Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson: Zelenskyy Should End Ukraine War NOW?

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

Larry Johnson: Zelenskyy Should End Ukraine War NOW?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 Monday, January 22nd, 2024. Larry Johnson joins us now. Larry, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thanks for coming back to the show. Good morning. You have been writing over the weekend about Ukraine. You posted a fascinating piece by a Ukrainian journalist or intelligent person who's been telling the world what's really going on there. So before we zero in on the bombing of the market in Donetsk, which our colleague Patrick Lancaster covered in real time for us yesterday, some general questions. How close is the government and the military of Ukraine to the end of their rope. Public reports that are coming out now in the last 24 hours indicate that Zelensky is going to replace Zeluzhny, Z on Z violence here. So President Zelensky is going to dump Zeluzhny to replace him with Kirill Budanov, who's the head of intelligence. Budanov had a military career,

but not as a commander, not by any means in a position that he would now occupy. So really, they're bringing him in because he's a political loyalist. And the rumor mill is swirling that if Zelushny is going to be forced out, it's going to create a real blowback throughout the Ukrainian army. So they're in chaos right now. And they don't know what to do. It's like somebody that's trapped inside a building during a fire and all the exits are blocked. There's just that kind of panic. How popular is Zeluzhny, the current military commander, with his troops? He's enjoyed popularity with the troops, I think, to some extent,

but there's also been questions about his decision, apparently, to send all these soldiers across the Dnieper River into that little village of Krynky, that's just been a death house. They die trying to cross the river. Once they get off the boats, they die. And it's militarily a meaningless gesture. So Zeluzhny being in charge of the army, allowing that. You know, let's say it's not his idea, but he's not stepping in to stop it. You know, a senior commander in that role, if he's seen something that the political authorities are doing that he can't stomach,

has to stand up and say, okay, look, I'm out of here. I'm going to resign and I'm going to speak out in public against it. He hasn't done that. So these guys are all, you know, I think they're all on sort of their little personal fortune-making trips. They are extracting this. There are a lot of tricks they use. For example, if you have guys that die in your unit, if you report their deaths, then the government has to pay out like 15 million hervnia, the Ukrainian currency. So what do they do? They bury them in unmarked graves that way,

but they don't report them as missing. They report him as still on active duty. So the commander gets money. He gets paid for every troop that's still on active duty. But then if they declare him missing, well, that's good because then the government doesn't have to pay the family any money. I mean, it's just the corruption here is just staggering. Haven't you quoted this person, again, I don't know who it was, with three words that struck me. The situation in Ukraine is darker, bleaker, and more helpless than the West can imagine. The question is, is the Zelensky government controlling the narrative, or is the CIA controlling the narrative that's coming out of Ukraine in order to influence the Republicans in the House of Representatives? Yeah, I think it's a little of both. The woman you're quoting, she's an American citizen apparently that just paid a

visit to Ukraine. And she came back horrified with what she was seeing. She didn't get to the front lines. She was horrified just what she was seeing in the cities, how devastating it's been for them. And yet, in spite of the objective facts about what's going on on the ground, that Russia is not getting pushed back, Russia's pushing forward, that Ukraine is suffering from a devastating loss of manpower, that the average Asian is now up over 43,

44 years of age of their soldiers. You know, those are the guys that ought to be, you know, out playing golf on the golf course, not, you know, humping a rifle and backpack around. Right. Just, you know, physically usually not in the condition to do so. And yet all this happy talk persists that, oh yeah, the Ukraine's still in the fight. And yet they have to attack civilian targets. They're not attacking solid military targets because they're for fear of getting struck.

Some of you are noting a trailer on the bottom of the screen about Telegram. Someone has created a Telegram account that purports to be judging freedom and judge nap. It is not us. We have nothing to do with it. Whoever runs this thing is purporting to answer questions from some of you as if he or she were me. It is not I. It is not us. We're doing our best to get this thing shut down. That means you're being effective. The fact that they have to mount an operation like that means that you're effective and your channel's important. Well, I just want to thank you, Larry. I just want people to know why we're running that scroll on the bottom. We were on air yesterday, Sunday. We normally aren't, but Patrick Lancaster, the wonderful independent journalist, called Chris, my executive producer,

before the sun came up and said, hey, I'm at this open air market in Donetsk, which the Ukrainians just attacked. I just counted 25 people dead. We're going to run some of the pictures, and you and I can talk over it. Now, we blurred out the dead bodies so as not to offend people and so as to be consistent with YouTube's requirements. But, Larry, what conceivable military benefit is there to attacking a civilian open-air farmer's market in a city on a Sunday morning? Yeah. No, there's none.

The entire purpose for the Ukrainians is they think if they kill enough Russian citizens, that that will create a political backlash against Vladimir Putin and then force Putin from office. That's their strategy. What they don't understand is they just need to go back and read history. Because the history of bombing and killing civilians shows it does not expedite the end of the war. It doesn't fray support for the government. During the London bombings or the blitz by the Germans during World War II, that inspired and rallied British support to the side of Churchill, not the opposite. Worth noting that there were like 70,000 Brits killed in that. Then the United States and the British, we bombed the cities of Germany into oblivion.

We killed over 900,000 civilians. I'd like to, I'm afraid to suggest this, but it would appear that part of the Western military strategy is to see how many civilians you can kill. Look what we did in Iraq. Look what we did during World War II. Look what we did in Vietnam. There's not this notion that you can turn civilians into military target is unfortunately something that's been a part of Western military doctrine for at least the last 100 years. Is the Ukraine government on the verge of breaking because it doesn't have cash coming in to pay veterans, to pay civil servants, to meet the daily demands, financial demands of the government. Yeah. No, that's one of the reasons the Biden administration is looking at stealing

the $300 billion of Russian assets that they've temporarily seized. They want to maintain the reserve status of the dollar and confidence in the United States as sort of the primary financial power in the world, they won't do that. But I think that's what they're going to do. And that'll be done some probably towards the end of February. It'll keep Ukraine afloat for a while. But the problem is, even if you gave them all the first-rate weapons in the world, who's going to operate them? That's one of the reasons you're seeing these dead mercenaries.

I'm convinced that the reason they're trucking in so many mercenaries is they don't have enough trained Ukrainians that can operate some of the equipment like HIMARS, Patriot Missile Batteries, etc. So they're having to bring in foreigners. And it's not just French, it's German, it's Poles, it's Brits, and it's Americans. So these are American soldiers of fortune. These are not American active duty military under the command of Joe Biden. Well, that's where it gets gray. There have been examples in the past where the United States has gone sort of with a wink and a nudge, hey, why don't you put in your retirement papers and then you

can get this terrific gig where you'll be sent overseas. It's just sort of, it's a way to eliminate the direct tie as if they are acting, you know, wearing the uniform with the American flag patch on their shoulder to pretend that they're no longer part of the U.S. military effort. But this would be more of an intelligence operation. But it's a paramilitary intelligence operation where you're sending trained military personnel into theater to carry out missions that the Ukrainians cannot. One of the arguments that Victoria Nuland and Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken and even the president have made is that we're defending a democracy against the dictator.

Nobody can really... He's the dictator, but they're obviously talking about Putin when they say dictator. Nobody can really claim that Ukraine is a democracy. Is it not true that you will be arrested and incarcerated without trial if you publicly criticize the war effort? Yeah, not only that, you know, they've shut down the Eastern Orthodox Church, replaced it with a heretical version that pledges basic support to the state. They've shut down opposition political parties and jailed political opposition figures, shut down opposition, any kind of independent media. Even the mayor of Kiev, Klitschko, former mixed martial artist, boxer, he was out saying that even today,

he said, no, we're not looking like a democracy. This is not democratic. This has become Volodymyr Zelensky's kingdom, and he's reigning over it as the little king. But, you know, it's wearing thin. And the support among the EU is splitting. You now have both Hungary and Slovakia very firmly saying, you know, no, you're not getting into NATO. And if you get into the European Union, that's going to be a while.

Did Zelensky order the murder of Gonzalo Lira? No, I don't think he ordered it. It was, but Gonzalo had incurred, let's call it the wrath of the intelligence community. If anybody was going to say, hey, make sure his life is uncomfortable and it ends, it would have been Budenov, Kyrgyz Budenov. That's the guy that Zelensky wants to replace Zoluzhny as chief of staff of the military. Correct. And so I think it would have come through his channels. But, you know, the United-year-old boy was shot in the head and in the chest in the West Bank by the IDF.

And he was born in Louisiana. So he was an American Palestinian. Right. The State Department doesn't care. Just a statistic. There was a time when the State Department went through lengths to help protect Americans overseas. They don't care if it's in the West Bank or Gaza or apparently Ukraine. How extreme is the kidnapping in Ukraine? I mean, kidnapping of males and sending them... Are they even sent for training?

Or are they just given uniforms and weapons and sent to the front lines? The ones who've been caught, who have surrendered to the Russians, indicate that it was just cursory training. You know, they're shown... Given the rifle, shown basically how to operate it.

And then they were headed to the front. You can't call it training. It's familiarization. They're getting a briefing and saying, this is where the bathroom's located, and this is the exit. But they're not getting trained because training involves learning how to do something repetitively. And then when you're under stress, you can do it without having to think about it, such as reloading a rifle under fire or moving to cover as soon as if you're ambushed, you know, a variety, just a variety of skills that are developed during training that these guys aren't getting. They're just warm bodies up at the front. And they recognize that.

So this has been going on now for at least the last year. There's video after video after video on Telegram and other channels that shows these so-called recruiters going out and tackling people and then forcing them into vehicles, and away they go. I'm now about to ask you something that's a little gut-wrenching, but the reporter who you cited, the American journalist, said that Ukrainian men were breaking each other's legs in order to disqualify them, obviously amicably, though painfully, disqualify them for a military service. That's pretty extreme. Is there evidence of that? Yes. Yes. humorous links until the Ukrainians started

recruiting and dragooning women. Some guys opted to dress up as women, but they were not transgender advocates or cross-dressers. They just saw it as a way to try to disguise themselves. Others have adopted disguises as elderly gentlemen. And the only problem with that is that Ukrainians are now grabbing old guys. If you and I are walking around on the streets over there, they'd probably snarf us up. And next thing you know, you'd be on the front lines.

So, I mean, this is not how a country that's winning, that has the wind at its back operates. This is what happens when you're losing. This is reminiscent of Hitler in the final days in Berlin, pulling out 13, 14, 15-year-old boys and 70-year-old men and giving them the anti-tank weapons, the Panzerfuss, to try to stop the Russians. It was just a futile, feckless exercise. Is there anything remaining of a Ukrainian military defense resisting the Russians? Oh, yes. No, listen, they're still heavily dug in in several positions and along the 600-mile front. But Russia, just in the last 24 hours, there were predictions that, you know, they might be stuck trying to force the Ukrainians out of Avdiivka for another six months.

But they've made actually some significant breakthroughs. They've discovered in one of those breakthroughs that the defenders were actually the unit described as the presidential guard, one of the elite units attached to Zelensky. So, you know, Russia is moving steadily forward. They're incurring, they're taking more casualties as they're on the offensive now, but not as many as the Ukrainians. And the Russians have one thing the Ukrainians don't, ample reserves of men and material.

Well, you would think they're really on their last leg, no pun intended, if the presidential guard, I mean, this would be like in an American war, sending the Secret Service to the front line so there's no longer defending the president. I would think that would be almost literally a last straw. What will happen if Joe Biden gets his way? Let's say cuts a deal with the Speaker of the House and the House votes along with the Senate to give him $68 billion in money for other things so that they can get the Republican votes. What will become of that $68 billion?

Go buy your stock. If you're not a stockholder currently in General Dynamics, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, go get that because that's where the money is going to go. They describe it like Congress approves this money, then a truck pulls up to the Capitol and they load all these bundles of dollars in, drive it out, the dollars, put it on an airplane, fly it over to Kiev. And then the Ukrainians are standing there, get the money and they pass it around amongst themselves. That's not what's going on. This money is appropriated, and the significant, the vast majority of it is going to be then redirected through DOD contracts to U.S. government contractors like General Dynamics. You know, they've got to build some more HIMARS. They need to build some more Patriot missiles. We're running short of those.

Those Tomahawk cruise missiles are out of those. So, you know, there's a long laundry list of things they need to try to replenish the depleted inventories in the United States. And that's why I think it's going to pass, because what member of Congress can turn down having billions of dollars pumped into his district during an election year? That's just, that's a no-brainer. Is there anything happening with peace talks? Zelensky had indirectly asked Swiss officials to put together a high-level peace conference in Geneva. Is there any truth to that? Is there anything happening there that you're aware of? Not that I'm aware of. All I know is this. Russia's negotiating position has become more stern, more limited.

There's not the flexibility that they demonstrated two years ago at the end of March when they had that agreement hammered out. The preliminaries, the outlines of an agreement hammered out. Well, that's the agreement that everybody in the world except Bill O'Reilly recognizes existed until Boris Johnson and Joe Biden busted it up. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if he even had the two of the Ukrainian negotiators admit that, you know, they were sitting there at the table, they signed off on it. So what's happened since then now, Russia is not in a forgiving mood and they're not going to give any territory back.

They're going to demand the security guarantees. They don't want it with every civilian death. What Patrick Lancaster reported on that happened yesterday. Every one of those deaths just adds up to Russian resolve that they're not in a forgiving mood. There's going to be an account to be paid on the part of Ukrainian officials and potentially on the part of Western officials for enabling this. Because that's what the French, the British, the United States were enabling murder, were facilitators. And what will the West do to get the attention of the world off this catastrophic defeat in Ukraine? Start a war in the Middle East.

Yeah. Well, right now it looks like, you know, you and I are both old enough to remember Captain Kangaroo. And remember when they had those, they put the plates on the end of the sticks and, you know, you had all these spinning plates running around the room. That's the United States right now. We've got more conflicts than we can handle. We don't have the industrial capability to supply both Ukraine and Israel. And if God help us, if we decide that we're going to get into a shooting war with Iran, Iran's already firing back. They launched ballistic missiles, tactical ballistic missiles on the Al-Assad air base in Iraq just two days ago.

And there were, I'm told there were at least two wounded Americans. So not just the traumatic brain injury, but actual physical wounds that require medevac and to be treated. So, and this is going to escalate from Iran's standpoint, because the United States and Israel have been assassinating, killing Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders. So it's really, it's an unspoken war. And this is taking place without, you know, Congress declaring war or Congress authorizing this kind of conflict, which for Biden is stupid. Let's not forget Taiwan, which Joe Biden says he wants to defend. They just elected a president who's already under the skin of President Xi of China. I don't know how we

could conceivably have a military in all these places at the same time, Larry. Yeah, no, we're overstretched. And then you add into that the fact that the United States is not able to meet its recruiting goals. I think maybe the Marine Corps was the only one who met a recruiting goal, but not the Army, not the Air Force, not the Navy. And when you don't meet those recruiting goals, that means ultimately you're not going to have enough trained personnel to operate these, you know, advanced modern weapons systems that have become sort of the hallmark of the modern U.S. military. So it's one of those things that we keep looking in the mirror thinking that we're, you know, we're big and we're strong and we're the best looking on the planet. And we're strong and we're the best looking on the planet and we're not uh we our ability to project force and sustain it is quite limited and that's what they're discovering right now in

yemen you know we launch uh bombing after bombing raid on missile sites and more pop up more pop up than we can shoot then we can close down. And the Houthis, if you watched their remarks, they're not at all cowed or intimidated. They're basically just saying, bring it on. They want this fight. And we're stepping right into it.

Larry, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for your time and your analysis. We'll see you Friday with that youngster McGovern. By the with that youngster, McGovern. By the way, we found a McGovern lookalike who owns a pub in Dublin and is also a member of the Irish Parliament and ranted and raved the other day

calling Netanyahu the butcher of Gaza, and we played it for Ray, and he was translating from the Irish brogue to English. I would say only in America, but this wasn't in America. Yeah, well. Thank you, Larry. We'll see you at the end of the week. All the best.

All right, Judge. Thank you. Sure. Coming up, Kyle Anzalone. With Kyle, we're just going to go through all the hot spots of war going on that the mainstream media won't tell you about. And then, of course, a deeper analysis with big brain time with the great Professor John Mearsheimer. Kyle at 2 Eastern, Professor Mearsheimer at 4 Eastern from frigid, frigid northwest New Jersey. Judge Napal Tao for judging freedom. I'm