Judging Freedom - Heavy Bombing Continues in Ukraine - Scott Ritter

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, March 10, 2023. It's about 105 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Scott Ritter joins us for his weekly time with all of you. Scott, always a pleasure. Welcome back. I want to start right out with something that Victoria Nuland said just the other day, attempting to make the argument that the American forces would be justified in attacking Crimea. Before you react, let's listen to what she had to say. There is a drone base in Crimea where the drones that the Iranians have given Russia are being launched from. There are command and control sites in Crimea that are essential for

Russia's hold on all of the territory, including the land bridge. There are mass military installations on Crimea that Russia has turned into essential logistics and back office depots for this war. Those are legitimate targets. Ukraine is hitting them, and we are supporting that. This is the number two person in the State Department of the United States. It's not Tony Blinken. It's not the Secretary, obviously, purporting to justify, as I read it, an American attack on Crimea. Well, it's a proxy American attack. What she's saying is that the United States is providing the support, both in terms of materiel, the weapons, and the intelligence targeting to attack. But she's right. I mean, from a Ukrainian perspective,

everything she laid out is a legitimate target. I mean, welcome to war. If Russia thinks that it can wage this conflict with Ukraine and not have these targets struck by Ukraine, that's another thing coming. But for the United States to come in and literally how they do the rankings. The number two or three person in the State Department of the United States with a smile from ear to ear justifying the use of American military equipment, which we know means American military personnel, against a part of the world that has been Russia since Catherine the Great reigned over Russia, which was before George III reigned over the American colonies. But it's not just that. She's, I mean, yes, we know the historical link, but she's basically saying straight up, America is a party to this conflict. Literally, she just said, we are a party to the conflict. And thank goodness the Russians aren't us. Because if there was a Russian Victoria Nuland, they'd say, well, every American base in Europe is now a target, and we are going to attack you. That's my point. How dangerous is it for her to make a statement like this? Who knows if they ran this past the lawyers? Who knows if Tony Blinken approved it or had a heart attack when he heard about it?

Whatever you think of him, he's a lot more nuanced than she is. I mean, this is reckless to the extreme, is it not? Totally. Look, in the lead up to Desert Storm, there was an Air Force officer who spoke out about the air campaign nothing he said was factually wrong but it he spoke out um in a way that put the Air Force in a bad light put the United States in a bad light he was fired the same day fired the same day Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense picked up the phone called uh Colin Powell and said fire him and they did uh why Because he doesn't get to make these policy decisions. She should be fired on the spot. Literally, she should be terminated, fired, kicked out. What if what she's saying is American policy? Okay, but that's unspoken policy. You can't commit the United States down the path that could lead inevitably to not just conflict, but nuclear conflict. She is dangerous and she should be terminated in terms of her employment.

Could it have been a trial balloon? Well, it's the silliest trial balloon I've ever seen because it's a trial balloon that to what end? It doesn't prove anything if Russia does nothing. It just means that Russia, again, once again, demonstrating that they are the adult in the room. But then if Russia does something, then you're at war with Russia. Again, it's a horrible trial balloon. All right. As we speak, it's the end of the day in Ukraine.

The sun is setting. What is your understanding is the status of control and forces in Bakhmut? The Russians continue to push forward. The Ukrainians continue to reinforce, and people keep dying. And at some point in time, I believe the Russians are going to capture Bakhmut, whether it's through an encirclement, whether it's through just grinding their way through, they'll capture it. And when that happens, as President Zelensky has accurately said, that will burst the Ukrainian defenses. And then we'll have the Russians. Right now, if you look at Bakhmut, you get a little bit of a bubble here from this encirclement,

but it's basically a line. When it bursts bursts the Russians are going to be able to come in and take a lot of territory that just elongated the front lines the line of contact Russia has the troops to man that that area Ukraine does not which means that this bubble is going to grow bigger and bigger and bigger that's why bakmood is so important it is literally the Gordian knot that holds Ukrainian defenses together. And when it falls, you're going to see this ballooning. The last time we spoke, actually the last two times we spoke, Scott, you were commenting that the Ukrainians are using ammunition faster than the West can supply it, faster than the West can manufacture it. Is that still the case?

Because if it is, sooner or later, the number is going to go down to zero. No, literally, there's nothing the West can do to change this. Literally nothing. Even if Joe Biden today woke up and said, I'm going to sign some war powers authority for defense production, we can't get the production lines up and running. We can't get the resources allocated. We can't get things off the production line to stop what is inevitably going to happen. Ukrainians will run out of ammunition sometime this summer. And when that happens, it's all over. What is the status of the three to five hundred thousand reservists, veterans, conscripts,

whatever you want to call them, the people that President Putin called up around September that have been training since then, here we now are in March. Are they on the other side of that line that you talked about, or have they begun their assault into Ukraine? Some are on the line of contact, putting the pressure on the Ukrainians. Because remember, when Bakhmut falls, this bubble begins. In order to man that, Ukraine's going to have to pull forces away from elsewhere, which thins those line out so you get more bubbles. And you're just going to see this percolation of bubbles along the line bursting forward, et cetera. That's where the Russian troops are either positioned on the line or somewhere in the rear, ready to move up and exploit these opportunities. Russia has the resources to exploit the advantageous situation that's going to evolve. Ukraine doesn't have the resources to be able to adequately man this expanding line of contact.

What is the current situation with the Wagner Group? So mainstream media is saying two things. The head of Wagner and Putin are not getting along, and the Wagner troops are not getting along with their superiors. So first, give us a little bit of a picture of Wagner. Our friend, in quotes, Jack Devine, calls it a paramilitary group. I think you're going to argue it's more seriously military than paramilitary, but tell us about it. Who runs it? What's the chain of command? And is there this political tension? Wagner was created in 2014 when this initial Ukrainian civil war happened between-

When Victoria Nuland herself fomented the coup that threw out the popularly elected pro-Russian, but popularly elected president of Ukraine. Viktor Yanukovych, that's right. He fled and the ethnic Russians were declared to be terrorists by this new neo-Nazi affiliated government. Conflict happened. nazi affiliated government conflict happened russia is prohibited by its constitution to deploy its troops outside of the russian borders without a declaration of war or something some authority given by the the russian parliament so wagner was created to be a vehicle through which russia could provide military assistance wagner was a private military company so any military forces sent to wagner aren't military they're

private uh it was created with a unique funding structure uh mr progrosion was put in charge of this and uh wagner served its its role very well even when the special military operation started the lugansk and donetsk republics were independent not not Russia. So Wagner continued in this privileged mode, but now attacking in a more concerted fashion. They became a very valuable assault resource, and they had a high priority in terms of the provision of assistance. But when Lugansk and Donetsk became Russian territories after the annexation, after the referendums, Wagner can't exist as a private military corporation anymore legally. So Wagner became a volunteer military unit.

And now it is directly reporting to the general staff. And it's part of an expanding Russian force that went from 200,000 to 700,000, which means resources are going to be thinned out. So now Wagner stopped being the only show in town with a priority of resource, and they now become one of many, still a priority, but not getting what it wanted. And so there is some tension there going on. Now, here's my problem with what's going on in the media. I don't know if you remember a while back, there was a video of a defector from Wagner and they showed him with his head taped to a concrete

block and he confessed his sins and then a sledgehammer hit him in the head. And because that's the Wagner symbol, the sledgehammer. And everybody said, this is how Wagner deals with traitors and all this stuff. And everybody said, oh my God, what a horrible organization. Well, then Prokofiev came out afterwards and brought the guy out and said, no, we set this whole thing up. This was all an intelligence ploy for him to get in close, et cetera. Prokofiev's not a stupid man. Prokofiev knows that he owes everything to Vladimir Putin, literally everything.

And if Vladimir Putin, Shoigu, Gerasimov could pull the plug on Prokofiev like that, Prokofiev would disappear. He knows this. Does Wagner have a chain of command in the traditional sense, which ultimately reports to someone in the Russian military. Oh, absolutely. Wagner is a military unit, a volunteer unit that has a reporting channel through the various staffs to the general staff. Prokhozhin is a civilian who handles the management of this volunteer unit in a way that a lot of people don't understand. There's a lot of units called bars. They're volunteer units. Their management is done by the various civilian directors of the regions they come from. So if you're from the Kuban Cossacks, you have a Prokosian type character back there also helping out. So it's not unique. I just can't believe that Prokosian is going to sit here and do what he's doing if it weren't some sort of intelligence game to make people think there's

problems with Wagner. Meanwhile, what's happening every day? Wagner's stacking the bodies. Wagner's taking the villages. Wagner's killing people. Wagner's advancing. So here on the media, it's playing out that Wagner's falling apart. There's dissension on the battlefield. Wagner's doing its job. So I have to believe that this is sort of a game that Prokofiev's playing for intelligence purposes. All right. So while you're on this role, we have to run this clip of Jack Devine. It's not directly on point, but towards the end of it, he mocks Wagner. Nobody knows Afghanistan the way you do, Jack, but that was the death throes of the Soviet Union. That was not Putin with a modern army. Well, first of all,

I dispute he has a modern army. He's now demonstrating to the world he doesn't have a modern army. He has a lot of modern weapons. Well, he has a more modern army now than Gorbachev had in the Afghan days. Yeah, but look at what the Afghanis had, AK-47s. Look at what technology has done for the Ukrainians and all the sophisticated technology from drones to cyber intelligence, his army is not showing itself very well. It's a surprise to all of us, although this is the second time I've been surprised because when I went in to do the Afghan program, I was assured they were 10 feet tall and then every day they shrunk a quarter of an inch. So I think what's showing here, and I think it's the big story, he has paramilitary functioning as his cutting edge because his own army, now they're fighting.

Remember, Judge, you and I talked about dissent and how the things crumble when you start to lose. Watch the dynamic between the Wagner group and the military. Does our dear friend who refers to himself as the spymaster from his days in the CIA know what the hell he's talking about? No, he doesn't. The Russian military is a very modern military with extraordinarily high levels of proficiency proven on the battlefield. You know, you take away the propaganda, and I will tell you, if you take a US Army officer who's professional, forget the propaganda stuff, and he watches how the Russians are fighting, he's going to appreciate the professionalism of

the Russian soldiers, the Russian advance, the Russian utilization of artillery, et cetera. He may say it's not as precise as us, but he'll also say they have a heck of a lot more of it. Is this a CIA MI6 line that they want to preach to the American media that the Russian army is not modern, is not sophisticated, is rife with dissension and is doomed to lose? Because we've heard this from Jack before. No, he said, look, with all due respect to Jack Devine, I'd love to debate him someday about Afghanistan. Contrary to what he believes, the Russian military wasn't defeated. They didn't leave Afghanistan with their tail between the legs like we did. They left Afghanistan because of a political decision made by Mikhail Gorbachev as part of an overall policy called Perestroika and Gwasnoz. And they

said, we're just not going to waste resources in Afghanistan. We're leaving. When they left, they left in good order. Their general was large and in charge. Their military was not a defeated military. It wasn't the highest morale in the world. Nobody likes to leave, but they weren't defeated. In fact, Jack, I'll remind you what the reality was on the ground in 1988 for your CIA programs. You were getting beat. The Russians had adapted. The Spetsnaz were hunting down your boys and killing them like flies. The only fighter you had of any viability was Ahmed Massoud in the Panjshir Valley, and even him was pinned in there. So, Jack, the CIA wasn't as good as you think they are.

And you're out there blowing smoke up people's you-know-what right now. And the Russians are pretty darn good. They're not perfect. I agree with Jack. I don't want them to be 10 foot tall, but they are about 6 foot 2. And that's pretty big. Which is the better fighting force, regular Russian army or Wagner group? Regular Russian army.

A regular Russian army has all the fire support, has all the support. Wagner is a purpose-built unit right now doing a very difficult job of urban warfare. But it can't do what it's doing without Russian artillery support, Russian air power, Russian electronic warfare, Russian aircraft, with Russian paratroopers and Russian mechanized infantry on their flanks protecting them. Wagner is, you know, they're very good at what they do, but they are not a combined arms combat force. Is President Putin still under some political pressure from his right to wageager more vigorous and quickly ending war? Is his political stability in office as sound as it was six months ago or a year ago? It's stronger than it's ever been. When you say under political pressure, look, the amazing thing about Russia being a nation of war is the amount of free speech that

actually takes place in their airwaves. They have people out there that are critical of the president, critical of the military. They're out there and they're not being shut down. If this was the dictatorship that everybody talks about, the plug would be pulled on all these channels. They're out there able to talk. They can't go out and demonstrate and actively, you know, advance something that's negative to the troops, but they can. There is dissension. There's talk advance something that's negative to the troops. But there is dissension. There's talk. But that's the element of a free society, which newsflash to people, Russia is a freer

society than, say, Ukraine or other places. But Putin's not under pressure. He doesn't feel any of this political pressure. He listens, as any leader would. But he has a strategic vision as do his leadership and they're moving along with that plan and they're not going to be pushed out of the way by public opinion. You say that Russia is a freer society than Ukraine. Was there not recently an incident in which an NBC News journalist was targeted for assassination by Ukrainian forces?

Yes, the NBC News journalist went to Crimea to do journalism where he actually spoke to people on the ground. And as a result, because he was trying to tell the truth, provide a broader perspective, the Ukrainian intelligence services put him on what's called the Mir Tvorits list. It's a kill list where people actually are targeted for assassination. Daria Dugina, a Russian journalist, the daughter of Mr. Dugin, who's a big philosopher, nationalist. You don't have to agree with him, but his daughter didn't deserve to die. She was killed, liquidated. I'm on that list. I've been on that list since June of last summer. The bottom line is if you say anything that is deemed by the Ukrainian government not to be supportive of the narrative they're putting out, not that it's factually wrong. Everything the Ukrainians have accused me of saying is all factually correct.

They just don't like the fact that I'm saying it because by saying it, I'm apparently promoting a pro-Russian narrative as if. God, I got to stop here. Are any of your friends like the ones speaking to you now on the list? Many are. Judge, I think there's a spot down there for your name on it too, unfortunately. I better tell the New Jersey State Police that some of, you know, we shouldn't make light of this. What became of the journalist? What became of this fellow? This is a British journalist, a British citizen, a full-time employee of NBC News, writes articles based on his observations that the Ukrainian intelligence don't like. They publicly put him on the list. What became of him? Well, he's still employed by NBC, but here's the big question. Where's NBC? Why isn't this the top story on NBC saying,

get our guy off the list or we're pulling out? We're not going to do that. We're supposed to protect the health and safety, or at least the safety of Americans in foreign countries, particularly countries with which we are allied, particularly countries that are vassal states of the United States. Yeah. Look, the State Department actually funds what's called the Center for Countering Disinformation, which puts out a blacklist. I'm number one on the blacklist, by the way. I'm the number one anti-Ukrainian narrative producing person in the world. They have targeted me to be eliminated, silenced, removed, and it's funded by the State Department. Congress knows about this and yet continues to vote money to pay the salaries of the people who are trying to silence me for carrying out my First Amendment right of free

speech. Last Friday, a week ago today, German Chancellor Scholz visited the White House with the usual fanfare that accompanies a head of state meeting with the president. And then suddenly he and President Biden went off alone in the Oval Office. No translators. The chancellor speaks English and apparently no aides there. We can guess what they spoke because suddenly there appeared on the front page, top of the fold, left-hand column of the New York Times on Monday morning. Oh, the CIA, it's hard for me to say this with a straight face, Scott, found a sailboat. Sailboat. A sailboat that was in the Baltic Sea about the same time that the Nord Stream pipeline was blown up. And they're investigating who on the sailboat might have been involved with blowing up the pipeline.

My guess, the chancellor said, Joe, you're killing me. You blew this up without telling us. I'm going to be thrown out of office if you don't come up with some kind of an explanation to counter this guy, Cy Hersh, because most of my people believe Cy. No, the timing of this is unreal. I mean, I can't even believe the New York Times ran this story because it falls apart right off the bat we know that the swedes have collected explosive traces from the from the the crime scene they've acknowledged it and they've evaluated and they determined that it's man-made etc uh we know that based on the damage done to the pipe we can reverse engineer the shape charge that was put on it the swedes probably recovered a an unexploded

shape charge remember there's four pipelines, only three blew up. There's one that wasn't blown up. So we can assess that they recovered, which means they have the detonators. They know what's going on. So now they come out with a story and they're dumb enough to say, we found explosive traces. And the forensic guy in front of me says, please take a swab, put it in a lab, give me the results, and I'll go to Sweden, and I want to compare and contrast. And everybody's going to say, well, you can't do that. Why? Because it's all a lie. But it's such a bad lie that at the end of the story, everybody says, well, you know, this could have been a false flag, or this could be a fake story. You know,

it's because it is going to be exposed. Already, it's exposed as a fake story. You can't do the level of operation required to take out three pipelines, put a fourth explosion down on a sailboat with a crew of six. You can't do it. Our friend Larry Johnson couldn't stop laughing, likening this to the minnow that was the boat on Killigan's Island. That's almost the ludicrous point. Is there any way that the pipeline could have been blown up on a project of this magnitude by non-government actors? No. First of all, the sophistication of the explosive charge alone. It's a it's a massive breaching charge. It has to be purpose designed to fulfill not only the task of blowing through hardened steel encased with concrete, but it also has to be able to do that underwater with a remote detonation. That's level of sophistication is beyond anything a private

sector could do. Joseph R. Biden, the first president in the modern era, maybe the first president in our history to attack an ally. That's a war crime, is it not? It's a war crime. It's a violation of the Constitution the way he did it, avoiding mandated requirements. He's a terrorist. He's a war criminal. And he shouldn't have the honor or privilege of serving the American people in any capacity at any time. Scott Ritter, at your best. Thank you very much for joining us, my dear friend.

Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. Thank you very much. Have a good weekend. Thank you. More as we get it. Wow. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.