Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson: Russian Offensive Picking Up Steam

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024. Larry Johnson will be with us in just a moment on why and how and where the Russian military machinery is gaining steam in Ukraine. But first this. A divisive presidential election is upon us and the winner is gold. Let me tell you what I mean. Since 2016, our national debt has grown a staggering 70 percent and gold has increased by 60 percent. Do you own gold? I do. I bought my gold in February 2023 and it has risen 33 percent. You've heard me talk about Lear Capital, the company I trust. Let me tell you why. Recently, Kevin DeMeritt, who is the founder and CEO of Lear, assisted the FBI in discovering a nationwide gold theft ring. And because of Kevin's good work, the FBI caught these people before they could steal anymore.

That's why I have been saying the people at Lear are good people. They believe in America. They believe in their product, and they're honest to the core. So take action right now, my friends. Call 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com. Protect your savings and retirement before it's too late. 800-511-4620, learjudgenap.com. Remember, hope is not a strategy, but gold is. Larry Johnson, welcome here, my dear friend, as always. I do want to talk to you about a couple of pieces that you've published about the

Russian military advances gaining steam and about the deplorable state of preparation and training for Ukrainian troops. But before we get there, the breaking news is a very significant attack on a Russian military college in Poltava, which at last count has killed 47 people and wounded close to 200. What can you tell us about this, Larry? Well, it's just a reminder that this is one of the problems, insurmountable problems that Ukraine faces. Compare this with the Soviet situation in World War II. Yeah, they suffered some enormous defeats early on in the war, but they were able to recruit people and train them behind to the east of the Ural Mountains. Well, the Germans couldn't hit them there. So they could train people, they could have time to train them, they would be safe, they were not vulnerable. In Ukraine, there's not a single place in Ukraine you can go and form an army unit and try to conduct training that they can't be hit.

And that's exactly what happened here. The Russians hit this Ukrainian base, you know, the school. Zelensky's crying about it today, claiming, oh, they killed civilians. Okay, let's trot out all the civilians that you actually killed. This was a military target. Just the other day, there was a video circulating on Telegram showing Ukrainian soldiers horsing around inside a school. I mean, they were bivouacked there. And, gee, what happened yesterday?

The Russians hit it. So, yeah, the Russians are hitting schools, but the schools are being used by Ukrainian troops, and they're actually showing themselves on TikTok. What did the Russians use to hit it, and what is the state of Ukrainian air defenses today? I don't know what they did. The most likely one is Iskander. That's been used a couple of times. It has a pretty distinctive shape when it comes to whistling down on top of them.

But air defense in Ukraine is virtually nonexistent. They just, the Ukrainians, they no longer have the ability to stop the Russians at all. And that's one of the reasons that a lot of these are taking place in daylight. You know, in the past, you go back a year ago, the Russians were hitting at night, but not now. And they're ready to go in the daylight

because they know that the capability of the Ukrainians to shoot back is nil. Has the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk impeded the Russian military in Ukraine as Zelensky and his generals hoped and boasted that it would? Not at all. And that invasion into Kursk, incursion, whatever you want to call it, was predicated on some very false and inaccurate assumptions. The assumption was that the Russians have a limited military, that they have limited resources, and that they can only do one thing at a time. You know, they can walk or they can chew gum. They can't do both. Well, bad assumption because the Russians started, you know, now almost two years ago.

They recognized that this was going to be a protracted conflict. And so they immediately expanded and called up reserves and then began pushing on recruiting. So the Russians have been recruiting on average around 40,000 new soldiers every month. And those soldiers go off for six months of training. Well, the army in Russia has now increased from, say, 750,000 to over 1.4 million. So up in Kursk, they didn't have to divert any troops from the south, from the Donbass. They were able to move reserves that were already there. And that's what Russia has as a luxury. They have ample reserves of men and equipment and ammunition. They're not suffering on any of those fronts. Ukraine is suffering on every single one.

What are Ukrainian, just give us a handle on how degraded the Ukrainian military is. What are their casualties per day or week or month today, Larry, September of 2024, compared to a year or a year and a half ago? Yeah, basically they've tripled. The Russian Ministry of Defense a year ago, a year and a half ago, were reporting on average 700 casualties per day. That's killed and wounded. That's Ukrainian casualties. Yeah, Ukrainian casualties. Now the Russian Ministry of Defense is reporting in upwards of 2,000 casualties per day for the Ukrainians, which is just, it's a massive number. And one of those, one of the major causes is, apart from the fact that

they're outgunned, they're poorly trained. They're inadequately trained. The Ukrainians are in such a desperate manpower situation that they're literally grabbing people off the street, dressing them up in a uniform, shoving a gun in their hands, and then putting them out on the front. They have no idea what they're doing. And it's easy to get killed when you get into a combat environment where people are shooting live ammunition. Do they really think that they can resist a military as well-trained, equipped, and financed as the Russian with kids that they have just taken off the streets? And when you say no training, you mean no training? You're just putting a uniform on them and giving them a gun and putting them out there? Yeah.

Let's look at what the benchmark for training should be. You would expect a new recruit to get a minimum of three months basic training. Right. And U.S. does 13 weeks. Then once you get through that basic training, then you get put into advanced individual training, which is where you actually learn the skills that you would apply in the field, in combat, such as how to drive a tank, how to load a tank, how to fire an artillery piece, how to maintain an artillery piece. So operate drones, you know, there are a whole number of tasks that have to be performed. And as well as that part of that unit training is learning how to identify friend versus foe. How do you know when to shoot and when not to shoot?

And so that normally, we're talking a six-month process, minimum six months. What are they doing to these Ukrainian guys? They're grabbing them, and they're literally taking them to a collection point. They may have a week total of, quote, instruction. Now, this is how you put on your uniform. This is how you put on your uniform.

This is how you tie your shoes. Here's a gun. Here's the rifle. Here's how you load the magazine. You know, that's about it. And then, wham, next thing you know, they're out there on the front line. And it's just that deficit in training is showing up. I was shocked yesterday to see a video put out by the Institute for the Study of War. This is General, you know, one of General Keene's outfits.

It's put out either by the U.S. Defense Department or by the Military-Industrial Complex, if Jack Keene is running it. Yeah, I mean, it's been, they've been pure propaganda all along. And Victoria Nuland's sister, I think, or brother or brother-in-law runs the place. But they put out a video yesterday saying, yeah, this poorly trained troops who are also tired, they're causing most of the casualties. They're causing a large number of the casualties among the Ukrainians. They're shooting their own. Are you telling us there's friendly fire because they're shooting at their own people, obviously by mistake?

Yeah, absolutely. And you've got to wonder, why call it friendly fire? It's not a very friendly thing if bullets come in straight between your eyes. It's the opposite of friendship. But they are being killed. It's blue on blue, or in this case, blue and yellow on blue and yellow. How much longer can this last, Larry? 2,000 a day.

How many troops do they have left? They've already lost more than half a million. Yeah. Andrei Martyanov, I think he's got a better grasp on the numbers. He thinks it's well in excess of a million dead. You know, so, I mean, it's a horrific figure. I don't see how they last to the end of the year, candidly, because it's starting, it's coming apart very rapidly now.

And they're in desperate straits to try to figure out what to do, but there's nothing that they can do right now. To turn this around, just like when you looked at how fast the Soviets were collapsing in the face of a Nazi invasion back in 1941, they still had reserves that they could call up and train, and they could have reserves that were in a protected area. Ukraine doesn't have that. They don't have a supply of men 18 to 30 years of age that they can then call up and put into training bases inside Ukraine where they're going to be able to train and not be killed,

like happened at Poltava, as we talked about at the top of your show. So that's the real Achilles heel. It doesn't matter that there's limitations on artillery, not enough inventory in the West. Same for Atacama, same for Patriot missiles. The West has been exposed as an empty shell too, that we just do not have the industrial capability to sustain one of these modern day warfare actions. But at the heart of it,

you still got to have trained personnel out there. And we're not just talking about training people, putting them through a six-month course. When they get to the front, are they with experienced non-commissioned officers, sergeants of, you know, various ranks, you know, from just first sergeant up to master sergeant, you know, within all of that, do you have people who are some grizzled veterans that can say, okay, kids, let's show you what not to do and what to do. They don't have that. So Ukraine across the board has just suffered devastating losses. And there is no way now to stem that in any foreseeable timeframe. Are there even people to do the training of these forces. You mentioned grizzled senior NCOs, non-commissioned officers. The NCOs are the backbone of any infantry. We all know that. Are these people around? Are they still

alive? Are they still available to the Ukrainian military? Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. There's a few, but they're becoming fewer every day. And so one of the ways that they've coped with the training, there are some units that get trained, but they get taken out, they're trained in Poland or Romania or Germany or the United Kingdom,

which sounds like, oh, that's okay, except if you're a unit that was trained in Poland and you're coming together with a unit that was trained in Germany or the United Kingdom, I guarantee you, you have not been trained at the same standard, trained in the same way. Yeah, there were some similarities, sure. But each country has sort of a unique perspective on how they do things. Just as an example, something as simple as if you have a semi-automatic pistol and you're going to load the magazine. In the United States, what we do is we put our finger on the rounded part, and that's how we do it.

In the United Kingdom, they do it the exact opposite way. And one of my buddies is a retired SAS who was showing me, oh, this is quicker, mate. So just something as simple as that, that you have those kinds of differences. And then when you get into a battle, all of a sudden, those differences can kill you. Let's switch gears and look at this from the Russian side. This war has been going on for two and a half years. That's as long as the United States was involved in World War II. Do you think Putin has any regrets about the slow pace of it, or do you think this was planned all along? I don't think they planned to go this long. They've adjusted their plans as events have unfolded. They early on really thought that they could get a negotiated settlement. I think there was a failure on the part of Russian intelligence

at the outset who had apparently convinced Putin that they had things wired in Kiev, that they would surrender, that they would come to and negotiate a deal. They didn't count on the West being this desperate to try to destroy them. But that's the dark cloud. The silver lining here is it really has freed Russia and freed Putin from more than a decade of perceived dependence on the West. They warned the United States and NATO back in 2008,

Putin did very clearly, that, hey, don't expand NATO and certainly do not bring in Georgia or Ukraine. And the West ignored it. And then when the West conducted the coup in 2014 in Kiev, in the Maidan, again, it was a sign of the West conducted the coup in 2014 in Kiev and the Maidan. Again, it was a sign of the West's intent to subvert and ultimately challenge Russia. Yet in both of those situations, the Russians didn't push back hard. They did not rise up and go for a military solution.

It's been now over the course of the last two and a half years, the Russians, I think they finally come to the realization, we're going to have to militarily defeat the West. This is no longer something that can be handled through negotiations. Part of it, I guess, they were sort of made immune or inoculated during the Cold War. Because during the Cold War, when Russian pilots were helping Vietnamese shoot down U.S. pilots in that war, we still talked. Russian leaders, U.S. leaders talked and actually negotiated substantive arms control agreements. Right. Not now.

There is no conversation. And the conversations have gone just sort of in the opposite direction. And then all the Russians are hearing of the United States talking about, yeah, we need to go in and destroy, destroy Russia. There's Michael Rubin at the American Enterprise Institute. He put out the most crazy article I've ever seen in the last six months, saying that Japan ought to get involved now in the war against Russia and get back its islands that the Russians took 140 years ago or 120 years ago. And I mean, they're treating Russia as this aggressive imperialist power that has been attacking countries around the world. That's simply not true.

That's been the United States. That's us. This is called projection. Yet, this only solution that's being proposed by people, whether it's Lindsey Graham or these think tank types, is war with Russia. And the Russians have made it clear. We're rethinking our nuclear doctrine to figure out when and if we'll have to use it preemptively because the West seems convinced and committed to trying to destroy us. All right.

So here's what General Christopher Cavoli said this morning in Sweden. He, of course, is the Supreme Allied Commander. The scale of the war is out of proportion with all our recent thinking, but it is real and we must contend with it. The implication is that while soft power diplomacy and economic measures favored by some allies in recent years have a role. Being skilled with tanks, artillery, and all manner of firepower must take precedence to defend against Russia. Yeah. Hey, it's the three-year-old kid with a hammer. Everything's a nail and everything has to be hit with that hammer.

And where has it brought us as a country in terms of the United States? Has it made us more secure? The only thing it's really done is it's made certain stockholders in General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, et cetera, very wealthy. They've made a lot of money. It's made generals who have played along with the system and then gotten out, made them comfortably wealthy or, to quote Pink Floyd, comfortably numb. So what we're looking at here is a failure to recognize that we are on a collision course and nobody's grabbing the

steering wheel or trying to put on the brakes, say stop. We keep, we're accelerating towards destruction. Late last week, President Erdogan announced that Turkey has made an application to join BRICS. Now, how could it be in BRICS and NATO at the same time? Does this mean he's going to walk on a picket fence, or does this mean that he's going to withdraw from NATO? I think ultimately they'll withdraw from NATO. What benefit is it for Turkey? I mean, it's one thing, you know, Turkey has the second largest army in NATO. And so NATO depends upon Turkey, hey, you know, pony up those boys for cannon fodder. Yet, those same Europeans that want to use Turkey, insult them, degrade them. They view them as second-class people

because they're Muslim. And the Germans turn their nose up at them. For almost 30 years now, Turkey's been trying to become a member of the European Union. And they keep getting rebuffed. If you kept trying to join a country club or any kind of private club, and they keep telling you that you're stupid, you're fat, you're ugly, whatever, we don't want you. And then you find a group that says, hey, man, judge, we'd love to have you part of our crowd. Where do you think you're going to hang? I know where I would go. You want to go with those who want you, accept you. And that's what, you know, this Brooks thing is developing a momentum

that the West is just ignoring at its peril. What's your take on the German elections over the weekend, Larry? It's going to be chaos. They talk about this, you know, far right party, the AFD. They won in 31, 32% victory. So nobody won a clear majority. And what is clear is that the opposition parties are going to band together to try to limit their power. But what it highlights is that there is a hard division, a fissure within Germany, separating, I don't know if you want to call it right or left,

but certainly those who are pro-war and those who are anti-war. So it's just going to weaken Germany because they are so divided. The economy is already in real trouble and exacerbated by the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline. And yet throughout all this, the figures just came out over the last couple of days, the number one exporter of liquefied natural gas in the world is Russia. Wow. It has, and it's number one now back in Europe. It just costs some more because it has farther to travel.

I mean, what a great strategy. Hey, let's blow up the pipeline so we're going to have to pay 50% more. Ray McGovern is of the view that with the success of the AFD in two German provinces and with the success of this new left-wing group led by a very dynamic, articulate, very, very attractive female politician that seems to have come from out of nowhere, sort of a Tulsi Gabbard type, if you will. Right. That support for the war in Ukraine will collapse and that Chancellor

Scholz will undoubtedly not be chancellor after the national elections next year. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. I think that's right. It's just we shouldn't. I'd be more confident if they were polling at 50, 60 percent so that they had a solid majority. They're a solid minority right now. But in the German political system,

that minority has enough clout that they can certainly throw a wrench in the monkey works there and keep it from going forward. massive demonstrations, the one-day general strike, the public denunciations of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his steadfast determination not to change course? Well, in some ways, it's very similar to what you're seeing in Germany as far as you've got a very vocal minority. It's a large group, but right now they do not constitute the majority of the Israeli voters. This is, again, a case where Israel got caught, you know, killing its own hostages. They're trying to blame it on Hamas, and I guess you could say Hamas carries the blame for having taken the people prisoner in the first place. But the ones who killed them were the Israelis. Now, what I've really found interesting is how-

What do you mean by that? The ones who killed them were the Israelis, by the manner in which they've waged this war against the civilian population in Gaza, or they actually pulled the trigger? No, when you drop a bomb on a place where people are hiding, they die. That's how these people were killed. The Hamas didn't line them up and shoot them in the head. So this is, several of these hostages have died simply because lack of medical care, because of what Israel was doing to cut off access to those services, or just

through the bombs that have been dropped. But here is the Netanyahu government is saying it's not going to change course, yet we haven't seen any kind. You know, a week ago, we were talking about the Hezbollah attacks on the military bases and the Israeli attack on Hezbollah bases. Well, that's all sort of quieted down dramatically, hasn't it? And you've got to wonder that there's something else afoot. And part of what's afoot in Israel is the fact that there are growing divisions that we've talked about previously between senior military leaders and intelligence officials and the Netanyahu government. When you've got the heads of Shin Bet, Mossad, and the IDF,

you know, pointing fingers and saying, hey, we're going the wrong direction in dealing with Hamas, and they're being, you know, viciously opposed by Netanyahu and his gang of, you know, Smotrich and Ben-Gavir, that's, you know, it's tough to maintain a united front in that and to actually move forward. Just to raise your blood pressure or give you some belly laughs, here is the senior senator from South Carolina on all of this, cut number three. If you want the hostages home, which we all do,

you have to increase the cost to Iran. Iran is the great Satan here. Hamas is the junior partner. They're barbaric religious Nazis, Hamas. They could care less about the Palestinian people. I would urge the Biden administration and Israel to hold Iran accountable for the fate of remaining hostages and put on the target list oil refineries in Iran

if the hostages are not released. This guy is such a clown. Okay, yeah, let's go hit some oil refineries in Iran. This guy is such a clown. Okay. Yeah, let's go hit some oil refineries in Iran. Oh, yeah. Hey, Iran sits right there at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. They could shut down all oil coming out of their period. Hey, that would be great.

That would certainly help oil prices here in the United States since we drained our strategic oil reserve. This is what I was referring to earlier, that we no longer have adults with any kind of wisdom sitting in positions of power in Washington, D.C. We've got emotional children. And that's exactly what Lindsey Graham is. He's a child. He's old enough to know better, but certainly refuses, I guess, wants to embrace ignorance as his mantle. Thank you, Larry. Thanks for all your time. As always, we'll look forward to our time together on Friday afternoon with the youngster Ray McGovern. All the best. I'll be there. Thanks, Judge. Thank you. Have a good week. Coming up later today at 12 noon, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, all times Eastern, at two o'clock, Matt Ho at 2.30,

Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.