Judging Freedom - Dr. Gilbert Doctorow: Who Really Invaded Russia?

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

Dr. Gilbert Doctorow: Who Really Invaded Russia?See 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 Thursday, August 15th, 2024. Professor Gilbert Doctorow joins us now. Professor Doctorow, always a pleasure, my dear friend. No matter what we talk about, it's an honor for me to be able to pick your brain, and it's very much appreciated not only by me but by our audience as well. I really have been waiting almost all week to talk to you about the Ukrainian incursion into Russia, who's behind it, who caused it, what's going on. But before we do, there is some breaking news this morning. I don't know this outfit. Maybe you do. Something called TF Global is reporting this morning that General Sersky, the Ukrainian military chief of staff, is about to engineer a collective resignation

of himself and his senior people in the military and encourage his troops to leave the battlefield. Have you heard this and do you know if there's any credibility to it? No, I don't know the source and I haven't heard the news that you just passed along to me. It'd be very interesting to see if there's any substance to it. It wouldn't be very surprising considering the high-risk expedition in Kursk acknowledged as such by major Western media, not just by those who are skeptical of U.S. and NATO policies. So it's credible as a way out, but there's no news to my knowledge to substantiate this. Who invaded Kursk?

The invasion of Kursk is said to have been led by the elite troops, that is the best reserves of the Ukrainian armed forces. These were people who, now I'm telling you the Russian story, that from the very beginning, the remark that the 1,000 men who entered Kursk were elite. They were the reserves. They were the people who had been trained meticulously by NATO officers,

and they were following marching orders that had been drawn up by NATO, not by Mr. Siersky, not by anybody in Kiev, but NATO. And so all statements coming from Washington or from London or from Berlin that we don't know anything about this, Mr. Zelensky dreamed this up by himself. We wish him luck.

We will support them, but we're not part of this. All such stories have a very specific motive, that is to exculpate the United States, not to allow the United States to be drawn in as a co-belligerent, while at the same time, preparing the way for Mr. Zelensky's removal,

because the possibility of things going wrong and ending even as the BBC acknowledged several days ago, in a catastrophic manner, that possibility was recognized from the outset and would, by itself, be a credible reason for removing Mr. Zelensky. What is the catastrophic manner to which they alluded? They'd be entrapped. They'd be surrounded. They would go in too far. You're talking about the troops in Kursk

or you're talking about the city of Kiev? I'm talking, well, Kiev is a separate question. Mr. Medvedev raised that issue. Shouldn't we really storm Kiev now? But that is not what I'd like to talk about in the beginning. I'm talking about Kursk, and Kursk, this area that they have invaded has very low population initially. All of that has been evacuated, and so the Russians prepared the possibility of total destruction of anything in the area that's called the area of occupation by the Ukrainians.

The most interesting thing about all of this, because there's been tremendous speculation in both major media and in alternative media on what were Ukraine's motives, what they hope to achieve, and how this will end up. The interesting question from the very beginning was, how could it happen that this expeditionary force initially of 1,000, now said to be 10,000 or 11,000 Ukrainian soldiers, how is it that they could cross the border

and stage this raid, a raid which became an expedition, without being stopped, without being, encountering a Russian response. And we know from reports in the Financial Times, people who interviewed the soldiers who participated in day one of this incursion, that they encountered no one. In fact, the Financial Times had a most curious feature of its article interviewing these soldiers, where the Ukrainians said, well, we crossed over, we were very surprised, we were not met by any resistance, we proceeded into a forest. There we encountered a group of Russian soldiers sitting around having coffee. Remember, this incursion occurred very early in the morning.

They were unarmed, and we shot them all. Well, it's curious that the Financial Times thought it proper to put on its front page a narrative that is a war crime. But that's a separate issue. Why is it that the Russians didn't prepare for this? And that is a subject that some of my peers, for example, Alexander Mercurius in England, have made extravagant statements about it. That the Russian general command knew this was coming, intentionally did nothing, so that they could entrap the Ukrainians. Even if there would be civilian deaths and so forth as collateral damage on their own side. This reminds me of the speculation that Franklin Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor, but did nothing because he wanted to get the United States into the war.

There are all kinds of speculations of this nature in a situation as dramatic as what we see in Kursk. I don't believe this for a minute. If the Russians had foreseen this and prepared for this, they would have closed the trap already. They haven't. The latest news that we have, if we have any news from the Russian side, who are very quiet, the latest news is that they're scrambling to bring in men from the center of Russia, that is soldiers, and heavy equipment to annihilate the Ukrainians,

if they can. That does not jibe with a theory that the top command knew what it was doing. That leaves you with the question of what's wrong with the Russian top command? What's wrong with their military intelligence? And for this, I would like to refer you and the listeners to a new source that you probably don't use regularly, but I do. Since every couple of weeks or three weeks, I'm invited as a guest commentator on it. And that is the Indian private English language global broadcaster, WION, W-I-O-N. If you tap WION and then the name of the gentleman who is the subject of their news report, Duman, D-Y-U-M-I-N, Alexander Duman, you find a very interesting news bulletin. The essence of it is that Mr. Putin was very frustrated with his chief of staff, Gerasimov, General Gerasimov,

who was the general leader of all of the Russian efforts in the special military operation, because Gerasimov had given him a report in front of the cabinet saying the things are under control everything's going fine in the effort to expel the invaders. Whereas alternative information reaching Putin suggested that things were not at all under control And he appointed this Alexander Dumen to be the general coordinator or curator, as Vion calls him, in the effort to expel or destroy the Ukrainian invaders in Kursk. And then I think it wasn't only Vion that caught this name. I think I've seen it elsewhere in

mainstream. But taking it as an example for ridiculing Mr. Putin for the kind of strange appointments he makes. After all, he appointed Mr. Prigozhin, who was his caterer, who was his restaurateur, to be an important military commander to be in charge of the mercenaries. And here he's appointing a certain Mr. Dumin to be the head of a very important military operation. And who is Dumin? Well, what they say, those who want to ridicule Putin, they say, Dumin was just the head of Putin's personal security, his bodyguard for maybe eight years. Well, this is a real problem that we have with all Western approaches to Mr. Putin's government or regime, depending on

which side of the fence you're on. Mr. Putin, to my estimation, is one of the world's best managers of human resources. And he uses methods which go back to Peter the Great. The method is intuitive, gut, and to work both within and without official hierarchies. Mr. You have the hierarchy of the

Russian general staff. Gerasimov is at the apex of it. He came up the usual way. Mr. Newman, who's now been given this enormous responsibility, is a side fellow, a person who's been... Probably perceived by President Putin as extraordinarily loyal, as personally loyal and utterly trustworthy. Agreed? Agreed. And add one further fact, gifted. Mr. Putin has surrounded himself with many people, some of whom are scoundrels, some

of whom have cheated the state for millions, if not billions of dollars, but they all had something in common. They were extraordinary people with great gifts, mathematical gifts, whatever. And so they could be very effective in helping with the economy or doing other things. Let me ask you about the actual invasion and the preparation for it. Could this possibly have been done without the aid of CIA and MI6? I won't answer that question directly, but I'll answer it indirectly. The Russians from the

beginning were saying that this operation was meticulously planned by the United States and its NATO allies. All of the scenario, who does what when, the whole game plan was NATO. The Ukrainians were simply carrying out NATO instructions. And this was just one more case where NATO has cynically used Ukraine, not just as a battering ram against Russia, but as a testing ground for new equipment and for new strategies. The Russians said from the beginning that this elite brigade that moved into Kursk was equipped with the latest NATO equipment, that they were top-notch, and that they had new tactics that NATO had not applied anywhere because NATO had no experience for about 40, 50 years in a ground war

with a peer. And that's what they had in the case of the conflict with Russia. How embarrassing has this been politically and even amongst the military and cultural elites in Moscow for President Putin? You don't feel that in the public arena, but I think you're touching on a very important point because the Financial Times, the New York Times, CNN, that first reaction they had was, wow, Mr. Putin has been humiliated. The word came up in many different news reports. Well, as we say, he laughs best who laughs last. And that's the case here. I think the humiliation is a lot of weights to the United States and its allies.

And yes, of course, it's embarrassing. But then it's come back to the nature of the embarrassment and the bigger issue, which you've just touched on, and that is, why did this happen? How did it happen? In that article of Weon, which just expanded by giving the biography of Mr. Duman, so we know, understood better who this man is. But it also went on and ended with a point which is very relevant to your last question. And that is, Gerasimov had received military intelligence that the Ukrainians were massing heavy armor to enter Kursk, and he dismissed it. My reading for this is that Mr. Gerasimov's time in office already is counting down. Let's remember that when Mr. Prigozhin, the mercenary group leader, had his big spat with Moscow, with the military,

there were two people whom he was denouncing as incompetent and needing removal. They were Sergei Shoigu and General Gerasimov. Shoigu was kicked upstairs, Gerasimov stayed in place, and I don't think he's going to stay in place very long. Paul Jay Wow. Colonel McGregor reports from sources that Russian surveillance was able to pick up voices from among the invaders, and it heard English speakers and its linguists. I didn't realize it gets this detailed in Intel. You would know better than I. Its linguists identified the English speakers

as, quote, having American accents. Is it more likely than not that American personnel, whether CIA, whether contractors, whether military out of uniform, whether some sort of technicians operating heavy equipment, were physically present and involved in this invasion? Well, I think you put your finger on it in that remark about operators of heavy equipment or sophisticated equipment. It is most likely that Americans or other nationals who represent the country, the manufacturer of any given very advanced NATO equipment that has just been given to Ukraine, would be filling that role.

Just as the delegation from South Carolina to Kiev, Lindsey Graham was calling for American pilots to man the F-16s since there are only two or three qualified Ukrainian pilots. So it is with the other heavy equipment. Surely we know that the Patriot air defense systems are manned by NATO officers, not by Ukrainians. It just takes too long

to train them. And those who may have learned something were blown to bits on various Russian strikes on Patriot systems. So yes, it's very, very likely that there are Americans in this incursion in Kursk. How does the incursion in Kursk end, in your view, Professor Doctorow? Well, I've been pursuing one scenario, which I take from Russian history, and I take from the present evacuation. The Russian news about the Kursk affair on state television has been extremely limited. There has been a lot of coverage of what's happening in Kursk, but only the humanitarian side of it. We see all of the food deliveries, the clothing deliveries, the blood supplies that

are being shipped in from across Russia by various aid organizations, volunteer organizations, patriots, local patriots, and donors to assist the evacuees, of whom there are now approximately 140,000, of whom approximately half are living in tent cities that have been hastily built, probably in Kursk City or nearby, and half of whom have been sent by train and bus further inland to the Russian heartland, to Moscow oblast or whatever. These rescue efforts and humanitarian efforts are widely publicized. The military activities that Russia has performed or is about to perform to expel or to exterminate the Ukrainian forces, nothing, nothing on their news. The evacuation, to my way of thinking, has been extreme. And I think I perceive in the extent of this evacuation a lesson from the past that's being used in the present and future. It is remarked on Russian media that this is the first invasion of Russian territory since World War II.

I'd like to take this thing back a bit to 1812 and Napoleon's invasion reaching Moscow. The Russians then practiced something called scorched earth. And I think we can envision the Russian response to the incursion by the Ukrainians in terms of a lightly scorched earth campaign. That's to say, they have taken all civilians out of this territory, which was never heavily populated, by the way. But the Ukrainians have gone into, they're all little settlements here and there, farming territory. There were no towns or cities. So this territory is likely to be destroyed by the Russians themselves as they use very heavy weapons against anything on the ground. Here is, you mentioned the delegation to Moscow from South Carolina. Here is the delegation from Connecticut and South Carolina.

You have a liberal Democrat, Senator Richard Blumenthal, and the arch conservative Senator Lindsey Graham agreeing. And about as pro-, as you can imagine. Watch the two of them. We'll run them back to back, starting with Senator Blumenthal, Chris, and then following with Senator Graham. It's not very long. Addressing President Putin just two days, excuse me, President Zelensky just two days ago. You're fighting our fight, the independence, freedom of people around the world, including the United States. But we want the American people to appreciate the value of this alliance. So two and a half years later, you're still standing and you're in Russia. Remind me not to invade Ukraine.

I'm so proud of you, your people, your military, your leadership, your country. You're under siege, unlike anything I've seen in my lifetime. They were predicting in Washington that Key would fall in four days, the whole country fall in three weeks. Well, they were wrong. That appears to be typical of the uniparty in Congress, the pro-war party that can unite people on just this issue, people who disagree on just about everything else. Lindsey Graham, Senator Graham's body language betrayed some sort of discomfort, but his face betrayed great joy. Yes. Well, you opened this program with reference to one of my two alma mater. That is Columbia.

The other one is Harvard. And it's an embarrassment to say that I'm a classmate of Richard Blumenthal. I've seen him from time to time at class reunions. I thought he was about 10 or 15 years older than you. Well, he's a man of great experience. There are very few successful politicians in my class. We didn't produce any John F. Kennedy's.

But we produced Blumenthal, which I think is a disgrace and it's a sad commentary on Harvard because regrettably the extreme positions that he is setting out in part of his visit, of course time shared with Lindsey Graham, would be shared by a large part of the faculty and the student body at Harvard. That is very, very sad and it calls into question the value of this very expensive higher education. Before we go, Professor Doctorow, how did the special military operation launch to recapture the Russian cultural and Russian language parts of Ukraine morph into a full-blown war between Russia and NATO. Well, the Russians have been reactive throughout the whole course of this conflict.

The active part has been the United States and its NATO allies. And so the change in nature of the conflict from a civil war in Ukraine, which Russia was participating on the side of its compatriots, we can call them, and that's becoming an East-West war, a war between Russia and NATO. That has been the consequence of a whole series of escalatory steps by the United States and its allies.

So it was at the same time, let's take a step back before the beginning of the special military operation, go back to December, November, December 2021. And the bigger issue going well outside and beyond the question of looking after fellow Russian speakers in Ukraine and looking strictly at defense issues and security issues had brought Russia into a very brief contact with the United States and NATO allies over its proposal for restructuring European and global defense. Well, European defense was the subject. So it started out as a Russian initiative to revise, to revisit the United States' presence in the former Warsawap Pact states, every whole expansion of NATO since the middle of,

since the start of Clinton's second term in office. And then it became of a specific saving, saving the Donbas from an impending Ukrainian attack, assault, which was heralded by intense, very intense artillery strikes across the border from the Ukrainian-held part of Donbass to the rebel part of Donbass, which was looking to Russia for cover.

Then, as I said, as time went on, with each escalatory step introduced with new equipment, with new equipment, first of all, it was non-lethal and became lethal, then it became of this limited range and then of a greater limited range. Well, step by step. We don't have to go through it month by month here. But the United States led the way into what we now see, which is a very close to a war.

Incidentally, the fact that Ukraine has entered Russia would normally be a casus belli for declaration of war. And if you want to pursue it further, it would be a declaration of war against the United States. Did the United States invade Russia? From the Russian standpoint, yes. Well, thank you, Professor Doctorow. Much appreciated.

Very, very much appreciated. We look forward to seeing you next week, my friend. All the best. Well, thanks so much. Bye-bye. Of course. It's a pleasure and a treat to get to pick his brain once a week, and I deeply appreciate it. Coming up

later today at 11 a.m., Ambassador Charles Freeman, how long will Iran wait before retaliating against Israel? At three o'clock this afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer, does the United States still consider itself the indispensable nation? And at five o'clock this afternoon, always worth waiting for Max Blumenthal on the latest from Israel. And why is the Western press so pro-genocide? Justin Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.