not the head of state. Yeah, well, in Putin's speech, he basically made clear that he does not see Zelensky as a legitimate president anymore because his mandate has expired. And he suggested that the legitimate authorities in Ukraine should be members of parliament, which he basically said was still a legitimate body.

I suspect if Zelensky actually were to change his stance, that Russia would be more accommodating. It wouldn't be so hardline. And possibly Russia is responding to the fact that Zelensky has ruled. Zelensky signed a decree basically saying he won't talk to Russia so long as Putin is in power. So basically there won't be any negotiations with Moscow until there's regime change there. So now Putin's laying down a hard line stance of his own. I suspect if Zelensky were actually to be sensible and recognize that this war is futile, that the more he continues, the more he's going to sacrifice his country's well-being, that possibly the Kremlin would reverse that stance. But who knows? The only way is to try.

And right now, inside Washington, there's zero appetite for diplomacy. There's only appetite for plunging Ukraine further into the abyss. The $50 billion deal that Joe Biden signed, which is $5 billion a year for 10 years, it's just his signature. It's not a treaty ratified by the Senate. Donald Trump or whoever succeeds Biden could undo it easily with a signature. However, it does not refer at all to Ukraine joining NATO or even that the U.S. would facilitate efforts to get it to join NATO. It's just $5 billion a year. Is it just for show, this agreement? It's all for show.

And most of that money is, in fact, a loan that Ukraine will have to. Although some of it will, will be financed by stealing Russian money, which the Biden administration thinks is a good idea, even though, you know, on top of, you know, theft not being a good thing, if you care about stuff like that.

Also what that will do to the financial system and the trust people will have and putting their money in us banks. The lesson is if you do something, the U S doesn't like, we'll distill your money and give it to the people who were're supporting in our proxy wars, in this case, Ukraine. But yeah, Biden's not offering Ukraine any more path to joining NATO because Biden has only wanted to – and he's made this clear now. He recently gave an interview to Time magazine where he said that I don't see Ukraine joining NATO anytime soon. He always sees is using Ukraine as a proxy on Russia's border, using the future promise of joining NATO to further militarize Ukraine and using that open

door to NATO as a backdoor to fight Russia. So basically we're going to use Ukrainians. We're going to militarize you. We're going to arm you to the teeth so that you can bleed Russia. But in terms of actually giving you a binding commitment to come to your defense through NATO, we're not going to do that. So it's treating Ukraine is completely expendable. And Zelensky keeps convincing himself that somehow all this moves him closer to NATO when it doesn't. Just to raise your blood pressure as much as I love you, Admiral Kirby arguing that after Ukraine wins the war, they're going to join NATO. Cut number 11. First, they got to win this war. They got to win the war first. And so, number one,

we're doing everything we can to make sure they can do that. Then when the war's over, no matter what it looks like, they're still going to have a long border with Russia and a legitimate security threat to the Ukrainian people. That's why the president at the G7 signed our bilateral security agreement, joining what some other 14, 15 other countries have done the same thing, to make sure that for the long haul, Ukraine's defense industrial base can continue to make sure that they have what they need to defend themselves. And that includes assistance from the United States. That's the long haul. That will help them defend themselves while they work on the necessary things they have to do,

like any member of the alliance has to work on, for instance, on corruption, before they can apply for NATO membership. But we do believe that NATO is in Ukraine's future, and we're going to work with them every step of the way to get them there. No credibility whatsoever. He sounds like just a deceptive salesman because

that's what he is. He's selling Ukraine on a fiction that they're going to join NATO, when really the future promise of NATO is just an excuse to militarize it, arm it to the teeth until there's no one left to sacrifice. And then he says, we can talk about joining NATO far off down the line. Ukraine's received actually no concrete steps on what it can do to join NATO. That was Zelensky's big complaint last year, that the promise of the NATO summit last summer didn't offer Ukraine anything they could actually do to bring itself into NATO. Because the truth is NATO doesn't want Ukraine in it anytime soon because it is very corrupt. It is a huge drain. All they want to do is use the future promise of NATO as an excuse to militarize Ukraine and use it for as long as it's convenient to weaken Russia, which is the U.S.'s only goal here. And he talks about building up Ukraine's defense industrial base. What he means is funneling more U.S. taxpayer dollars into the U.S. defense industrial

base and recycling those profits through Ukraine. Aaron Maté, thank you very much, my dear friend. I know you're still overseas and we very much appreciate the time. We look forward to seeing you next week. All the best. Thank you, Judge. Of course. A great and insightful journalist, and we are privileged to have him on the show. Tomorrow, a very interesting lineup for you. 8 o'clock in the morning Eastern Time, Dr. Gilbert Doctorow. 9 o'clock in the morning, Lieutenant Colonel Tony Schaefer. 11 o'clock in the morning, Scott Ritter. 4 o'clock in the morning, Max Blumenthal.

Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.