Judging Freedom - Ian Proud (fmr. British Diplomat): European Leaders’ Ignorance of Russia.

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

Ian Proud (fmr. British Diplomat): European Leaders’ Ignorance of 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, February 27th, 2025. Ian Proud, the member of our team who was a former British diplomat, joins us now. Ian is also the author of a fascinating piece that appears from time to time, which he calls the Peacemonger. Now, Ian, I know what a warmonger is and I know what a fishmonger is, but what's a peacemonger? Well, a peacemonger is somebody who relentlessly kind of searches for ways to bring peace to this world. Unfortunately, over the past 10 years, certainly on Ukraine, a topic close to my heart, we've only seen politicians and members of the mainstream media who want to promote warmongering.

So I'm providing a counterpoint to that alongside the very good work that you and others have been doing as well. Well, I commend to the audience reading this because it's fascinating. One of those warmongers of whom you speak is in the White House meeting with the President of the United States. He is, of course, the Prime Minister of Great Britain. What does he want? What does he expect to get from President Trump besides a dinner with the king? Well, I think somewhere he may genuinely believe that he can somehow persuade the president of the United States to change his course on Ukraine, to shift back to the European stance of promoting a never-ending war, which Ukraine is gradually losing on the battlefield. And I think in that he's deluded.

The president has made his policy stance on Ukraine clear for many months now, practically a year, if not more than that. So the scope for, you know, Starmer to actually change President Trump's view on Ukraine in particular is very limited. I'm sure they'll be talking about many other things besides including tariffs and so forth. What did President Macron attempt to achieve? Well, I think likewise. Actually, Macron was interesting because he has been more moderate, less of a warmonger than Starmer since the beginning of the war in 2022.

And actually, he's shown a willingness to kind of meet President Trump, to kind of hear his point of view and to flex the European position on Ukraine, which is essentially the need for an urgent ceasefire. And he himself, actually, Macron, spoke about the possibility of a ceasefire and he himself actually mcconn spoke about the possibility of a ceasefire happening within the coming weeks so that is encouraging whether starmer will be so forward remains to be seen because you know back at home in here in the good old blighty the mainstream media can want him to change president trump's mind and tell you that's

impossible was prime minister starmer serious when he offered to send british troops to ukraine i mean how would that resonate with parliament how would it resonate with the british people how would it resonate with the troops well i'd like to think there'd be a vote in parliament about that but unfortunately because there's such cross-party consensus on ukraine i suspect that parliament would actually vote in favor of it. I doubt that we give members of the public a choice in the matter. I think British troops, believe it or not, can have remarkably gung ho about this. After the withdrawal from Afghanistan, you know, a few years ago, you know, they haven't really had a significant deployable role. This seems like a good old jaunt in the minds of many officers,

despite the fact that Britain's army is 10 times smaller than Russia's. I'm not sure how much people have really thought through the risks of this. How big is the British army? In total personnel, it's about 130,000 people. That is literally 10 times smaller than the Russian armed forces, which count to about 1.3 million personnel. We've increased spending to 2.5% of GDP. If we're lucky, that will give us 10,000 more people. So it's still tiny in comparison to Russia. What leverage, if any, do President Macron and Prime Minister Starmer have with President Trump?

Very limited, because the United States of America has provided the vast majority of funding to this war in Ukraine, a vast majority of the weapons and munitions that have been used on the battlefield. We simply cannot replace that power with European economy really in the doldrums right now. It's just impossible. So President Trump knows that he's got a much stronger hand of cards right now. And actually, he can really set the agenda and not them. He can set the agenda and not them. How did the British elites react when President Trump it Zelensky is the biggest Democrat, you know, of this century, possibly of this sort of past, you know, millennia and so on is quite incredible from every single political party.

There's no Zelensky is a remarkable Democrat, even though he hasn't had an election last year. I don't remember the name of the group, but even the party headed by Nigel Farage was critical of Trump's comments about Zelensky. Well, he wasn't critical about President Trump because he's a very pro-Trump politician. But he did say that actually, you know, Zelensky is indeed a Democrat, like everybody else did, he was cornered. And actually, well, that shows, you know, just, you know, how censored British media is on the war in Ukraine, that even reform, you know, party politicians like Farage have to jump on the bandwagon and call Zelensky a Democrat when clearly he isn't. I was just on a Russian program called The Great Game with Dmitry Symes. You may be familiar with it. It's one of their premier early evening talk shows. And he and his colleagues are convinced that under international law, and even under Ukrainian law, as they understand understand it Zelensky is no longer the

head of state and they're baffled as to why all the Europeans think he still is the head of state well yes and people often liken Zelensky situation to the situation in World War II when the UK suspended elections. But at that time in the United Kingdom, we had genuine power sharing in parliament. But that doesn't apply in Ukraine where power has been completely centralised on one person. He has absolute power, it seems to me, with no checks and balances.

So for me, it's a legally questionable issue because the Ukrainian constitution does allow for the delay of elections, but his centralization of power does raise questions about the legitimacy of his rule. Speaking from a political perspective and not a legal one, is he more or less controlled by a gaggle of hard right nationalists who will never let him enter into a ceasefire agreement, particularly after Russia has effectively seized the 4-0 blasts

that it claims are Russian to begin with? I think there's a lot of evidence that that is true. If you go back to the death of the Minsk Agreement, that was caused by widespread resistance from the ultra-nationalist wings of the Ukrainian body politic, which were determined to prevent that from following through, obviously sponsored by the Americans and the British at that time. You know, the Azov, all these kind of ultra-nationalist, kind of neo-Nazi-leaning groups,

they have no investment in a ceasefire because that would erode their power base, you know, within Ukraine. As calls for democracy grew, as Ukraine sort of pursued this so-called path to European integration. I mean, these people have no desire to see a ceasefire, which would end the gravy train that they've been living on for the past 11 years. I know you told me that there was near universal criticism of President Trump when he referred to Vladimir Zelensky as a dictator and said some other negative things about him and said that Ukraine started the war. But was there this universal criticism of him when he announced that he spent 90 minutes on the phone with Vladimir Putin, something his predecessor refused to do in the last three years of his presidency, and that they planned to meet either in Washington or Riyadh or Moscow. Did the British elites criticize him for that? They did, but in much more subtle ways. They were cautious about criticizing him outright, if you bear in mind that anybody else

who's had any engagement with Vladimir Putin over the past three years has been called out as a Kremlin puppet, and people were reluctant to do that, even in the UK hard-over propagandistic system that we have here. What they did was to compare his charts with Zelensky, saying, well, why did Trump call Putin first and not Zelensky? Why did he speak to Putin for 90 minutes and only 60 minutes to Zelensky? Is that kind of critical commentary that we saw? They were picking apart in every way that they could to say that this was an inappropriate thing to do. President Trump has been critical of the former British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, commonly called Bojo,

just a nickname by abbreviating the syllables of his first name and his last name, because it was he who, at the behest of Joe Biden, persuaded President Zelensky to reject a 126-page detailed agreement that had been negotiated in Istanbul between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators. Is Bojo perceived as a clown today, or does he have a future, or does he speak sensibly bear in mind i have a clip i'm going to show you which will answer the question of whether he speaks sensibly but i want your views well i mean i personally think he's a clown as do many people in in the uk system but he i think he genuinely believes his ego is so large that he can make a comeback along the lines that president trump has made a comeback in the United States

of America. What's different is that he doesn't really have the power base that President Trump had through his movement and so on. So I think he's deluded as well as being a buffoon. Chris, I think it's number 13, but it's the recent one that we've been playing of Boris Johnson. Watch this, Ian. Everybody knows there's a minerals deal on the table today, right? And I think it has every prospect of being signed. And frankly, I think it should be signed because it commits the United States in black and white to a free, sovereign and secure Ukraine. So what we need now is everybody to be serious and to get real and to listen to what Trump is actually saying and doing and proposing. He said he doesn't mind UK troops on the ground

in Ukraine. That's great. Well, then we need to make that real. The US is committed, black and white, to a free, secure, sovereign Ukraine. You can't have a sovereign country without the ability to decide which clubs you're going to belong to. Sovereign country can remain committed to joining NATO. That's sovereignty. Sovereign country can remain free to allow whatever troops it wants to come on its soil to support it. That's sovereignty. Now,in could never accept that the u.s has already committed to that i think putin is ultimately going to fail and ukraine is going to succeed he's been living under a rock for the past three years i think he has and uh but one part of what he says suggests he's he's desperate to cozy up to President Trump,

because ultimately he sees himself on that kind of right centre grouping that would align itself with President Trump. But actually what he wants for Ukraine is completely the opposite to what President Trump has said that he would like for Ukraine. So they are poles apart in terms of their stances on Ukraine. And if he can't see that, then again, I'm afraid he is deluded and still a buffoon. Are there European leaders, whether it's a former leader like Boris Johnson or the current prime minister like Keir Starmer, whether it's Olaf Scholz or Frederick Mers or whether it's Emmanuel Macron, Gloria Maloney, you know, the people of whom I speak, who still hate and fear Russia and Russians and all things Russian?

Well, all of those names are forementioned. I mean, I think the Germans have the most nuanced position on it of all, as actually indeed as Macron. I think between Germany and France, they will probably take the most nuanced position of all. Maloney's position is kind of bizarre, frankly. The most sense actually spoken in Europe is in Central Europe, so Viktor Orban and so on and so forth.

But even there, you know, the kind of blob in Brussels is trying to kind of clamp down on their ability to kind of say, well, actually, maybe we do need to get on board with Russia. Well, if I were permitted to address the House of Parliament and were to say, how many of you go to bed at night fearing a Russian invasion of Great Britain, would anybody raise their hand i'll ask them if they fear it then i suspect a lot of them would because they've been

what would be the basis of such a fear well they've been brainwashed into believing it i mean there's no free press in the united Kingdom. It's not like in the United States, you know, where there is a myriad and spectrum of different views. You know, we don't have that in the United Kingdom. There's utter censorship here. So people would just follow the party line, and they're like the green toys in Toy Story, kind of waiting to be picked by the big sort of claw from above.

They don't have their own ideas. They haven't at all researched Russia. Most of them have never been to Russia or met Russian people. They're just making things up as they go along and living in fear. What do the British elites, maybe members of parliament and others, think of Donald Trump? Do they think he's a clown and a cowboy, or do they think that he's dumb dumb like a fox uh both both of those

uh you know they genuinely seem to kind of dislike him and everything that he stands for again for no for no you know real researched kind of reason just because he's different i mean know that the uk political establishment is built on foundations of everybody thinking the same way. And when somebody steps out of and smashes, indeed, the Overton window, then actually that that's usually challenging for people. It creates this kind of cognitive dissonance. They don't really know how to cope. So the best way to cope is to criticize him because he's very, very different from the bland, kind of grey, flaccid uh political types have come before including the the dreadful joe biden you know and other people too does the british public have a hatred whether it's from

government schools or culture or you know going back to the stalin, a hatred of all things Russian? Or do they yearn for being able to fly from London to Moscow and purchase Russian vodka and whatever else the Russians have for sale? Well, I do. I used to fly directly from London to Moscow on a regular basis when I worked there, as you know, Judge. But I think most people are blissfully unaware. I think the establishment absolutely is not that they are keen to keep this new iron curtain in place. I think if ordinary people were given more accurate information about it,

they would be keen and interested to find out for themselves unfortunately our political leaders aren't how would you get to moscow today you'd probably have to go through a stunt bull or dubai right from london yeah or as i did when i finished my time i drove all the way back from moscow to eng. Oh, good Lord. How did you do that? Well, I drove through parts of what are now occupied Ukraine. But, yes, five days trip. Tremendous. I can really, really recommend it, actually,

maybe when peace breaks out, but not now. Well, let me switch gears a little bit, and I want to know if I understand this correctly. The GCHQ, your domestic spying entity are they now legally permitted to hack into everybody's mobile device including americans that might be on a visit to london or the countryside well i mean they have been for a long time um uh when will they not uh you know i mean they need to they need to have legal permission for each case of course um but yes of course they have the legal powers to do that have had for a very very long time in fact wow i mean it's no different from the nsa right you know right right right the n NSA pretends that it gets a warrant when it does that.

We all know that it spies on everybody all the time. I was under the understanding that Sir Keir had issued an edict, what we would call an executive order in the US, or Parliament had enacted something which made it open and notorious and publicly known that GCHQ can do this and that Apple was fighting them. Now, I may be mixing apples and oranges here, no pun intended, but educate me on this. Has there recently been a dispute in Great Britain about hacking into Apple, the government hacking into Apple devices and Apple attempting to resist? I'm not aware of that, but it wouldn't necessarily

kind of surprise me. I mean, there'd be lots of kind of cyber related issues, including not just around Apple, but around things like TikTok and other things besides. So I'm not aware of that particular case. I'll look it up, but it doesn't surprise me that Apple in particular would have done that for quite all real reasons. What do you expect will happen when Sir Keir returns to Great Britain tomorrow or Saturday, empty-handed? Yes, I think it will be spun more than a five-year-old at a fairground on a ride, and they'll make the best of what they can of a bad job.

Is his government stable? Well, it is for now. I mean, I think people find him bland and boring, this is Sakhir Starmer, but coming off the back of the DP ineffectual stories, you know, how do you choose? So, yeah, it is, I think it is actually, unfortunately, a stable, you know, for now I see no immediate threats, because, you know, on Ukraine there is complete cross-party support, that, you know, somehow we're doing the right thing, and there's very little debate to that, which actually lends a certain amount of stability and the domestic

issues you know take up far far more bandwidth really in terms of government fixed by the day to day basis uh back in the uh 9 11 that era of george w bush and tony Tony Blair. Blair was referred to as Bush's poodle. I guess you couldn't say that about Sarkir. No, I'm not entirely sure what sort of dog he would be, apart from, yeah, I don't know, one that's an extremely boring dog. But no, you certainly can describe him as Trump's poodle. Trump's...

Yeah, I don't even know. Maybe, yeah. Can't think of that one. Pleasure to chat with you, Peacemonger. I commend everybody to read those. Where can you find The Peacemonger? Is it on Substack? It's on Substack, Judge.

Okay. Okay. The Peacemonger by Ian on something it's on substack judge okay okay the peacemonger by ian proud uh wonderful work ian a pleasure we'll hope to see you again soon many thanks so it's great to talk to you again all the best all the best bye-bye for now sure coming up at two o'clock this afternoon colonel larry wilkerson at three o'clock the great professor john meersheimer and at four o'clock, the great Professor John Mearsheimer. And at four o'clock, why do you fire generals and admirals? Chief Sergeant Major Dennis Fritz. Judge Napalm Center for judging freedom. I'm out.