Judging Freedom - Dr. Gilbert Doctorow: Murder In Moscow.

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow: Murder In Moscow.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, December 19th, 2024. Our dear friend, Professor Gilbert Doctorow joins us now. Professor Doctorow, thank you very much for your time and your thoughts to come. Was President Assad's departure from Syria a strategic defeat for Russia? Not if you listen to President Putin in his question and answer session today in Moscow, in which he addressed that very issue, what happened in Syria and what Russia tried to achieve back in 2015, which has been widely distorted by all of our recent news in Western media. What he tried to achieve is precisely what I was saying he tried to achieve when I wrote about this a couple of days ago. It was to ensure that the Islamic State would not establish a durable enclave in Syria. And he did that because if you look at the

map, you understand that the Middle East is rather close to the southern fringes of Russia, to the Caucasus, where it would be like an incendiary if there were these radicals based in Syria and within reach of Russia's southern borders. So they achieved that. He said that we did it without having boots on the ground. We know the only troops that Russia had in Syria during this period, from 2015 later, were those who were guarding its naval base and its air base on the Syrian coast, where these bases are today. That all the fighting was done by Arab units.

He meant precisely, he didn't say this precisely, but he meant the proxy forces of Iran and the then Syrian army. But the Russians had nothing to do with the fighting. They achieved what they wanted. Now, in the recent months, they understood that the recent events that brought about the collapse and departure of Assad's regime, they understood that his troops melted away. And whatever support there should have been from friendly Arab units also melted away. And so the situation was untenable.

As regards the present, Putin said that we have contacts with everyone inside and outside Syria and that most everyone is asking us to keep our bases in Syria, as I mean for the air base and Tartus for the naval base. And we are considering that. But all three things will depend on what arrangements we agree or don't agree with the governments in Damascus. The government in Damascus is a successor to ISIS, which is a terrorist organization, according to the British and the Americans, which collectively have put a bounty of $10 million on the head of al-Jazani, who now appears in a Western business suit and claims he's changed. Is it realistic for the Russians to claim that the danger of Islamic fanatics on their border has dissipated, whereas some would say it has been exacerbated?

Why shouldn't that be the case? The Russians are virtually the only ones, together with the Chinese, who have established working relations with Afghanistan, a country which has had more than its share of Islamic extremism. Yes, I also watched the BBC interview in this morning's news wrap-up, and he was very impressive, very impressive. Quite unimaginable that it's not just putting on a business suit, it's what's

inside his mind and what he was saying. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt. The question is, can this one man have real sway, not only over his own followers, but over the other? Right, right. His followers are as maniacal as he used to be. How are Russian commentators, the great game in those other programs with which you're so familiar, explaining the sudden, summery collapse of Assad? Well, these experts, and I'm speaking now of the orientalists who are the most serious voices on these programs, not general political commentatorsentalists, who are the most serious voices on these programs, not general political commentators, but those who are professionals, academics,

and long experience in the Middle East, not as outside observers, but actually as having been there on the ground. They're saying very much the same thing that you see in the most authoritative analyses in the West on programs like yours. That this was untenable, that

the Syrian state was starved for funds, and therefore they were unable to pay salaries or living wage to their army, which made it very likely that under pressure and under fear of an attack, they would disappear. They would melt away. There's no real difference in the understanding of how impossible it was to save Assad on the Russian observer side as what you have around you. Does the, is the report in the Guardian of London that Russia is moving its air defense missiles from Syria to Libya, is that report credible? I do not know. I am not aware of this. Are you aware of any reports that Russia is making this move?

Because that would undermine any desire to stay in Syria. They can't stay there without air defenses. Yes. The Russians, the only news that I've seen in Russian media pertains to the evacuation of equipment, unnamed equipment, without any specification where it was being evacuated to. So I don't have an answer using open sources. But I'd like to make just a little explanation here, because this comes into play, exactly what is the value of the news, either the official news wrap-ups or of these talk shows. This is the same value as the paper press

always was for studies that we call now criminology. This was using open sources. Open sources always, in studying the then Soviet Union, were the dominant factor in understanding what was going on. And they play the same role today. Now, there are many other sources, of course. And I don't claim to have them all in my hands or to be trying to chase them all. But I am giving you on these programs what is known from open sources inside

Russia. Got it, got it, got it. How close do you think the Kremlin believes the Ukrainian military is to collapse? They think it's quite close to it. I can't give you a number of days or weeks. They're very cautious about this. But from the behavior, from the demeanor of the war correspondents in the field, of the soldiers they interview, they're very satisfied that they are moving quickly. And now they show maps every day on the Russian news, which you don't was known before the Kiev regime put new names on places. So they are expecting a quick victory. Who killed General Karelov?

This is a very interesting question. We know precisely who. I don't think he's been named, but it's a 29-year-old Uzbek citizen who has been a resident in Russia for some years. The Russian television showed the restaurant, the Uzbek restaurant where he was working. You can understand that he's what they would call a sleeper. He was recruited by Ukrainian intelligence. He said that himself when he was interviewed.

I wouldn't say interrogated because it was really just a very open question and answer. He was not under any obvious duress. In fact, he didn't have a scratch on him, which is a marked distinction from what happened to the Crocus gang, the terrorists who ran amok in the Crocus Entertainment Center some months ago, who were missing a part of an ear and looked like they'd been pretty well worked over. He was not in that case. He was very forthcoming with why he was recruited. But the Russians made it clear almost immediately after they were satisfied that they had nailed the man who did the job.

They made it clear in the briefing that Maria Zakharova gave yesterday that that is not where the trail ends. And she said publicly that the Russians believe that the masterminds of this were the Anglo-Saxons and the chief beneficiary of this were the Anglo-Saxons. An interesting phrase, Anglo-Saxons. I mean, it could refer to anybody in the West, but probably means Great Britain. Exactly. In the State Department, they got very excited. They thought that she was pointing an accusatory figure at the U.S. No, no. As it was clear from her following remarks, Great Britain was the country in the West

that had placed sanctions on the head of General Kirillov. Great Britain was perhaps had its nose out of joint because of the very effective work he did in knocking out the false flag operations of MI6 and of the white helmets in Syria for these staged and filmed chemical attacks that were laid at the door of al-Assad and behind the Syrians, laid at the door of the Russians,

which were completely phony. He was the one who debunked the whole British story of the killing of the Skripals, the poisoning of the Skripals with Novichok. He was the one who publicized exactly why this could not have been. So the Brits really were quite annoyed with the general for having exposed their deceit, their terrorist activities and the like. On the talk show, weviov he and his panelists were were aligned in the notion that the killing of of kirilov had all the marks of a mi6 operation and yesterday's yesterday's edition of the great game it was more specific that the British were the only ones among Western journalists, Western press, who didn't just ignore, fail to make a statement of regret that this tragedy had happened, but went out to celebrate it. The passage from the editorial, the lead story,

as they call it in Britain, of the Times of London said specifically that the murder of the General Kirillov was justified as an act of war by the Ukrainians in their desperate situation. So that from the standpoint of the Russian elites, this was a statement linked to the knowledge that their own intelligence operatives were behind it. Great Britain is not at war with Russia, even though storm shadow missiles supplied by Britain, used and aimed by British technicians, have landed in Russia. And now Britain is almost celebrating the assassination of a senior Russian general who also happens to have been a scientist, a very valuable scientist to the Kremlin.

What is the Kremlin likely to do? This strikes me as an insane move by Prime Minister Starmer's government. Well, one would expect, and if you look at the kind of headlines that appear in various YouTube entries from the Times of India or a few other world broadcasters, you would expect the Russians would do something really drastic. And of course, Washington must be hoping for that. This is exactly the kind of provocation that Biden and company have been trying to bring about so that they could make it impossible for Trump to proceed with peace plans. But I don't see anything of that sort happening.

The Russians' attention is elsewhere, and with good reason. It is not to carry out vengeance, although they certainly would like to, if they enjoy saying on television how exactly one Sarmat rocket could raise the entire United Kingdom to the ground. So they enjoy that among themselves. But when you look at the action side, what they're about to do, they have greater concerns. What happened to the general could happen to almost any of the leading military and industrial figures in Russia.

By industrial, I mean military industrial, not private industrial. Private industrial, of course, these fellows look after themselves very nicely. Thank you for security. But the Russian generals, like the general Kirillov, who was killed, they lived modestly. He had no security detachment. He just had an aide who was killed with him. The apartment house which they showed, it's a modest, ordinary, middle-class apartment house. It's not something extravagant. There's no concierge.

There's no security there. And that is a situation for many of their officers, which is puzzling, frankly. and i think there are a lot of people are scratching their heads now in moscow what to do about this i watched a little bit i suspect you watched more than i did uh president putin's now eagerly anticipated year-end two three sometimes four-hour press conference, I saw a clip from an NBC reporter with a British accent. I don't know his name, but they show him a lot, and Putin always lets him ask whatever he wants, who basically put a question to President Putin was, and I'll paraphrase it. You just lost Syria. You haven't yet succeeded in your special military operation, and one of your chief generals was just assassinated. When you meet with President Trump, aren't you the weaker of the two. He responded by quoting Mark Twain, saying, rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. He also, of course, went on to argue, and I'll ask you about this, Professor, that Russia is actually stronger economically, culturally, socially, politically, and militarily today than it was three years ago when the special military operation began and provoked

the sanctions from the U.S. But I'm sure you watched more of this than the one short clip I did. Take it from there. Well, your short clip was a very good one. It comes, I watched this for two hours, which was about as long as I could take. And I felt quite satisfied that i left at the right time because the russians uh re they they prepared this particular edition of his annual presser and and uh direct direct line conversation with the whole of russia who send in send in their questions to him he this was prepared in a way that was much more effective and interesting for an international audience than any of the preceding events of this variety. A combined press conference and public letters and emails to him, that was combined four years ago before

COVID and it stays that way. And they put it together in a very, very impressive manner. The most important thing I want to say is that all the trivial questions, which took a lot of the time in the past, were now taken aside and sent to the governors of the areas where the questioner lives to be solved locally without taking the time of the areas where the questioner lives to be solved locally without taking the time of the whole nation to hear Mr. Putin step in like the good czar and save somebody from the mean local officials. So that already took away a lot of the fluffy questions. As for the serious questions,

yes, Mr. Putin made the point of giving the microphone to this Kir Brennan, he's a hyphenated last name, leave it at that, Kir Brennan, from NBC. Yes, he obviously is British. And his questions were already

what you said, complex, but that was the question that he was allowed to deliver. Yes, he obviously is British. And his questions were already what you said, complex. But that was the question that he was allowed to deliver. But as regards Putin's answer, it was very solid. It was very self-confident and it was comprehensive, I'd say. That Russia is doing better and not just that Russia is doing better and that Russia is doing better. And not just that Russia is doing better, and that Russia is producing, its military industrial complex is ramped up and is producing more materiel relevant to the war of attrition that's going on now than all of NATO and the US combined can do. But that Russia is doing it effectively, efficiently, and watching its costs.

Whereas NATO, as he said, in the two years since the start of the war, the cost of each 155-millimeter artillery shell has quadrupled. As he said, the net result of the soaring costs of military production in the West is that the NATO countries would now have to put up 3% of their GDP just to stand in place to cover their contributions to NATO's overall expenses. They'll never be able to afford that. That's an extraordinary number. Professor Doctorow, I must run. Thank you for your time. Thank you for all you did for us in 2024. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your family. I hope and trust you'll be

back with us in the new year just two weeks from now. Okay, I look forward to it as well, and a Merry Christmas to you and viewers of the show, and a good 2025. Thank you, my dear friend. All the best to you. Coming up later today at one o'clock this afternoon, the former British diplomat who has a lot to say about what Professor Doctorow was just discussing, Ian Proud. At two o'clock, Colonel Larry Wilkerson. At three o'clock, Professor John Mearsheimer, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.