Judging Freedom - Ceasefire in Ukraine - Is it Real_ w_ Scott Ritter

Episode Date: January 6, 2023

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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, January 6th, 2023. It's about 2.30 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. My apologies for those of you who have been waiting on the basis of my erroneous announcement at the end of the Ron Paul interview that our guest to come would be on at 2.15. I was wrong. Obviously, it's 2.30. Our guest today now needs no introduction. Scott Ritter is one of our go-to people with respect to the war in Ukraine. Scott, it's a pleasure.

Be late and Happy New Year. Welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. Happy New Year to you, it's a pleasure. Belated Happy New Year. Welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me. Happy New Year to you too as well. Thank you. Since we spoke last, the Ukrainians are taking credit for the killing of about 90 Russian soldiers, apparently in their sleep, while they were in barracks, which were in the same building or very close to where munitions had been stored.

And some of them were using their cell phones, and their use of the cell phones allowed either American intel or Ukrainian intel to have the missiles zero in on where they were located. Does this make sense to you? Well, unfortunately, it does. I mean, the history of military rockets and wars replete with this. You know, this isn't the first time a rocket has hit a barracks or a place where a lot of troops were stored. In World War II, on December 15th, I believe, a V2 rocket struck a cinema in Antwerp, Belgium, killing over 700 people, half of whom were American soldiers. During the Gulf War, an Iraqi scud struck a barracks, killing 24 Americans, wounding 89 others. And here we have a HIMARS rocket striking a barracks. This is what happens at war. And each one of those people had a right to say,

why did you have so many people clustered in one place, not protected? We had the right to ask that question about Antwerp, about Tehran, and now the Russians have a right to ask that question. There are two other questions. Why did you have so many people sequestered so close to munitions? Because apparently there were secondary explosions, which wiped out even more people. When the American HIMARS struck, it caused the stored, tell me if I have this wrong, Scott, the stored Russian ammunition to explode and kill more Russians. Well, this is a narrative that is out there,

but we don't know that it's factually correct. Okay. I can't tell you right now that absolutely there was ammunition stored at that. That's a Ukrainian narrative that's been picked up by some Russian bloggers. I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm saying we don't know. What we do know is that President Putin has ordered a commission to be formed to investigate this. And hopefully they'll get violating the orders of their commanders by using cell phones, that the triangulation of the cell phone told American intel or Ukrainian intel that they were there? area where that is indeed the case, to me more probable, is we have satellites that take photographs that track the movement of troops. And we see trucks coming in, troops getting off,

and those photographs produce an intelligence report that's then turned over to Ukrainians for targeting. That's what we've been doing. The cell phone narrative is, again, something being promulgated by Ukrainian sources and picked up by Russian bloggers. Is it possible? Yes. But again, I'd like to wait until an investigation. But the bottom line in all this is, frankly speaking, it doesn't matter because it doesn't change anything. The Ukrainians took advantage of a Russian mistake, made the Russians pay a heavy price. But at the same time, the same day, the same moment that this attack took place, a Russian missile in a Ukrainian facility, a converted ice skating rink, killed

nearly 200 people, destroyed significant quantities of the Russian soldiers, but nothing about what you just told me? Well, I mean, that's part of the problem. It's not that you fell for it, but that's what dominated the news cycle, was that story, the emphasis that was placed on it. or 36 hours this weekend in order to commemorate the Russian Orthodox New Year, which is typically a week or eight days after hours? Well, there's a couple of things at play here. One, the Ukrainians don't want to be seen as being the receivers of largesse from Russia, meaning the Russian master is saying we have 36 hours of peace, go forth and be peaceful. There's that narrative. They want to maintain the,

we are fighting till the end. We don't need your break. We don't need any of this. We're going to go hard. Two, and as important, you know, there is an ongoing theocratic conflict between Russia and Ukraine over the role of the Orthodox Church. Right now in Ukraine, there's many Ukrainians who are saying we must reject Orthodox calendar, reject Orthodox Christmas, Orthodox New Year, and only celebrate the Western because we don't want to have anything to do with Russia. So another part of it is to accept this ceasefire would breathe legitimacy into the supremacy of the Russian Orthodox Church, because after all, this ceasefire was originated because the head of the Russian Orthodox Church petitioned Putin and said, I'm petitioning you for the ceasefire to respect Christmas and that Putin went ahead with

the ceasefire. It's a political move by Putin too. It's designed to make him look good, to say, look, I'm all for peace. So the Ukrainians are rejecting it. And in many ways, I can't say that if I were in their shoes, I wouldn't do the same thing. You know, it is a political move. It may also be some sort of theological movement. Could you imagine in the old Soviet Union, the head of what then was the Russian Orthodox Church

petitioning any one of those guys to do something that would have laughed at them and said, you know, go back to your golden dome. Putin went along with it, whether it's brilliant politics, whether it's because, I don't know, maybe Putin's a Christian, maybe he's an Orthodox Russian.

I have a priest friend who's very well connected internationally who tells me he's friends with Putin's confessor. And this confessor, the priest to whom Vladimir Putin confesses his sins, travels with him wherever he goes. I don't doubt that. But let's remember this. with the Germans at the gate of Moscow, Joseph Stalin appealed to the Orthodox Church and appealed to Russian Orthodoxy and Mother Russia in order to rally support in the face of the German attack. So Russian Orthodoxy runs deep. It's ingrained in the DNA of every Russian, whether it was during the Soviet Union or today. There's a famous Russian movie, by the way, just to show a Soviet movie of World War II that shows it's about pilots.

But there's a scene where the engineer who fixes the airplane, when the pilot gets in, who's a staunch communist, every time the pilot starts to move off, the engineer crosses himself. It's a Soviet movie about World War II. So, well. Okay, I got it. I got it. I got it. The weather, Scott, a review of the forecast for much of Ukraine shows it regularly and consistently in the freezing. So what for us is below 32, what for them is below zero centigrade, same thing, just different measurement. The ground freezing. Now talk to me about who that helps. Does that help Russians because the tanks don't have to worry about mud? Does it hurt Ukrainians because they don't have heat and they don't have hot water and their water is going to freeze? I mean, talk to me about what the temperature does for armed forces.

Well, I mean, for the armed forces, the bottom line is when the ground freezes, you'll have a significant amount more mobility than you do during the Rasputitsa, the muddy season when everything gets bogged down. So the side that has the wherewithal to exploit this mobility potential will have the advantage. And right now, that's going to be Russia, exclusively Russia. Ukrainians have burned through the bulk of their tanks, their armored fighting vehicles. This is why General Zeluzhny was saying back in November that he needs 300 tanks, 500 infantry fighting vehicles, because he's lost everything. He needs that to replenish his capability. The Ukrainians are now moving around in light armored vehicles, basically fortified SUVs. And that's how they're transporting their

troops. That's not survivable in modern mobile combined arms war. So if Russia goes on the offensive, as we expect them to do, and they incorporate these thousands of tanks and armored personnel carriers they're bringing in, this weather is going to advantage Russia overwhelmingly. I assume that when President Zelensky was here and spent private time with President Biden, that he asked for tanks.

And I don't know what President Biden said, but if President Biden said yes, I mean, how difficult is it to get tanks there in large numbers? I mean, would they come west from Poland? Are they already there? Would they come down from Germany? Or do they have to be put on cargo planes in Maryland and flown to Kiev? Well, they won't be put on cargo planes because we're talking about a significant quantity of people on ships, I think. But before they even get put on ships,

most of the equipment that we, first of all, we know that Zelensky asked Biden for equipment, Biden said no. But nowiden has rethought the problem because i think um washington's slow on the uptake zeluzhny said in his interview with the economist i need 300 tanks 500 apcs and 500 artillery pieces if i don't he said he needs a new army he needs a new army and he also said if i don don't get it, the Russians are going to beat me. And so Zelensky said, hey, I need all this stuff. And Biden said, no. And now Zelensky's back.

And I think Biden and the Germans and the French are going, holy cow, the Russians are going to win because they've got nothing. So now France is saying, we're going to give you light tanks. Germans have to say, no, no, no. The martyr infantry fighting vehicle say, we're going to give you the martyr. The Americans are saying, we're going to give you light tanks. Germans have to say, no, no, no, to the martyr infantry fighting vehicle saying, we're going to give you the martyr. The Americans are saying, we're going to give you the M2 Bradley. Now, we're not going to give them the M1 Abrams yet, but who knows? The British are talking about bringing T-10s. The M1 Abrams is a tank. The M2 Bradley is what? Is that a tank killer according to Time Magazine? No. I mean, it's an infantry fighting vehicle. It carries a squad of troops.

It has a 25 millimeter chain gun on it and it carries some tow missiles. If used properly as part of a combat team, it could be a tank killer. But if you take it into combat without significant armor support or helicopter support, it's going to be isolated and destroyed. But the most important thing is all of this equipment is in a warehouse so before it even goes to ukraine it's got to be brought out brought up to speed maintained then you got to ship it in train the ukrainians on how to use it um and then employ so this stuff isn't going to arrive on the battlefield till april may warehouse where in the u.s or somewhere in europe

no the bradley is going to be warehoused in the united states basically in these giant places where bradley's that aren't on active service are going to be um warehouse the germans are pulling uh their martyr infantry fighting vehicle which is like a bradley equivalent um out of their warehouse but again they've got But again, they've got to maintain them. They've got to give them up to speed. The other thing is the Ukrainians don't have technicians, maintenance people who know how to fix these things. So they're going to send them in knowing that if they break, they got to be taken out of

Ukraine and taken to a maintenance facility in Germany. It's just a very complicated logistical thing. Scott, what about, I'm going to do air quotes, the American advisors on the ground, aren't they there to repair complex equipment when it breaks? No, because it's not just having the manpower. You've got to have a facility and you have to have the spare parts. That's a footprint that can be detected by the Russians and the Russians will hit it and kill everybody on board. So the equipment that breaks is taken out of Ukraine into a depot in Germany, Poland or elsewhere.

The head of Ukraine Defense Intelligence was quoted as having said last night, this is obviously an English translation of what he said, quote, the hottest fighting will be in March. That's two months from now. What does he mean by that? This is the head of Ukraine defense intelligence. Yeah. He's the same guy, I believe, a couple of days ago said that in March, Ukraine is going to launch a decisive offensive that will begin the process of recapturing. Is this Baghdad Bob or is this some guy that's credible and knows what he's talking about? No, it's pure propaganda, pure propaganda. You know, what he's trying to do is create a narrative that justifies the West providing Ukraine with offensive strike capability. That is these armored fighting vehicles, the tanks, the artillery. He's creating a scenario that says we can do this

if you give us this equipment. But, you know, unfortunately for him and everybody else, the Russians don't have to wait for America to pull armored fighting vehicles out of the depot, repair them, put them on a ship. The Russians have been sending equipment by the thousands to the front lines. They have their troops finalizing their training. They're showing up now, 10 to 15 division equivalents, and they're going to be there ready to fight before any of this stuff that we your opinion that a Russian victory is a near certainty? No, Russian victory is a near certainty. Okay. Scott, it's always a pleasure.

Thank you very much for joining us. Come back again next week. Thanks for having me. Judge Napolitano, have a nice weekend. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.