Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson: Ukraine War Viewed from MOSCOW!

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Larry Johnson: Ukraine War Viewed from MOSCOW!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, February 26, 2024. Larry Johnson joins us from Moscow State University in Moscow in Russia. Larry, it's been a long day for you, but thank you very much for taking the time to join us. Much,

much appreciated. What is the general attitude in Moscow amongst students, professors, the general public about the war in Ukraine and about President Putin? Putin enjoys a lot of support. This conference I'm attending, it's called the International Rucifile Movement. There are representatives from over 110 countries, a lot of significant foreign ministers, that kind of thing. And they recognize that Russia is in an existential struggle. And they recognize that they can't let this go, that this is not just about defeating Ukraine. This is really a battle for the soul of Russia, for its culture, for its commitment to Christianity. The really interesting thing about Russia right now is this conference is called Multipolar. And here is Russia, who is now a confirmed Christian country.

The Eastern Orthodox is the religion of Russia. However, Russia has demonstrated its work through a major civil war live in peace with Islam, with Judaism, with Hindus, with Buddhists. I mean, they really cover the spectrum in terms of cultural and ethnic identities. And they are all part of one nation. That's what's fascinating about it so uh this war in ukraine is is simply seen as an extension of they're battling against the west and i've heard repeatedly the concept that the west is satanic that is indulgence with uh the the different just bizarre lifestyles that have taken front page.

They don't want any part of it. Have you heard the concept that you and our colleagues on Judging Freedom and I have talked about, which is that the United States, well, the West in general, the United States in particular, wants to use Ukraine as a battering ram. I realize that's a uniquely American phrase. There must be some Russian equivalent to it, to drive President Putin from office. Yeah, yeah. No, there is clear recognition that Ukraine is being used as a proxy. And that's what's, you know, the Russian military has not, when you compare what the Israelis are doing to the

Palestinians in Gaza, just wanton destruction, killing women, children without any regard. You're not seeing that by the Russians in the attacks against Ukrainian military forces. They're working very strenuously to avoid those kinds of civilian casualties. The reason is because they still view the Ukrainians as Russian. In fact, you know, one of the ironies is if you listen to Tony Blinken, Tony Blinken will talk about his great-grandfather having to flee. He said he had to flee Russia because of the pogroms, because of the persecutions of the Jews.

And then you ask Blinken, well, where did your great-grandfather live? Oh, Kiev. Oh, you said he fled Russia? So it's just a reminder that Ukraine is an artificial creation. You don't find it on a map prior to 1904. And so the souls that the soul that is shared between Russian and Ukrainians, it's real. It's genuine. You are a former analyst for the CIA. You have an extraordinary knowledge of how it works and, of course, tremendous over-the-top courage to reveal those workings, not national security secrets, but what the government is doing to the public. And I know, because we talked about this before we went on air, that you had a chance to see this 10,000 word puff piece in the New York

Times, supposedly generated by 200 interviews, making the CIA look like the saviors of Ukraine. So first of all, why would the CIA cooperate in something like this when Ukraine is about to fail? And second, if this is true, that the CIA rescued, financed, manages, and controls Ukrainian intelligence, isn't the CIA engaging in acts of war against Russia? Well, we'll start with the last question. Yes, CIA is engaged and has facilitated, you know, they're an accessory. You know, if this was a murder trial and you're back on the bench, the CIA would be guilty as an accessory to murder. What's fascinating about that article, it's filled with lies. I mean, blatant lies. As an example, they talk about that, oh, they got intelligence from the Ukrainians who identified

a Russian that told them about Fancy Bear, this computer code that was used to intercept messages from the DNC as part of the 2016 russian interference in the election judge that's garbage that's a lie there is absolutely no evidence of that whatsoever the the that that computer trick that they're talking about fancy bear that was created by the cia that came out of what's known as vault seven you just just had a CIA contractor recently convicted for revealing that to WikiLeaks, and he's going to prison. But that's one example. They also saw it, oh, they worked with the Ukrainians and identified the Russians shot down this Malaysian airliner. No, they didn't.

That was a Ukrainian operation that brought that airliner down. So what you've got is throughout this piece is they're constructing this narrative both to reinforce the lie about Russian interference in 2016. There was no Russian interference in 2016 that affected the outcome of the election. That's number one. Number two, this article is designed to show the CIA of, boy, we knew the Ukrainians were doing some bad things. We tried to stop them, but they wouldn't listen to us. But at the same time, we're giving them everything that they need in order to go out and target Russians. I mean, they're trying to have it both ways. I think this piece is a signal

that the United States is getting ready to hit the ejection button, that there are no more happy days or here again in Kiev, that Kiev's days are numbered with respect to these intelligence operations and the support of the CIA. All right, Larry, because we know each other's brains pretty well, you anticipated my next question. Could this, let's say that the sources for this are CIA operatives, could something of this magnitude have been done in cooperation with the New York Times? Not the Washington Post, the CIA's favorite mouthpiece, but the New York Times, their bitter competitor. Without the compliance and approval of CIA management. Yeah, absolutely. Because some of the information that's revealed in there is of such a nature, if true, in terms of the location of CIA, joint CIA-Ukrainian bases.

I mean, you're literally giving the Russians a roadmap for things to attack. And so right away, that should have launched a CIA internal investigation of who's talking to the New York Times reporter. Who's leaking this? Well, this was an approved leak. That's how, you know, otherwise that information wouldn't get out there. But it's also designed to deceive. If anybody approaches that thing, oh boy, we're going to really get the truth about what's going on? No, no. You can find a lie on about every page, a lie or misrepresentation. It's written to spin a particular narrative,

and that narrative is serving a broader U.S. purpose right now. They recognize even if the Congress calls up $61 billion, it's not going to change the trajectory of the war in Ukraine because they don't have soldiers. It's that simple. And, you know, you don't magically create soldiers. They say the joke is it takes 19 years. The baby's got to be born, grown up, and then it has to go through basic training. Even if they're able to scrape some people off the street now, it's still, you're looking at easy, if they're going to be properly trained, easily nine months away. Ukraine doesn't have nine months. It's just, it's that simple. Over the weekend, or I guess right before the weekend,

President Zelensky's office released a statement saying that 31,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed. Now, that is off by a magnitude of about 12 or 15. I mean, we know from a variety of sources that you consult and that I consult that it's about 500,000 killed or so seriously wounded they can't get back to the battlefield. Over the weekend, President Zelensky slipped. We'll play this clip for you in just a second, Larry, in an interview with CNN saying millions have been killed. Now, maybe his English is not perfect. He then corrected himself and said millions will be killed. This is a crazy statement that he makes, but I'm anxious for your comments on it. Chris, cut number one. Senator J.D. Vance, who was in Munich at the security conference, but didn't meet with you. He said that even if you got the 60 billion dollars in aid,

it is not going to fundamentally change the reality on the battlefield. What's your response to that? I'm not sure that he understands what's going on here and we don't need any rhetoric from people who are not deeply in the war. So to understand it is to come to the frontline to see what's going on, to speak with the people, then to go to civilians to understand what will be with them and then what will be with them without this support and he will understand that millions people been killed will be killed so he doesn't understand it because he doesn't understand it of course he does god bless you don't have the war on your territory

does he know that he's on his last leg, him personally, his government, and his military? He should, unless he's in a cocaine-induced haze. The reality is, when he said 31,000 were killed, maybe he was just referring to those that died in the Battle of Diefka over the last month or so. That might be an accurate number for the last month. Right. Sad as that is, you're probably right. Yeah. But when you look at the images on social media of the cemeteries that are being expanded, added onto with row upon row, flag after flag after flag. And then that coupled with the fact that the average age of the soldier fighting for Ukraine is creeping up. It's now above 43, 44, which means you got 50-year-old

guys out there. You got 60-year-old guys. Because when you're saying the average age is 43, that means, you know, anybody understands basic math, you've got like 50% above that number and 50% below that number. So it is, you know, you can't fight this kind of brutal war because, you know, the weather's still cold here. And it's going to get muddy and wet and icy. And, you know, 60-year-old guys have no business slogging around in there, I believe. its firepower on Ukrainian military assets rather than on the Ukrainian people as the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. This is almost like a replay of World War II. There's a book out by David Glantz and Jonathan Hausman. It's called When Titans Clashed, and it was about the battle between the Soviets and the Nazis.

And what happened in 1943 is that the Nazis started to suffer attrition because they didn't have the same manpower base that the Soviets did. And so they were increasingly having to throw untrained troops into the front lines. And that's why from 1943 to 1944 in their ultimate defeat in May of 45, one of the contributing factors of that to the Germans at the time was that they couldn't replace their troops quick enough with adequately trained personnel. By contrast, the Russians were able to train their personnel and they were able to do so having them east of the Ural Mountains. And so we're actually seeing that same phenomena

again. Russia has ample manpower. They're under no pressure whatsoever to bring those troops to the front. They're able to get the full up basic training and then the advanced individual training, AIT, and then training within units ranging from company-size movement to brigade-size movement to division-size. So they're getting the whole panoply before they're thrown into the battle. Ukrainians aren't. And so it ends up being a self-destructive cycle. So Russia has the decided advantage in terms of quality of troops that it's deploying. Plus, they're signing up 41, 42,000 a month. And they're not going into prisons. They're not having to put guns to people's heads.

They're not chasing them down the street and tackling them. These are people who are willingly going into recruitment offices, signing up. So that means Russia, last year they signed up a half million new soldiers, and those soldiers are in the pipeline. They're being trained. Ukraine didn't even come close to that. Moving over to Gaza, we have Ramadan coming up. The Arabs, of course, want access to Al-Aqsa Mosque, as they have for thousands of years. The right-wing fanatics and Prime Minister Netanyahu's government say it's not going to happen. What's going to happen? Well, we've seen already that the Israelis have redeployed their brigades out of Gaza. So it looks like they're relying almost entirely on airstrikes.

They're limiting their ground combat operations there. Have they succeeded in defeating or even degrading Hamas in Gaza? No, no. They can't even chalk it up. You know, Hamas is still intact. What they have done is they've, you know, devastated the population and they're starving. But what Israel is doing is getting ready to make, I think, a fatal error. They've shifted their forces to the north because Hezbollah, through shelling along the border towns up along the Lebanon-Syria border, have basically cleared out the Jewish settlements.

And the Israeli army is insisting they're going to carry out military operations to allow those people to come back in. They didn't learn the lesson in 2006. And what's happened in the intervening time, Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006, got really beat up and had to withdraw. They did not defeat Hezbollah then. Hezbollah today is a far more powerful, capable army. We're not talking a bunch of guys wearing slippers with rags on their heads, running around doing terrorist tactics. We're talking actual organization of military units, chain of command, and they've carried out exercises and worked a variety of scenarios.

And they're not just limited to rifles and some artillery and anti-tank guns. They also have missiles, missiles that can reach deep inside of Israel. They've not used them up to this point. But if Israel is foolish enough to launch this as a military campaign against Hezbollah, I think you're going to see Israel facing its first serious defeat in its history. And that is going to be transformative when it comes to the negotiation process because it will panic the Israelis and using nukes, that's not going to help them at this point

because they're so close with Hezbollah they can't use nukes without damaging Israel as well. The slaughter continues in Gaza. The settlements are present in the West Bank. Over the weekend, Amos Hochstein, you know who that is, the Israeli-born former IDF member, American citizen, now Joe Biden's chief negotiator, actually supervising a variety of negotiations, said the settlers need to move back to the West Bank. At the same time, the Secretary Blinken said, we're changing American policy. The settlements in the West

Bank are illegal. Does the government know, can it talk out of both sides of its mouth at the same time? Does it know what it's doing? Yeah, absolutely. That's not a problem. That's showing skill in government that there's no consistency. Look, Israel doesn't care what the Biden administration says, because the Israelis know that through the Israeli Political Action Committee that they've got basically unfettered permission from the United States to carry out whatever operations they want. So, you know, these threats, these are really

idle threats. It's not going to be until Joe Biden actually would step up and turn off the spigot, but he's not going to do that. There's too much at risk from a political standpoint of, you know, completely sabotaging the support of the Jewish establishment in the United States. He's not going to walk away from that. What do you think will happen this week in the Congress, where the government's about to go out of business on Friday, the House, because they don't have a new budget. The House is on vacation until Wednesday. The president is twisting Mike Johnson, the speaker's arm, to allow a vote to send $61 billion to Ukraine.

Donald Trump is twisting Mike Johnson's other arm to saying, don't even allow the vote because it's a waste of money. And if I become president and any of it is unspent, I'm not going to spend it. Where do you think this ends? I realize we're going back to Ukraine, but where do you think this ends up? Well, I think ultimately they'll get the money only because when they appropriate that money, it's going to go to U.S. military industrial corporations. And then that money has a way of, happy way of making its way back into the hands of politicians that are looking at re-election this year, both Republican and Democrat alike. But the other argument that is actually resonating, and a lot of this comes on the heels of the murder of this nursing student in Georgia the other day. She was murdered by an

illegal alien, a Venezuelan. So more and more Americans, both Republican and Democrat alike, saying, why are we spending $61 billion on a border in Ukraine, and we're not spending that money to secure our own border and protect our own citizens? It's a great point. I think the message of protecting Americans, protecting the border, that's going beyond the MAGA crowd. That's also filtered over into the Democrat crowd. Aaron Bushnell, a now deceased member of the Air Force, doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire at the entrance to the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. over the weekend in order to, that's a clip

of military personnel running to the scene. There is a clip of the immolation. We don't have it. No, I've seen it. It's shocking. We can't run it, right. But I want your thoughts on this. This is pretty severe and pretty extreme, but equally as severe and extreme as the non-mention of this in American mainstream media this morning. on Telegram. And so I did a quick search of Washington Post, nothing. New York Times, nothing. The only one, the only newspaper was the New York Post that had put an article up about it fairly extensively. So the New York Post is the only one. The rest of the media was staring away from it. But, you know, this is reminiscent of when the Buddhist monks during the U.S. war in Vietnam set themselves on fire. That became sort of a turning point in the war. It became one other touchstone to refer to as that this was going in the wrong direction. And now these images, the media can try to hold it down, but it's impossible. Social media is beyond the control of the legacy media.

And so that story is going to get out there. I mean, it was going all over the group here in Russia. They were seeing it. I mean, there's shock and horror just to see that. Last time you saw someone immolated like that, it was ISIS setting fire to a Syrian pilot in a cage. But this was a U.S. airman who did it voluntarily to himself, and he did it, as he claims, in protest of the United States facilitating genocide in Palestine.

Larry, thanks very much for your time. I know you're about 8,000 miles from us, but we're in an entirely different set of time zones. We appreciate it all. We look forward to seeing you with that youngster, McGovern, on the Intelligence Roundtable Friday afternoon when you're back in the good old USA. Well, I'll be back Friday, but I'll just let all your viewers know, everywhere I've gone,

people said, oh, I've seen you on Judge Knapp. They love Judge Knapp. Larry, you're a magnet. Thank you very much, my man. All the best. All righty. Bye-bye. Very nice.

Very nice to hear. Chris, did we break that 300,000 number? No. Okay. So we're within a few. I want you to like and subscribe if you haven't done so already. We're within literally just a dozen or so of breaking the 300,000 threshold on our subscriptions. Two o'clock this afternoon, Eastern Time, Kyle Anzalone, 4.30 this afternoon,

Eastern Time. The one and only Scott Ritter, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.