Judging Freedom - LtCOL. Tony Shaffer : Ukraine’s End: Battlefield or Conference Room?

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

LtCOL. Tony Shaffer : Ukraine’s End: Battlefield or Conference Room?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, August 21st. August 21st, where does the summer go? 2025. My longtime friend and colleague, Colonel Tony Schaefer, joins us now. Colonel Tony, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Morning, Judge.

Good morning. Before we get into your views on the nitty-gritty of where Ukraine is and does it end on the battlefield or in the conference, through and what is your general big picture take on the trump putin conference in alaska tony so the i've been saying this and i must sound like a broken record uh you know i i recommend a book called the russians written by frederick smith uh i read this back in high school in lisbon back in the 70s it's it's a it's a thick book but it's it really does capture kind of the spirit and culture of Russia. And I just think that we have people on our side still advising President Trump who don't understand the Russians. And the more you see the bad advice play out, the more I think President Trump is being badly served by those who give him advisors. I'll just leave it at that. I don't want

to get into personalities. But I think there's some real errors being made. Now, some of the things that have happened regarding the war, regarding what President Trump has said is absolutely correct. And I appreciate the fact that he, President Trump recognizes there's useless loss of life, thousands. He was on, you know, your former network and where I used to hang out on Fox and Friends talking about how he wants to get to heaven by stopping the killing. All right, great.

But to do that, you've got to understand the mechanisms to get there, and that's where I'm still concerned. judge the russians have no reason to stop what they're doing none i mean they are by all accounts making a solid slow but solid progress they're encircling port profsk uh that's one of the enclaves that the ukraine continues to hold that essentially is kind of the the last bastion they have to hold back the russians from hitting the steps the step the the open uh farmland and heading towards the de nepper river so militarily ukraine is on is on the ground they can't they cannot continue to sustain even the current pace of military operations much more than another

30 days and i think uh it's and i keep hearing this oh well you know uh there's do you think the russians want to keep this going tell the winter freeze like no they don't have to they just have to continue to grind down the Ukrainians and they'll just collapse on their own. That's what they're going for here. And so what President Trump is doing is great, but I don't think they acknowledge the military situation necessarily as much as they should regarding what Russia is doing. When they met in Alaska on Friday and each side had about an hour and 20 minutes to make its presentation uninterrupted, President Putin apparently gave a typically long,

winded Russian explanation. Remember when Tucker Carlson interviewed him in the first question, which had about 25 words in it, prompted a 45-minute answer. Oh, yeah. President Putin gave President Trump a lecture, not demeaning, but a lecture on the Russian understanding of how a special military operation came about, going all the way back to the 1990s. Do you think that the people around Trump, A, didn't know what Putin was going to say, or B, didn't prepare the president or C, never told him the Russian version of all this? Now, I think President Trump at this point under has been told the Russian version. I think he has people like Keith Kellogg and Lindsey Graham who try to explain it away.

They try to say, well, that's not relevant to our interests, which I would argue. you. That's not a wise move. I'm a Reagan guy, Judge. You know this. And I've been talking to some of the Reagan folks about how Reagan approached this. Reagan understood in great detail what the Russians wanted, what they were concerned about. And he went about trying to manipulate their thinking in ways that would essentially give us, the United States, the advantage over them, so that they, they, by their own weight and momentum of culture, would self-implode. We, you know, the whole thing with Gorbachevich, I think it was played well by the fact that he, Reagan, understood there were vulnerabilities within our system.

That's what we're not doing. Right now, we are trying to basically, you know, put our chest up against their chest and just say, well, we're as strong as you are and we'll just send forces into Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping force. I would argue we should be looking at this thing more asymmetrically. There are flaws within Putin's own political system that we're not taking full advantage of.

And I would argue the Ukraine war was winnable. It's just you had people like Sullivan, Blinken, and Millie who don't understand what we're talking about. They do have the flaws. What are the flaws in the Russia? political system that we can exploit the fact that the oligarchs are not happy with the way things are going this is taken way too long it's cost them way too much money and the fact that we have not i think approached the oligarchs in a way that would have been a profitable to us and that there's ways of

messaging there's ways of reinforcing the fact that that you know this this continued effort to get and take and eat Ukraine is not going to actually get them what they want as quickly as they could. There's an element of time here we could have dealt with. And frankly, the other thing is we've known from the beginning about this reselling of oil via India. Right. It's like we knew this, judge. We knew their Europeans were talking out of both sides their face because they're the ones purchasing it through India for a higher price. And we pretended not to know that. So that's another thing we could have gone at immediately and chose not to do it, just saying. Is President Putin under pressure, either from his national security people, Intel, military,

strategic, Medvedev and those folks, or the oligarchs, or Russian public opinion, to end this quickly? The public opinion for him is largely still favorable. and the reason is he's seen as an effective strong man who is focused on the Russian culture, defending the Russian culture. It's very powerful. The Russian people, the Russian concepts of security, the people are with him. So it would take some time to separate that from Putin.

I don't think it's possible at this point. The oligarchs are a little bit different. Judge, they've been continuing to make money. That's my point. It's like, yeah, they're getting. along going along and they're still making enough money to make life reasonable so until you actually go to his one of his largest constituencies the oligarchs and do something to get them to recognize that you know this is not a good way of doing business then it's going to continue so at this point there's

nothing the only thing holding Putin back is i believe the economic leavers president Trump does talk about not the sanctions sanctions are going to go nowhere you've got to get down to the to the brass tax of where oil flows, what the cost is of that oil, and how do we upset that process? Because, again, they've talked this great game of defending Putin's war, and they've never done it. And I think Trump could do it if he so chose to do that. And I think that is an effective lever to look at as a way of trying to deal with Putin. On the second conference, the one on the White House on Monday, the president must have given the unmistakable intention to President and Macron, Prime Minister Stormer, Chancellor Mertz, and the others,

that the U.S. would be involved militarily in a security guarantee. I'm going to play a little clip from President Macron. It's in English. It's on August 18, which before it was the evening of their meeting, before he flew back to France, and then ask you, isn't it in don't answer now i want you to hear what what president mccron says is it inconceivable that the russians would accept the u.s military presence in ukraine before you answer chris cut number 12 as it relates to security guarantees does that mean european troops and does that mean u.s troops

look i i think it's for me it's a very important progress of the past few days that your president expressed a clear commitment of the U.S. to be part of the security currency. It's a brand new. And last February, when I took the responsibility to gather a series of European leaders with President Zelenski in Paris, and we followed up in London, and we created this coalition of the willing. And it was a reaction to the feeling we had that we could see a temptation to go to a rapid peace, but without any guarantee for Ukraine.

And we know what it means. It was Georgia 2008, but it was as well Crimea, 2014. And there is full certainty that if you make any peace deal without security guarantee, Russia will never respect its words, will never comply with its own commitments. So it's for us totally critical, and this is an essential part of any deal,

for Ukraine and for the Europeans. This is for our own security. So this is a very important progress of the past few days that the US now is willing to be part of this. Before you respond, Tony, I'm sorry to hit you with two, but you need to see this. Foreign Minister Lavrov on this very topic yesterday, Chris Cut Number 4. We cannot agree with the fact that it is now proposed

to resolve collective security issues without the Russian Federation. This will not work. We have already explained more than once that Russia does not overstate its interests. But we will ensure our legitimate interests firmly and harshly. And I'm sure that in the West, and above all, in the United States,

they understand perfectly well that seriously discussing security issues without the Russian Federation is a utopia, a road to nowhere. Russians, under any circumstances, except EU, UK, US, boots on the ground, or jets in the sky, any more than we would accept Chinese boots on the ground in Tijuana, Mexico. No, as a matter of fact, the Chinese have offered to jump into so as the Japanese, which is kind of odd, but okay. Yeah, it's like, no, it's a non-starter. And again, any talk of this is fiction.

Macron knows this is fiction. This is all about the Europeans, again, trying to be problematic and drag their feet and create more problems to slow down the resolution. Everybody knows the Russians are not going to accept NATO or any other Western nations' boots in Ukraine, period. I've argued, and I would argue if I were advising President Trump directly, that a switzerland or finland in the old days style neutrality for ukraine is the best answer just let ukraine get back to being ukraine get back to business uh just basically accept the fact that the russians will always want to have a buffer zone of security based on

their their perception not mine this is not tony schaefer being pro-russian but the russians have a perception that they need to have these buffer zones because they've been invaded over and over and over since the beginning of their civilization. So it's not me, it's them. And until you understand that, and I think this is why, Judge, Putin continues to give these history lessons to try to get Trump to understand and his staff what I'm saying. The Russians have an inherent paranoia it's not going to go away simply because you say NATO's not here to cause problem because judge they've seen NATO move east despite the agreement in the Dayton that I think it was the Dayton Ohio where they did the the the Budapest protocols back in 94 and when they when they

allowed Ukraine to become a separate nation part of that same protocol was NATO would not move east and it did. So they're not going to, you know, this is the root cause thing that President Trump says he's trying to address. Well, I mean, does President Trump, who often believes the person who has spoken to him last, also suffer from a desire to please the audience? I mean, he must have said to Macron and the others.

He certainly said to Fox News, no boots on the ground but air power i mean air power is just as offensive to the russians maybe more so than uh than boots on the ground so don't the americans know that the keith kellogg prescription he said nato trump is saying e u lavrov is saying it doesn't matter under which flag they fly will never fly with the russians right well i think that's the thing you have i'll be blunt neocons lindsay graham's a neocon keith kellogg's a neocon there's a few others smattered in there who simply believe that somehow the coal war never ended and we have to continue to pursue the russians as if this was 1984 it is what it is and i i think that

As long as President Trump allows people like that to advise him, you're going to have the Macron's maintain some level of access. Because again, Judge, any rational person, and I've said this to certain folks I've texted with, you probably know who they are, this is stupid. Even the appearance that we're considering putting boots on the ground or any talk of it is stupid. It's science fiction. You might as well go off and watch an episode of Star Trek and get better information out of this because this is never. going to happen. So the fact that we have pretense as policy is that concerns me. Keith Kellogg and Lindsay Graham, obviously, we're not in Alaska, but Marco Rubio and Pete

Heggseth were. What are our neocon buddies, and some of them are friends of yours and mine, thinking and saying about the following. Trump, after listening to Putin has dropped his demand for a which the neocons ardently wanted and pressed on him aggressively. Trump, after listening to Putin and Rubio after listening to Lavrov, have dropped their demand that Ukraine could be open to joining NATO in the future. These are death blows to the neocon ideology, aren't they? But they keep coming back like a bad penny. They do keep coming back.

I'm sure Lindsey Graham's going to be whispering in his ear. in a golf cart this weekend yeah so and i think and look i love president trump uh you guys are closer i'm not his friend you're his friend i admire the man and i've met him as you know but i think he at this point president trump needs to be very definitive on what he wants i don't care what lindsay graham wants we know what lindsay graham and he's he's he's going to do things to benefit the military industrial complex. So the way I would I would split the difference here is this. I would move for a neutral Ukraine just say get everybody out militarily demilitarize it, create a 911 force that sits within current NATO. We are building right now, Judge, the largest NATO base in the world in

Romania. And then we always by by fact have about two armored brigades exercising or permanently located in Poland now. So let NATO be NATO. If the Europeans want to focus on building something up, go build NATO. Just go over there and play with your NATO. Go over there and play with NATO. And let the Russians do what they have to do to solidify to bring governance to the four provinces that they currently have to speak Russian.

And then those provinces which don't speak Russian, you give it back. And then set that up as the framework to end right now. because you're not going to win militarily. And this is what I find very distressing about the neocons. They would sooner maintain this illusion that we have a military solution and see people die, then accept the fact that you've got to stop the killing. And this is where President Trump gets it. But he doesn't quite get it all the way to say,

well, stop losing to these people who are trying to drag this out. But that's why I would approach it. Let NATO be NATO, give NATO something to do with a peacekeeping force. No boots on the ground. Don't say we're going to give air power. to anything just come up with a series of things that allow both sides to kind of go to their corners and let ukraine become a neutral part a neutral uh country that allows for commerce well tony what does security guarantee what does security guarantee mean does it mean

guaranteeing the neutrality as in austria or does it mean guaranteeing that there'll be enough military power there in case the russians invade again what a security guarantee mean Well, I've said this on the network. I don't know if I said it this morning on, but I said nobody can define what security guarantees are. What the Russians see and what what Macron sees and what we, it's all different. So you first off, I've got to set up kind of what is what is this mean? And to get to that, you've got to understand what the in-state. Judge, I always talk about this with, with anybody I mentor or work with.

I always begin with the end in mind. what do you want to accomplish right now nobody can can really uh uh tell us what the in state should be so fine president trump should define it the neutral ukraine no military get them out that's what i would do if i were trump it's like okay you can't define this i'll define it i'll fill that vacuum this is what the end state should look like and then work towards that because otherwise he's going to be distracted with lindsay graham and all these other folks who want to keep the industrial complex fed as we move towards whatever outcome will come out of Ukraine. One of our viewers writes in tongue firmly planted in cheek, security guarantee means whatever the

Federal Reserve says it means. Now look. Well, I think we would agree the Federal Reserve needs to go away, but that's another conversation. You're whispering to the converted right now. Wouldn't it be nice if supply and demand established the interest rates. But Rubio is no Lavrov. However, here he is two days ago talking about the weapons shell game. Chris cut number five. But as the Ukrainians have said to us, and I think have said publicly, you know, the strongest security guarantee they can come up with with their future is to have a strong military moving forward. And that's the other dynamic that's changed. We're no longer giving Ukraine weapons. We're no longer giving Ukraine money. We are now selling them weapons and

European countries are paying for it through NATO. They are using NATO to buy the weapons and transfer them to Ukraine. That's another big change from the way this war was approached just a few, you know, just under the Biden administration. First of all, is this true? And secondly, if it is true, how does the U.S. gain from this? I mean, the military industrial complex gains, but how does the U.S. gain from this? Well, I think, Rubio is only semi-converted from being a neocon, as I think we would agree from his comments there. There's nothing wrong, as I said. If NATO wants to pretend and play Army, okay.

But let's be honest here about the facts. Right now at this point, the moment we're speaking, the Mississippi National Guard is larger than the British Army. Just saying. I mean, the Europeans are a joke. And so, okay, you want to sell them weapons, but they have attritted their force structure. That's why every time I hear NATO saying, we're going to stand up to Russia, it's like, no, you're not. No, you're not.

It's like, it's not, it's a joke. So that's what I'm saying. It's like, we need to get past this whole, this whole fiction, this whole fictionist policies. Like, you know, these are not the Europeans of the Cold War, Judge. These, you know, these are not the Europeans you're looking for. So just get real. if you're going to sell them weapons okay why what what what will you get out of that ultimately is that strengthened NATO or are you just paying right the on some money to keep

people on the on the on the on the work line and employ we have not established what I think we need to do is a global strategy essentially what are we as the American Republic what do we want to accomplish JD Bansk gets it I think if you others get It's like we need to take a step back and assess what our role is in the world. Do we want to be seen as a bully or do we want to be seen as a friend? You know, Bruce Fine, our friend Bruce Fine. Bruce always talks about wanting to be the best neighbor to someone, but never be the bully. And I think now's the time to relook that because right now,

throwing, you know, letting the children in Europe buy weapons, it's not really going to accomplish anything. And I think it would just add to the continued muddling of policy. Okay. Before we go, tell us about your new podcast. So we're developing, we're monetizing my ex feed. You know, you guys can find me, T. Spooky on just go follow me. We're going to start off by doing interesting interviews with people. People like the judge, hopefully. We're going to figure out how to do that. Where I'm actually going to Vegas this weekend, not that I'm going to be gambling. I'm actually going to be working on fixing all this, putting it all together.

And we're going to make it fun and interactive. People can come ask me questions. I've already got the subscribers asking questions they want answers to. Some of those questions may not be answerable, but we'll give it a shot. But I appreciate you allowing me to get this in there, Judge. And I obviously want to talk to you about 9-11 stuff, which, by the way, you were one of the first folks who supported me after I got fired for being a whistleblower. So God bless you and I will always appreciate that. Thank you.

It was the genesis of our long and happy friendship. Tony, thank you very much for your time. Good luck with the podcast. Thank you for your invitation, which, of course, I cordially and with an open mind accept. And we'll see you again in another week or so right here. Great. Thanks, Judge. Thank you.

All the best. A busy day coming up for you today at 9 o'clock this morning, Professor Jeffrey Sacks, at 11 o'clock, just back from two weeks. in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia, Scott Ritter. At 1 o'clock, Professor Glenn Diesen at 2 o'clock, Colonel Larry Wilkerson at 3 o'clock, Professor John Mearsheimer. Josh Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.