Judging Freedom - LIVE FROM MOSCOW: Putin’s Patience Is OVER! Ukraine Faces COLLAPSE — Larry Johnson & Judge Nap

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

LIVE FROM MOSCOW: Putin’s Patience Is OVER! Ukraine Faces COLLAPSE — Larry Johnson & Judge NapSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Tragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? Jefferson was right? What if that government is best which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish

fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now? Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Tuesday, September 8th, 2026, live from Moscow, Larry Johnson and I will be chatting about Putin's patience is over. But first, this. If you're serious about preparedness like I am, head over to preparewithachadge.com right now. Let me tell you why. Our partners over at My Patriot Supply are the experts when it comes to emergency food, and they're serious about making sure you have what you need.

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We're in the same hotel, just a couple of hotel rooms apart. And we have been here for nearly a week. Thus far, the highlight, I think you'll agree, of our time here, was our three-hour dinner hosted by and in the residence of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. But before we get to what we learned at that dinner, this is about your fifth or sixth, maybe more, Larry, time in Moscow. your general impressions of the city, of the Russians, of their culture, of their attitudes. Modern, clean, prospering, happy. You know, the lies we get told in the West that, oh, there are gasoline shortages. There are no gasoline shortages.

I drove away from the airport to the hotel. It went by at least 30 different gas stations. There were no queues. In fact, most of them, you know, only had a couple of cars in them. So, you know, that's number one. The restaurants everywhere, they're packed. You know, people clearly are, you know, have some disposable income. And, you know, you wouldn't know that they're a war.

They're, you know, I saw one recruitment poster on one billboard. That was it. So, you know, it's a massive city. It's a beautiful city, and it's a clean, safe city. You and I both noticed the last time we were here together that as clean as it is and as safe as it appears to be, we rarely saw any police. I mean, New York, you go half a block, you run into two cops.

I'm not complaining about it, but it's entirely different here. It's almost as if the safety and the cleanliness is cultural as much as it is governmental enforced. Well, in fact, the last time you and I were here, and I guess it was for the RT anniversary, we remarked that as we drove around the city, the one thing you didn't see were cops.

You go to New York City, you know, they got police on about every corner. But here, you rarely see them. There'll be occasionally around certain buildings down around the Red Square, the government center, but by and large, you rarely see any police on the streets and, you know, women, women can walk around freely at night without getting assaulted. Yes. Now, Foreign Minister Lavrov hosted you and me and me and you and And Alastair Crook and his wife and Professor John Mearsheimer and one or two others to a three-hour dinner last night.

You looked at me at one point in the dinner and said, this is like a dream because he basically said to all of us, you know, what the young kids say, AMA, ask me anything. And we did ask him anything. And his candor was just overwhelming. your takeaway from our three-hour dinner with Sergei Lovroff, Larry. Yeah, well, it was like being in a dream, really. And Lovrov is very, you know, we've seen a different, let's call it, a different side of him, not that he's a phony, but he has this, he has his diplomatic game face on when, you know, like,

your interview with him today or when you and I with Mario Nafal interviewed him, you know, two years ago. But what what we saw last night was, boy, personable, warm. Plus, I gave him, I gave him a Florida shirt or a Hawaiian shirt, call it what you will. And he laughed. He says, is this used that I said, no, no, it's brand new. But, you know, he had a smile, and he was very, very engaging, and we asked a lot of direct questions, and he answered with, you know, with the understanding that we weren't going public with a lot of this. With deference to what he told us, and without being too specific, do you think that the Russians trust Donald Trump?

I would know in trust in the terms of if he says something, can they take it to the bank? No, they don't trust him in that regard. They do feel it's necessary to have a dialogue with him. You know, the Foreign Minister Lavrov is also accompanied by the Deputy Foreign Minister, minister also Sergei Rybakov and i i met uh sergey ribkov first uh back in december of 2023 and at that time joe biden was president and uh he actually i i was speaking to him with peppy Escobar. And he said to us at the time that there was nobody for Russia to talk to in Washington, D.C. And so I did ask him, I said, you know, you still feel the same way. He goes, oh, no, but, and, you know,

clearly there are communications with Washington, but it's still not what you would call the kind of diplomatic communications where you're actually getting problems worked out. You know, for example, just being able to take a direct flight from the United States to Moscow would be nice, but they're still allowing those aviation sanctions to stay in place. He asked me how long it took me to get here, and I told him it was 30 hours. I won't bother recounting the route that I took. But it's a long circuitous route with a substantial layover. And he looked at me and said, when I go to the UN, it is 10 hours.

Yeah, he gets to fly directly. And he revealed that he will be at the UN, meaning New York City, in the neighborhood where I work and live, the week of all the UN gatherings. What did we learn from listening to him? This I thought was rather startling, and I had not heard this before, was the Russian view of what happened at Anchorage. The Russians believed that they had a handshake agreement,

which in their culture is as good as if it were written down. And then the Americans didn't come through. Is that a fair explanation of what we learned from the foreign minister at dinner last night, Larry? I missed the last part of what you said. Could you repeat that? The Russians believe that they had a handshake agreement in Anchorage between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Yes, yes. And what they left very happy.

It wasn't what they wanted, but it was a compromise that they could live with. and then the Americans back down. Do I have that correct as to what we heard last night from the foreign minister in his house? Yeah, no. What, yeah, they were, you know, he was pretty clear about that as he had been, you know, I asked him again to repeat, if we had, if you and I had correctly understood during our first meeting with him, two years ago, that Russia had a deal with Ukraine, that the United States under Joe Biden, and with the help of Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, blew up.

That would have been to the war back in April, March, April of 2022, but instead they interfered. And so here they, you know, they clearly thought that they had an agreement. and this is why I think Foreign Minister Lovroff has said in the past that the United States is agreement incapable. They will agree to do certain things and then do not perform. They don't do it. And so that remains a real problem for any progress. And that's why I think they will continue to, Putin will continue to politely

receive Whitkoff and Kushner, but President Putin's also made it clear in the past that if there's actually going to be some real honest-to-God negotiation's diplomatic solution, it's got to go through Lovroff. Lov will be the one that heads that up or one of the members of his team. And so far that they're not engaged until Wittkoff and Kushner wake up and realize they've got to engage with Levorov, and that's the other part of this diplomatic fabric that has to be built into something. But they, the Russians, understand Trump.

They know that he either doesn't trust Rubio or Rubio has his own agenda, or he absolutely trusts Whitkoff and Kushner, Krishna being his son-in-law, Whitkoff. being his once in future, maybe present, who knows, business partner. And his golf partner, too. Right, right. They believe that only a real negotiation could only come about between the Secretary of State and the foreign minister. And they don't put much credence in Whitkoff.

And again, tell me if you disagree, and Lavrov, other than as means of communication, because they know that the two of them have Trump's ear, and they know that Trump has their ear. So for a communication mechanism, they find it effective and trustworthy. But for serious negotiations, it's not going to get them to first base. Agreed? Well, yeah, no, I fully agree. Because, again, what they've discovered is no matter what Trump says, even to their, you know, even to the face of

Vladimir Putin, he doesn't do. And he is incapable of delivering. Apparently, he allowed the Europeans to de braille him from the agreements that he had reached in Anchorage a year ago, August. So there is no level of trust from the standpoint of the Russians that they're confident that if Trump makes a promise that he will. deliver on it. And so as you correctly note, Witkoff and Kushner, they're water carriers. They carry the messages back and forth, but they really, they can't deliver any deal.

Including, you know, I think one of the things Russia, the United States is trying to push Russia towards is providing rare earth minerals as an alternative to China. And Russia's not going to do that either because they don't see why build why provide the united states with the ability to build weapons that are then going to be used against russia just doesn't make sense another interesting observation he made was that the first thing out of kersnorsesmouth was they want a ceasefire and they want it now now lavrov wasn't there in the room so somebody in the room maybe ribcroft was there i don't know there was a team of russians with President Putin, understandably, just like there were translators and others from the American side.

And, you know, Russia, they understand what the game is. Correct. That the Washington wants to get a ceasefire to save Ukraine right now. They also want to ceasefire before them. They also want to ceasefire before the midterms. And Whitkoff mentioned that, and of course, the midterms, Midterms are of no significance to the Russians. I said Whitkoff mentioned, and I'm sorry, Lavrov mentioned it.

Lavrov also said to me today, Whitkoff, Whitkoff will make this sound a lot better than it was. All right. And he said that to you and me and the others last night. Here's what Withkoff said, Chris cut number four. We came to see President Putin first. We needed to hear where he stood. We had good concrete conversation with him,

which we advise President Zelensky and his team about. Both sides have to come to a resolution here. And my job and Jared's job together is to bring the parties together, to narrow the issues between them, to create good communication channels. And hopefully we began that process constructively in the last 48 hours. And we're confident that there'll be a good resolution here. I don't know what they mean by a good resolution. It's almost, they're not going to get a ceasefire.

The Russians are confident of a military victory, as John Meersheimer says, a victory, a sloppy one, an ugly one, but a victory. In fact, what happened in the last 24 hours, so the Vladimir Putin had agreed to a three-day ceasefire for Kiev, that there would be no attacks in Kiev while there was meetings going on. The meeting took place Saturday at the Kremlin, and then Sunday in Kiev. So there's day two. And then day three was the, I guess, the end of Monday, but Monday night, that the third day was up. And Russia unleashed a massive, massive attack on Kiev.

the you know that temporary ceasefire that's all it was just to allow whitkoff and kushner to travel freely between moscow and kiv interestingly even though uh moscow had pledged that they would allow planes to land at keve's international airport they uh the the the kushner whitkoff crew decided to they flew to Resnale, Poland, and then took the train from Resnow into Kiev. And that's a good, you know, that's a good, you know, six-eight-hour journey from there. Okay. Has Putin's lost patience in the war, Larry? Larry has President Putin lost patience with his own management and his own pace in the war?

I didn't pick up the last part of that. Okay. Has President Putin lost patience in the management, in the slow pace of the war? Well, they made a decision about eight weeks ago to really, you know, step up the attacks, almost go on to it, let's call it a war foot because, you know, they've shut down the Black Sea. they have launched repeated strikes some lasting upwards of you know 48 to 72 hours straight on keve on key factories production facilities logistic facilities energy hubs and then they've also carried out the significant ground operations all across what's known as the line of contact which goes from the border

borders of Belarus in the north all the way down to the Zaporisia in the south. And this is creating real challenges for the Ukrainian military. They are short of supplies more so than ever before and suffering greater casualties than ever before. and with no hope in sight that they can turn this around. I want to jump to an issue that is very, very hot in the United States while we're here, and I didn't know about it until Chris told me. But apparently, look at that beautiful couple. This handsome young Air Force major is dead.

He was killed in one of the initial military operations. The Pentagon has refused a payout to his wife because in the Pentagon's view, the conflict in Iran is not a war. And Vice President Vance, though embarrassed when asked about this, we'll run the clip in a moment. Yeah. In the White House press room tried to walk it back. Before you weigh in, I can only imagine how angry you are as a veteran. But before you weigh in, Chris, cut number three. The widow of an airman who was killed in the Iran war says she's having trouble getting some of the benefits that they are, they should have access to because it has not been officially declared a war.

Can you and the president personally ensure that the family of Alex Clenner gets all the benefits that they deserve given he died serving the country? Yeah, so what's her name? You said his name is Alex Clinner? Yeah, he was an airman who was killed in the plane that went down over Western or Iraq. So what I'd say, Caitlin, is please, if you. especially if you have the private contact information, we will reach out to her directly as soon as this is over and make sure that she gets what she's entitled to. Obviously, you know, our heart breaks for every single person who lost their lives in this operation. We want to be as helpful as we can and ensure she gets everything that she's entitled to.

We love you. We're grateful for the sacrifice. And we very much take very seriously our commitment to get you what you need to get. Clean up an aisle eight. Correct. You know, this is, they, you just,

you just had a, an, a couple of elephants walked down that aisle and, and leave a couple of massive piles behind. You know, this was,

this was outrageous. Now, you know, I'm not, I'm not a veteran, but I, I work with and support veterans, particularly those who have been, you know,

the parents who suffered, whose children have killed themselves. they're in deep grief. So this guy was a pilot, and he was flying a KC-1-35 that was shot down by a surface-to-air missile. And the Pentagon initially came out and claimed falsely. This is Pete Hague-Sef, falsely claimed that this was a mid-air collision and that there was no fire, offensive. fire directed at it. Well, that was just a flat out lie. And then this, this, this woman has been trying to get paid for, you know, she's supposed to get benefits as the widow of a combat,

someone who died in combat. And she's got young children. And then instead, instead of doing what Vance just did, smartly, because he recognizes, man, this is, this is a fecal sandwich. And it's not going to get any better with age. Time to eat it, swallow it, and get this taken care of. But no, Hague Seth is such a moron that they allowed this thing to fester. And this, you know, once the White House gets in on it, then all of a sudden it discredit. Every, there, there, there should be some heads rolling over at the so-called Department of War. All this showed was they are the Department of incompetence. Here's a little bit more incompetence from the vice president himself.

Now, this Q&A occurred before the one that we just showed you, but this is the one where he says I wouldn't call it a war. It's a little bit longer, but very instructive. Chris, cut number one. In terms of the war in the timeline, given this administration has put timelines out there before, what you just said about no negotiations happening with Iran, will this war be over by the time of the midterm election? Well, Caitlin, again, I don't, I wouldn't call it a war.

Right now, there is no active shooting. I recognize there have been places where this is flared up. Major combat operations, again, major combat operations lasted for about six weeks. And since then, we destroyed, of course, their nuclear facilities with midnight hammer. With Epic Fury, we destroyed their defense industrial base for producing weapons, and also a lot of their conventional military. And then we made it harder for them to rebuild that nuclear. program. But when you ask, when will this end, you're asking me a question, like, when will the

Iranians stop shooting at ships? I think the reality is, I don't know the answer to that question. You would have to ask the Iranians. But so it's up to the Iranians when this war ends? Well, if the Iranians keep on, but, Caitlin, if the Iranians keep on shooting at commercial ships, again, we have, I think, a responsibility, but certainly we're the only ones with the capability to ensure that the Iranians are not destroying world energy markets. And our attitude is we're not going to set an artificial timeline because, let's just say, hypothetically, let's say I told you three months. Let's say I told you three days, okay?

And then the Iranians start blowing up oil and gas ships, and the United States is the only country with the capability to ensure that those oil and gas ships get to market. Well, what I would say is it would be irresponsible for us to write out our strategy and our timeline for an Iranian nation that simply cannot honor its commitments and cannot stop shooting at commercial ships. Well, he has really drunk the Kool-Aid, Larry, when he says the Iranians can't honor commitments. Well, they have not destroyed at all Iran's ability to manufacture ballistic missiles and Iran's ability to launch

said ballistic missiles, as well as coastal cruise missiles, as well as shoot artillery at ships in Strait of Hormuz. So the, and, you know, clearly what the Trump administration is trying to do now is pretend that there is no war. They're going to limit if to the extent that they can any kind of kinetic operations. And they're hoping that their economic pressure will succeed in forcing Iran to make more concessions. But that all will fail. The United States does not have the economic leverage

that Scott Besant believes that the United States has. And because of Russia and China, the support that they're providing, support this also coming from countries like Pakistan and even Turkey, Iran is in a much stronger position today to withstand international sanctions than they were, let's say, four years ago. Larry, a pleasure chatting with you, even though we're hanging out together this week. Next time we chat, I will be home. You will be elsewhere in Russia. Thank you very much for your time. Very instructive, very helpful.

And that's nice to have somebody on with me that agrees that he heard the same things I did. Thank you, my man. I'll see you soon. Yeah, yeah, we weren't hallucinating. Right. Right. Thank you, Larry. I must say it was a truly remarkable experience sitting down with the foreign minister in the residence at his dining room table and having him look at me and Larry and John Mearsheimer and Alistair Crook and say,

Ask me anything. And we did. I also was privileged to interview the foreign minister today with my friend Dimitri Symes, who's a Russian-American, and who hosts a show over here on which I appear weekly, usually by remote, but this week in person, called The Great Game. Dmitri and I interviewed Sergei Lavrov for an hour, and as soon as that is prepared and sent to us, Chris will post it. So thank you for watching. Tomorrow, I'll be traveling Thursday afternoon. I don't know the time yet. We'll let you know. Colonel Douglas McGregor and three or four of your favorites on Friday. Judge the Paltonno for judging freedom.