Judging Freedom - Matt VanDyke: A LIVE View From Ukraine

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

Matt VanDyke: A LIVE View From UkraineSee 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 Thursday, February 22nd, 2024. Matt Van Dyke, our old buddy Matt Van Dyke, rejoins us today from Ukraine. Matt, it's a pleasure, my dear friend. How are you? I'm doing okay. Nice to talk to you again. Okay, good.

Well, I appreciate your calling us and I appreciate your reaching out to us. We have two images of the war here in the U.S. You're familiar with this. We have the Western media's interpretation of the war, which is very pro- our various guests, which decidedly paints the other view that President Zelensky ought to have signed the peace agreement negotiated in Turkey with the Russians two years ago, but for the intercession of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and President Biden probably would have and would have saved a few hundred thousand lives. You're familiar with those two arguments. Tell us what's going on and what your perception of the war is today in February of 2024, almost to the day two years after it began.

Well, morale has gotten quite low among soldiers because of the turn in the war, the counteroffensive wasn't as effective as we wish it would be. And more importantly, the games being played in Congress that delayed funding have led to a shortage of particularly artillery ammunition on the front line, which has led to the fall of Avdiivka and other struggles on the front that are just sapping morale, causing a lot of concern and a lot of confusion about how Ukraine's strongest ally is seemingly dithering on a provision of aid. What does Ukraine need more, 155-millimeter artillery shells or human beings to fight the Russians?

They need both, but I would say the biggest challenge is human beings. You know, the ammo will come. The human beings are a lot more difficult to obtain. Ukraine has ramped up conscription efforts. People have to register, but, you know, it's hard to track people down. So sometimes there's recruitment people at checkpoints. And if you're found at a checkpoint by police and you can't prove that you have an exemption or you're not eligible and that your name has been called, you could end up being conscripted on the spot. So, you know, they're in desperate need of manpower.

That's a big shortage. The morale issue is playing into it. But, you know, it has to be done. How bad is the morale? Are there desertions? Are there people running over to the other side? Are there soldiers throwing down their arms and leaving? Is there friendly fire? I mean, how bad is it? Because this picture of bad morale usually precedes the end of a regime? It's not friendly fire. There's not many people running away from service. The issue is people trying to dodge the draft,

which we had the same problem in America during Vietnam. A big problem is that when you're on the front line, it's not only artillery now, but the Russians have called up to us for drones. So you're actually hunted by drones dropping grenades on you. I faced this myself.

Have you been hunted by Russian drones? Yes, my team and I were trapped in a forest, hunted by drone after drone, hovering above us, looking for us, dropping grenades right on us. It was unlike anything I've ever experienced in any of these wars I've been in. It changes the entire dynamic of the war. And once you're in a trench, you can't even leave your dugout, really, to use the bathroom without fear of death from above. Now, you're an American in Ukraine. Why are the Russian drones hunting you?

How do they even know about you? How do they know who you are, what you are, where you are? They weren't specifically hunting us because we were Western volunteers. They were hunting us because we're in Ukrainian uniforms or multicam, which Ukrainians also wear. They can't tell that we're American. They saw us. We're soldiers. We're hunted like anybody else. Were any of your colleagues killed or injured by these

drones? Yes, one was injured quite seriously and had to leave Ukraine for medical treatment in Germany. Another suffered a shrapnel wound. Both of them were wounded by a grenade shrapnel. Tell me about the drones. Can you shoot them down? Do they have smart bombs? Do the bombs aim for a heat-seeking target, or is it just gravity that brings these grenades down? The drones that were hunting us are commercially available,

DJI-type, DJI Mavic-type drones that have been fitted with a common hand grenade that it drops a grenade pins pulled. You have a couple seconds before it hits the ground to move. Some of them have thermal vision so they can see you quite well. Some of them don't, which causes difficulty when you're trying to evade these things. You know, if you move, you're going to attract his attention. But if it has thermal, it's going to see you anyway. So you've got to make decisions based on the behavior of the drone hovering above you. So it's really, in a way, it's sort of a ruined warfare, if you could say that.

Even it's made the job of infantry exponentially more difficult. It's going to be very hard to advance in this situation unless drones are jammed. You can't imagine how difficult it is to be able to not be able to leave a dugout because you never know what's just going to drop from you that you never even see coming. It almost sounds like this is a suicide mission, like there is no out, not even a reasonable probability of victory or safety. Am I right? It's not a suicide mission, but death and warfare always has an element of being random, especially with indirect fire. But this is a whole other element that makes it all the more difficult and terrifying. And the best laid plans can very quickly go bad when you get spotted by one drone and two or three show up. And next thing you know, it's raining grenades.

So it isn't impossible, but it definitely adds elements that is going to take some different tactics and some thinking. And this will be studied, I think, at West Point for a long time. How is the government of President Zelensky viewed by the soldiers? Is the president popular? Is the government credible? The president's popular enough, the government's credible. There was, you know, a little bit of confusion and concern when Zelensky was replaced by Siersky. I think that Zelensky did Zelensky a good favor by removing him before the fall of Avivka, because it was obvious that Avivka was going to fall, but Zelensky gave Zelensky the courtesy of being removed before that, so it didn't look like the firing was in response to that. Ukrainian soldiers I talked to had a concern about the change in leadership,

but I think that some of those concerns are fading now. I mean, the war was not exactly going well in Yerzalizhny, and there's a number of reasons for that. A lot of them I brought up on the show before. There should have been a counteroffensive started last winter, not waiting until summer, for example, when Russians built up defenses. The force shouldn't have been a counteroffensive started last winter, not waiting until summer, for example, when the Russians built up defenses. The force shouldn't have been split into multiple fronts. They should have followed the Pentagon's advice on this, but lessons learned to be applied in the future, I suppose. General Zelushnin was very popular with the troops, and General Sersky, his replacement, has the nickname from his troops of the butcher of Bakhmut. Why do his own troops refer to their boss as a butcher?

Are they talking about his butchering Russian troops or his butchering his own troops? I'm not an expert on Sersky. Zelizny and Sersky both have done great service to this country and to the world, really. In Sersky's case, you know, some of that comes from his tactics. Some of them he's applied are Soviet-style tactics using mass movements of infantry and result in high casualties. Sometimes that needs to be done, though. We'll see what happens.

And we'll see, you know, I'm sure that Ukrainian leadership's listening a lot more carefully to what the Pentagon's telling them now after the failed counteroffensive. You don't seem as happy or energetic or enthusiastic or optimistic as you were in our prior interviews. I don't remember when we spoke last, but it wasn't this year. It was sometime in 2023. Are you optimistic for the success of the Ukraine military as you have been in your previous appearances on this show, Matt Van Dyke? I always thought the war would take a couple of years. It looks like it's going to take longer. I'm optimistic for eventual victory.

We have no choice here. I mean, Russia can't be trusted with any peace agreement. Russia will just rebuild and come back time and time again. Really, the only hope is to push Russia out and lay enough landmines that they never try this again. You can't have a peace agreement with Russia. Furthermore, Putin's concern is that Ukraine will join NATO. NATO has basically a policy that's not going to accept a country that's already at war. So if Putin can keep Ukraine at war, Ukraine can't join NATO. So there's no real peace solution possible here. Is there not a peace solution possible with Ukrainian neutrality and not joining NATO? I mean, that's pretty much what Putin told Tucker Carlson in that

interview, or at least that's my read of that interview. Putin would never accept Ukraine's word on that. I mean, Ukraine can say we'll never join NATO, but who's to enforce it? It's very clear that Ukraine wants to join NATO. It's very clear that any country boarding Russia that's in Europe should be in NATO after what's happened here. Here's a clip of President, well, actually before President Biden. What is the feeling about the American government, either from the Ukraine government, the Ukraine people, or the Ukraine military, that the next tranche of artillery shells and equipment and cash does not appear to be coming?

We believe it will come eventually. It's unfortunate that Congress has so much blood on its hands by delaying it. I mean, there's a direct link between the delay of aid and the fall of Avdiivka and the casualties there. You know, but I mean, America is a democracy. And this is part of why we're always fighting one hand behind our back in any of these conflicts. And Russia isn't because Russia has a much better control of their people and their economy being an authoritarian state. They can ramp up production, they can conscript people, they don't have any dissent, they don't have any debate in government about this, whereas we do. And this is part of democracies, the limitations we have in fighting

wars, but fortunately we have good friends in Europe. Denmark just sent, I believe, all of their artillery to Ukraine. So, you know, there's people that will step up to fill these gaps, but really it doesn't come fast enough. It's never come fast enough. America has slow played this, not sure if they want, how far they want Ukraine to win. Not sure what Russia's response would be. Those games have also cost lives in addition to the decision to delay a counteroffensive. I understand your views of a democracy versus what you call an authoritarian state. So Ukraine is kidnapping people off the streets. You've already told us that.

Ukraine has blocked people from leaving the country. Not exactly what I said, but... Are they conscripting people off the streets? If people are stopped at police checkpoint and they don't have documentation that they're not dodging the draft, then they'll be taken in for further investigation and possibly conscripted that they're not dodging the draft, then they'll be taken in for further investigation and possibly conscripted if they're draft dodgers. Okay.

That's fairly normal in societies that have drafts. I'm ticking off the aspects of Ukraine that are decidedly not democratic. You can't leave the country. The presidential elections have been canceled. We understand that there are military brigades that extol the virtues of Nazism. The Orthodox Christian Church has been banned. Ah, and you call Ukraine a democracy. Each of those issues is worthy of an entire show.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church is doing just fine. The Russian Orthodox Church here was a tool for spying for the Kremlin. I mean, that's pretty well documented. Look, it's a nation at war. It's not a perfect nation at war, but it is a democracy. You know, people are – it's just a difficult situation. I mean, what do you expect them to do? We had a draft in our country and we had similar challenges and similar questions about limitations of democracy.

We had a draft. It's clearly obviously necessary. They're fighting for their lives here. They're fighting for the future of themselves and of Europe. You know, I mean, otherwise, come on, other foreign volunteers, come join me over here, and we'll get you all signed up. If anybody has a problem with the draft, then step up and come over here and take the place of Ukraine. Here's your favorite president about a week ago complaining that the Senate of the United States has voted to authorize 61

billion in aid and the House led by the Senate led by the Democrats by one vote and the House led by the Republicans have gone on a two-week vacation Anything you can do to get ammunition to the Ukrainians without a supplemental from Congress? No, but it's about time they step up don't you think? Instead of going on a two-week vacation. Two weeks and walking away. Two weeks. What are they thinking? My God, this is bizarre. And it's just reinforcing all the concern and almost, I won't say panic, but real concern about the United States being a reliable ally. This is outrageous. Paul Jay How is it in the national security of the United

States that we should be sending billions and billions of dollars to Ukraine? Russia has been our main adversary for decades. It's a destabilizing force in the world, not just in Europe, but also in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, everywhere. This is a fight that goes way beyond just Ukraine. It goes to everything that my grandfather and other people's grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought for in World War II to establish a system where countries do not just invade other countries and take their land without a response from the international community. So if we want to live in a world where might makes right, then we can sit back and be isolationist. But if we want to be following the footsteps of World War II veterans

and all the way up into Ronald Reagan's policies towards Russia and then honor all his legacy and all the sacrifices that were made for a better future for our country, then we need to support Ukraine. Congress taking a vacation, frankly, is disgusting. It's sociopathic even to not care about the lives that are lost. I don't know how any of them can look in the mirror at themselves knowing that because of their inaction, actual lives are being lost. And it's just pathetic. What happens if the aid never comes? What happens if this vote on the Senate bill is never even brought to the House floor?

How much longer can the Ukrainian military last? I ask that not only because it's profound, but because we're told that even if the House were to come back this morning and vote on this and President Biden were to sign the legislation this afternoon, it would still be months before any significant uh equipment arrived like we'll never surrender as omar mukhtar said in living history we win or we die and that's the situation here that people thought even at the beginning of the war that if ukraine fell we turned to guerrilla war you know fortunately we have european allies that

will step up and provide enough to keep us going. But, you know, we need America's help to win. We need Europe's help to at least sustain. With the delay in aid, there will be more casualties. There may be more towns and cities lost, more territory lost. It'll just make it more difficult, more costly in money and human lives to win it back later. But we'll never stop fighting here. In your interactions with Ukrainians, military and civilian, have you come across these military groups that are neo-Nazi?

I've never encountered even one of them. Is it a myth or do they actually exist? I don't think there's any units that identify as neo-Nazi. There may be individuals that have a tattoo here and there, just like there are in the United States, unfortunately. In Ukraine, look, there's a complicated history here where Ukraine was a battlefield fought over between Nazis and Soviets. And most of their harsh memories are towards the Sovietsviets because the soviets won and oppressed them for so long um you know it's their their their history is is complicated because they lived through it in a way that that others didn't um not not to excuse it but you know some people are just ignorant and we'll get a tattoo that's that's uh that none of us would like to see on them. But there's no widespread, there's no units

running around giving Nazi salutes as a unit. It's just a few idiotic individuals that unfortunately end up with their picture taken and used by Russian propaganda. Why is the Ukrainian military shelling areas that it claims are parts of Ukraine and killing civilians that it says are Ukrainians because Russia's on that territory and we're fighting a war and the civilians are unfortunately civilians die in war it's unfortunate happens all the time if they're still in those areas when the shells fall they they know that the area it's not like it happens all of a sudden. Some people choose not to leave, just like in America. Some people choose not to leave when there's a hurricane. You know, it's a tragic, unfortunate consequence of war, but it's certainly not intentional.

There's no reason to terrorize civilians for our side. We're trying to win their hearts and minds. Right, right. What military purpose is gained by Ukraine attacking civilians that says are Ukrainians, the Russians says they're Russians, in areas of land that Ukraine says is Ukraine, but Russia says it's Russia? But to distill this to a question that's easier to answer what military purpose is served by shelling civilians they're not shelling civilians they're shelling russian positions and civilians get hit look they're going to show ukrainian territory russia's on ukrainian territory the whole war is being

fought in ukrainian territory they're not going to win the war just by launching drone strikes at moscow this is going to happen there's no intentional campaign of terror look even if they want to we don't have the shells to be wasting shells targeting civilians first of all now that the funding is dropped so even as a as a practical point it wouldn't even make any sense, much less a moral one. One of the other Americans, aside from you, who's gracious enough to come on the show is a freelance journalist named Patrick Lancaster. And Patrick called us a few days ago and came on and brought some rather dramatic videos with him. So we'll play this. It's Patrick 1, Chris. We'll play this video, which is the immediate aftermath of the shelling of a pizza parlor,

a library, and a crosswalk in downtown Donbass. This is where the impact, the shell hit, and as we said, reportedly 155, now 155 that's only supplied by the West. These are not shells that Ukraine had before the Western support. These are the shells that come directly from Western taxpayer money to fund the killing of civilians here in Donetsk. Мы собираемся заработать на налоги для убивания в Донецке. Мы продолжаем показывать вам все, что мы можем здесь, на земле. Теперь военные инвесторы здесь, мы будем говорить с ними,

посмотреть, что они имеют на виду. У нас будет многое еще. Пожалуйста, ставьте лайк, поделитесь и подписывайтесь, чтобы мир мог увидеть, что действительно происходит здесь, в Донецке. subscribe so the world can see what's really happening here in Donetsk here's a pizza place, Chilin Tano Pizza and unfortunately the crosswalk that these people lost their lives Please do what we can to show you this is the real situation. Please like, share and subscribe. I'm Patrick Lancaster and right now we are back in the center of Donetsk. We had just come from a location where Western supplied 155mm artillery fired by Ukraine.

It killed two people and injured five. And just as I got to the computer to try to put some of that information out, at least one HIMARS came down here on the library, the city library, not far from the city administration building, just around the corner, here in the very center. And we can see the huge crater here. Now this appears to be, as said a united states supplied uh high mars the russian investigators are here on the site uh with uh looking at shrapnel and we're going to have a special full report do you have any reason to doubt the authenticity of that patrick

was in his apartment in dunbus when he heard these enormous explosions he ran out with his cameraman uh and the cameraman took those videos and patrick sent it to us i have no idea but that video we just shot there's been 10 to 1 100 to 1 of similar things that of russia showing our us that it hits civilian areas, including civilian areas deliberately targeted. I have no reason to believe this area was deliberately targeted. Ukraine does not have the ammunition or waste to be deliberately targeting. There'd be no purpose to it.

Ukraine has always, from the start of the war, been very careful not to play into any sort of Russian propaganda. I'm not going to go so far to say these are false flag operations. Maybe they are, who knows. But really in the context of what's going on in Ukraine and the number of pizza places, specifically even that have been hit by Russia, this is really a complete non-issue to be reporting on. Not a non-issue that happened, but of course, this is a guy who I've never heard of, this guy, this freelance journalist, who's pitching, like his stuff, et cetera.

I'm actually surprised you guys haven't run into each other. You're both Americans. You just have different views of this. We're not going to run into each other when he's hanging out on the Russian side with Russian investigators making friends with the enemy. We're not going to cross paths. I don't think he'd be very well received in Kiev by anybody. The HIMARS that he says were used to strike a pizza parlor, a library, a crosswalk, and kill civilians are very accurate and have smart bombs.

It's not like a grenade being dropped from a drone and gravity taking it down. So you aim at a specific target and it hits the target. We all know that. So question, hang on, hang on, I'm going to give you a chance to answer. Do the Ukrainian soldiers know how to use this equipment? Is the equipment defective or did they aim at their own civilians? I don't know about this incident, but I doubt that that guy, his professional diagnosis is that this was a HIMARS hit. I mean, he doesn't appear to have any credentials to be judging that. It showed no remnants of HIMARS missiles. I didn't see any in the video.

You know, you can call in a UN panel and try to investigate this thing independently, but there's probably numerous incidents like this on a weekly basis, especially Russian stuff hitting the Ukrainian side. HIMAR ammunition and HIMARs are very meticulously and carefully used in this war. So if there was a HIMAR strike anywhere in that area, it was probably to target a massing of Russian troops or one of their barracks or something. And stuff, even the best, most advanced weaponry, sometimes a rocket or two goes astray. I mean, if that was a HIMARS strike, there'd be nothing left if they were targeting that as a HIMARS strike.

Here's another clip of Patrick Lancaster. And these are pieces of what is purportedly part of the HIMARS rocket. Now, we bring you this information from this intense attack here on the center of Dunyets because you deserve to see things from both sides of the line. Watch as much sources as you can to make your own educated decisions because it's important not to be led by like sheep by the Western mainstream media and the people that want to tell you what to believe. Find out the information for yourself. Watch as much information as you can. All right, just to give you a little bit of an understanding on what the situation here is and how big this rocket is itself. This is one of the two craters of these United States-supplied

HIMARS hitting this library in the very center of Dunn-Y yet. Any reason to disbelieve that, Matt? Yes, first of all, it just looks like any random shrapnel you'd pick up from a site. But more importantly, HIMARS are multiple launch rocket systems. They don't send just two rockets over. There would be extreme devastation over that whole area if it was a high Mars strike. If there was a high Mars rocket or two that went astray, maybe that's the situation, but it clearly wasn't intentional. There'd be nothing left. He wouldn't be saying one crater, there'd be numerous craters or just complete destruction. So there really doesn't seem to

be a lot of credibility to what he's claiming here. What's your next move or your next project? What are Sons of Liberty International, your group, doing now or planning for the immediate future? Well, we're going to have an announcement coming up about that. What we've always done since our founding is we have multiple tools in the toolbox and we do what's needed at the time. So we've done training, we've done landmine removal, we've done provision of supplies, advising, and we're about to move into a new area that we'll be announcing soon. But, you know, whatever is needed to help the conflict and to help us win in the best way possible is what we do. So we have, it'll be quite an exciting development if people hear about it. Matt Van Dyke, I wish you well.

I hope you stay healthy. And thank you very much for reaching out to us. Reach out to us whenever you have news that you want to bring to us. All the best. Thank you. Always nice to talk to you. Of course. Of course.

Oh, boy. A very interesting conversation, my dear friends, just checking on the schedule for the rest of the day. At noon, Eastern, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, and at two, Eastern, Professor John Mearsheimer. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.