Judging Freedom - At the Ukraine Front Lines - Patrick Lancaster, Independent Journalist

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

At the Ukraine Front Lines - Patrick Lancaster, Independent JournalistSee 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 Tuesday, August 29th, 2023. Patrick Lancaster joins us now live from Ukraine. Patrick, what a pleasure. We had a lot of technical difficulties, which we overcame. Thank you for joining us. Can you tell us, without jeopardizing your safety, where you are at this moment? Yeah, I can, Judge. And I want to say again, thanks for having me as always. It's a pleasure to be on with you. And I am right now in the center of Donetsk. I have returned here to Donetsk, of course, as you know, many places around the war zone, but I've returned here to Donetsk to continue to cover the ongoing events here in the city itself, which is, as many know, the frontline city that borders Ukrainian-controlled territory of the Donetsk People's Republic. And the city itself is controlled, of course, by Russia, as it has been for the last almost 10 years. Well, before that, controlled by ethnic Russians. And then, of course,

18 months ago, Russian forces fully moved in. And after that, a referendum ensued for, as we know, the Donetsk People's Republic population to vote to join Russia. And that's where we are now. This city is full of ethnic Russians and controlled by Russia and the local people. Russian of Ukraine, which the Russian Federation annexed after a referendum a few years ago, largely Russian ethnic, cultural, and linguistic, but which Ukraine claims for its own. And that's where you are now. You are East. You are on the Russian side of the confrontation between Russian and Ukrainian troops. Is that fair to say? Yes. I mean, it's fair to say because everything's from the eye of the beholder. Of course, if you look at it from the United States and Ukrainian and European view, they would say I'm in Ukraine right now. If you look at it from the view of the local population who lives here, they say this is Russia, as well as Russian law says this is

Russia. So it's quite a little bit of a back and forth, but I tend to take into account, most important is what the people that live in a place have to say about the situation. And the locals say this is Russia. Agreed. And there are many, many people watching us now who are commenting. They're all so favorable to you and praiseworthy of your courage and your intellectual honesty, Patrick. If I began reading all of these one-liners, it would consume all of our time. But suffice to say, they are praiseworthy of your honesty and your personal courage. What became of the vaunted spring offensive that the American State Department, NATO leaders,

and President Zelensky touted so much in the media in the late winter and early spring. This is the so-called Ukrainian spring offensive. What became of it? Well, unfortunately, quite a few civilians died because of it. But Ukraine didn't get much out of it. They tried, it seems, but they came up with excuse after excuse, like the growth of the foliage is what was holding the offensive back and other things like this.

I mean, of course, there was little gains back and forth, but like take Bakhmut or Tyomysk, for example. Ukraine couldn't even take that back. So there's a lot of fighting going on now that has been, of course, increased since the spring came after the winter and is going on. Just today in the Donetsk area, particularly in Gorlivka, which is another city not far from Donetsk, there were three people killed when Ukraine opened fire on a dairy plant. And that was just today. And also today in the city of Donetsk itself, there have been civilian homes and apartments damaged in both the Kievsky District where the day before yesterday, there were three children injured when Ukraine hit a market with artillery. And these two of the children were actually physically injured with shrapnel. And the other child took a concussion from the shockwave of the blast.

And all three of them were taken to the hospital. And hopefully tomorrow I'm going to go make a report on how they're doing in the hospital. Let me make sure I have this straight. This is Ukrainian forces killing areas that they say is Ukraine, killing people that they say are Ukrainians, even though you're telling me that the people are truly ethnic Russians and consider themselves Russians. Ukraine killing Ukrainians in Ukraine. Do I have that right? Yes. From the Ukrainian side, that is exactly what they're doing. Ukraine're firing on Ukraine. What conceivable military justification, put aside political and moral justification, what conceivable military justification is there

for the Ukrainian military to be shelling sites, I ask the people why they're – if they know it's Ukraine that's doing this, how do they think? Why do they think Ukraine is firing on civilian areas if it's truly civilian areas? And the most common answer that I've been getting is to scare people away. And, you know, and that's terror. You know, the people that live here consider the attacks by Ukraine on the civilian areas as terrorist attacks. That's what the local population thinks. We're not talking about military members or anything like that. The civilians that live here, they will tell you themselves, they've said it many times on my

reports, that these are terrorist attacks by Ukraine forces. Now, this isn't just the last 18 months like the mainstream media would like people to think. This has been going on for nine years since 2014, when the local population of both Donetsk and Lugansk voted to break away from Ukraine. Wow. And do the Russians protect the areas of Ukraine that Russia says is Russian? So the Ukrainians are shelling eastern Ukraine. Are the Russians fighting back to protect the local population? Yeah, I mean, there's definitely nonstop battles going on on different front lines. Sometimes it's a lot hotter in Donetsk as far as constant attacks on the city center itself. Right now, it's not that situation.

It's more towards the edge of the city. But every couple of months, things change. And the Ukraine decides to hit the center a lot more actively and daily. But, of course, on the front line, there's intense battles going on. I myself have shown some of these in my reports. I do my best to show what the Western mainstream media wants. It's not always so easy, but I do my best. And, yeah, there's definitely fighting going on.

And a lot of people here in Donetsk thought things would go a lot faster as far as Russia controlling all of Donbass. But people are waiting. People's emotions are high, surprisingly. I mean, if you ask anyone, they say, well, things will happen when they happen. Right now it's war, but Russia will win. That's the idea of the local population here, as well as the soldiers. I want to run a video that you sent us and that you took. This is you inside trench holes, literally at the very front. I think you've seen me. So now we're going to go to check out the positions all the way to the front.

All right. So as you hear, we can hear the artilleries starting to go off. It's not hitting very close to us. But that was the outgoing and now we'll hear the incoming I think. Alright so as you see we're very close to Ukrainian positions. On one side it's 60 meters, on the other side it's 600 meters. This is the front line as you see it. I mean this is can't get any closer than this besides the Neighboring positions that is it's 35 meters away from Ukrainian positions, which this is the closest I've ever been on the front line to the other side and the days of Debaltseva I was

80 meters away from the Ukrainian positions, But this close is a first for me. But there's a lot more to come. Let's keep charging. A lot more to come. Keep charging. The soldier that was right behind you in the video that we just ran, I assume that that is a Ukrainian soldier. Well, that's, I mean, he was born in Donetsk,

so Ukraine would consider him Ukrainian, but he considers himself and his family Russians. He is part of the Kaskad Battalion, which is part of the Donetsk People's Republic internal forces and which is part of the Russian military at this point. So this is an ethnic... Yeah, it's a person that considers himself Russian, an ethnic Russian, and a member of the Russian military, but he was born in Donetsk,

and all the people that work with him are locals as well. Defending what Ukraine considers Ukraine from Ukrainian shells, defending what Russia and the locals consider to be a part of Russia, and part of the military command of the Russian military. Do I have that right? Yes, yes, yes. It's just remarkable the reporting that you have given us, not just here, but your reporting as well, because the mainstream media in the West doesn't cover this. Why does the mainstream media not cover this? Why is the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and Washington Post and NBC, ABC, CBS, and even my friends and former colleagues at my employer for 24 years, Fox News, why are they all taking the State Department's side on

this? Why are you the only one that is, the only American, the only Western reporter that is revealing that Ukraine is bombing its own people? Well, it just doesn't fit their narrative. I believe that people need to see things on both sides of the line. So I don't play like the Western mainstream media says, you know, they say, oh, ours is what you need to watch. And that's it. I say, watch my report. But don't just watch my reports. Watch things on both sides so you can educate yourself on the real facts that are happening on the ground, not just the facts that the West wants you to see. Try to get as many much information as possible so you can have an educated decision

and not just be led like sheep by the Western mainstream media. Educate yourself. Do you see any reporters from the Western media, mainstream or not, out there at the front lines with you? There's not any mainstream,

or much, I should say, mainstream media here. In the last six months, there was one semi-mainstream documentary filmmaker here. I believe his film should be out later this summer. It should be interesting to see. But as far as independent journalists, there are some here. There's a woman from France and a man from Italy. And there's a few people here on the ground idea in mind, you could say, is trying to show the truth of what the people in the West just aren't seeing and are being lied to about. Does Ukraine, the Ukraine government, attempt to suppress you? Say again, Judge? Does the Ukraine government attempt to suppress you, to prevent you from reporting on Ukrainian defeats, Ukrainian failure to move the dial, and Russia maintenance of the area that it says is Russian?

Well, I mean, they do their best. My channel is blocked in Ukraine. But, you know, and of course, some of my different social media and crowdfunding sources have had issues being blocked in the past. And that's how I, the only way I am able to do my reports is by crowdfunding. I used to be a freelance journalist by selling my reports to different agencies. But once I saw how they were lying about my reports, I mean, it's still on YouTube. One, for example, when I was in the Lugansk area in Pervomysk, I filmed a Ukrainian grad rockets hitting a soup kitchen, humanitarian soup kitchen. And I sold that footage and it got lied about. And you can still find it today where they say that it was Lugansk forces that fired on there when it was clearly Ukrainian. So once

that happened, I decided, you know, I'm just independent. I'm not going to sell my footage anywhere. I cooperate with other channels and things like yourself, Redacted and others, but my funding comes from crowdfunding. The people that watch my video and if they like it, they can support my work. That's the only way I'm going to be going forward with my work. So I can control- Your work is among the most dangerous and courageous in the world. Where do people go to see your work? You can come on here whenever you want, but we can't always get the connection. And sometimes you're in an area where you don't want the world to know where you are.

But where can people go to get your work, Patrick? Well, the easiest way to get the bulk of my full reports is on my YouTube channel, Patrick Lancaster. And also my reports are on Rumble with translations. And of course, YouTube full English and Russian translations for that matter. In addition, my updates with my full reports are on Telegram. A lot of information I put out on Telegram and, well, ex-former Twitter that doesn't make it to my YouTube channel, just little updates here and there, little sound bites or video bites,

video clips. So I recommend people for sure follow me on YouTube and Rumble. And after that on my Telegram channel and X or Twitter channel. Those are the best way to get all the information that I'm putting out. And that's all you can find me, Patrick Lancaster. Okay. East of you, deeper into the area closer to Russia that Russia says is Russian and Ukraine says is Ukraine. We understand that the Russian military has constructed three defensive rungs in order to repel or deter the so-called spring offensive. Do you know if the Ukrainian troops have approached or breached the first of those three defensive rings? Well, 100% not. They've made small advances here and there, and what they have made have been pushed back for the most part.

But as far as getting through the actual new defensive lines that have been put up, they haven't even made a dent. It's interesting you say that because our military experts, Scott Ritter, Colonel Douglas McGregor, Captain Matthew Ho, they all say the same thing that you just said. And they say it with certainty. Absolutely not. Yet this past weekend, the retiring, I think his last day on the job is this Thursday, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley said, oh, yes, they've breached, the Ukrainian forces have breached the first Russian ring of defense. Now, we hadn't heard that anywhere else,

anywhere whatsoever. And our people are telling me he doesn't know what he's talking about, but this is part of his farewell tour. He's the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And I guess in the death throes of his chairmanship, he just wants to mouth another Western lie. They have actually liberated a considerable portion of Russian-occupied Ukraine since the beginning of their offensive. And specifically on the access to advance that they're attacking on right now, they've attacked through the first main defensive belt. This is a defense in depth that the Russians had many months to prepare. It's got minefields, it's got dragon's teeth, it's got tank ditches. It's a very, very complex set of defensive preparations that the Ukrainians are fighting

through. And they're fighting through it. The Ukrainians have a significant amount of combat power remaining. This is not over yet. So I think it's frankly too early to say whether it succeeded or failed. It clearly has had partial success. What do you say, Patrick? You're there. Your eyes and ears and soul and heart are right there. He's in Washington. He's just playing word games.

I mean, you know, he's covering his, you know what, by just saying, oh, yeah, they've gone through the first line. Now, if you actually confront him about it and say, no, they're nowhere anywhere close to going through the real line, well, he'll say, well, look at this one little spot where they took 100 meters farther, say 500 meters, maybe took one village here and there, when over here Russia took three. It's just word games saying, okay, in one spot, maybe there is a little bit of forward action,

but no considerable movement as far as the front line goes. It's just playing word games to confuse people and to try to lead people into a certain way of showing them that their tax dollars aren't going to waste and their tax dollars aren't only killing civilians. Do you have a feel for how much longer this is going to go on or how it will end? Will the Ukrainian military say to the Ukrainian political leadership, this is a meat grinder and we can't do it much longer, and they'll just go home? Will President Zelensky be chased from the country? Will it be a stalemate? How do you think this ends and when do you think it ends?

Well, I can, I mean, we could say by the both sides, they look, as Zelnitsky says, you know, it ends when all the Russians are out of Ukraine and all that good nonsense. But on the Russian side, if you want to look at it from the Russian law, you know, I've said this many times, how the Russian law looks at this situation. Russia had the referendums and made all four regions, Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson, legally part of Russia. So by Russian law, this cannot stop until Russia fully controls those regions, regardless of whose opinions or what. Either Ukraine destroys Russia, which I think all of us realize that is not going to happen, or this is going to continue to go on, and the West is going to continue to give weapons to prolong this, and it's going to continue to go on

until Russia has worn down all of the Western weapons, all of what's left of the Ukrainian military, until Russia controls all four of these newly Russian regions, as Russian law calls them. So we're being told that the kill ratio is seven to one, where every one Russian soldier killed, seven Ukrainian soldiers are killed. The population of Russia is two and a half times that of Ukraine. It may even be larger now with all the Ukrainian refugees flooding westward into Europe. How much longer can the Ukrainian military last,

no matter what NATO and the Biden administration send there? You know, it just, we could say no matter what, but the only thing that's holding them up is the Western supplied weapons. And that's why every day or every other day, Western supplied weapons are killing civilians here in Donetsk and across Donbass. But this is just going to continue to go on until the West can't supply any more weapons. Or the West makes Ukraine give up what Russia considers Russian territory. Then it would stop, like Russia told Ukraine at the beginning. So it's just going to keep going on.

I have a feeling we've got another year, maybe two. But, you know but I pray it ends tomorrow. But hopefully the amount of civilians that are losing their lives and soldiers for that matter on both sides ceases. Of course, showing civilians is a horrible thing to see. And this is why i'm here uh showing what i can of the situation here on that side and again people should watch my reports and watch reports on the other side and educate yourselves you know don't know we watch your reports we watch your reports all the time patrick and you're in our prayers, and we are deeply, deeply and profoundly grateful,

as I said before, for your personal courage and intellectual honesty. You are always welcome here at Judging Freedom, and I know I speak for our millions of fans and viewers as well. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you very much for your time today. Be safe, dear friend. Be safe. Boy, that was just remarkable that we were able to get him like that and he was able to speak to us so directly and without any government filters, notwithstanding the one government, the one the United States is supporting, that would just as soon silence him. If you like what you saw, like, subscribe, tell a friend, more to come. Scott Ritter at two o'clock this afternoon, Eastern. Phil Giraldi at three o'clock this afternoon, Eastern. Larry Johnson at four o'clock this afternoon, Eastern. We'll run some of Patrick Lancaster's clips for them, and they'll be commenting on that as well as the blather that's been coming from American retired generals. We'll be running that for you as well.

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