Judging Freedom - Missiles & Drones in the Ukraine War - Ray McGovern

Episode Date: May 4, 2023

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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, May 4th, 2023. It's one o'clock in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. Ray McGovern joins us, happily so. Thank you, Ray. Thanks very much for coming back to us. I'm interested in your thoughts on a lot of things, but I want to start with the news today involving the drones over the Kremlin. We have a little bit more information about them than we did when they first came out, but let's take a look at them. We'll show you them from a view outside the Kremlin wall and then we'll show you a back view. You've probably seen them, but I want to make sure we see the same thing together. You'll see the

drone there. It looks like it hits the flagpole, but something exploded it right over that dome. You'll see this happen again. It's the same drone, same view. This is from outside the Kremlin wall by Western television. One more time. Now you'll see the opposite view. This is Russian television. You'll see an explosion way over on the left. There's the dome. There's the explosion. Now you'll see what actually is on the roof of the dome. You can see some fire there, whether it's the dome itself or whether it's the remains of the drone. There's another view of

it right there. So, the Russians say was the Ukrainians or it was the United States. President Zelensky, of course, says he knows nothing about it. He was, and this gets us into your analysis of this, conveniently in Finland when this happened. Has that generated any analysis about the likelihood of his wanting to avoid a retaliatory assassination attempt? It's at best circumstantial evidence. The first thing we intelligence officers look at is the possibility of a false flag. In other words, could the Russians have staged this? And the answer is, of course. Would the Russians have staged this? I asked my daughter who is helping out here today, Kristen, do you think there could be a false flag? I said, Dad, everything you've told me about Putin, he doesn't need a false flag, right? Why would he want to have a false flag? When you're winning, you don't need a false flag.

You know, that's it. In other words, I would rule out, even though Timothy Snyder, who teaches at Yale, has said it's a false flag. Even he uncommonly admits in the 18th paragraph, I could be wrong about the false flag. There's no reason for a false flag. So it isn't a false flag. They're genuine. So the question is, who knew about it? Now, my guess is Victoria Nuland knew about it. Whether Tony Blinken was kept out of the thing to give him plausible deniability, it's possible.

I mean, the guy's not too bright. But Zelensky knew about it. So the Russians have the equivalent of a casus belli, a cause for war, if they want it. Now, most of my friends, including my close friends who have been watching Russian television every night, every day, actually, they think something really bad is coming. It's coming soon in retaliation. I'm an outlier on that. Not only does Putin not need a false flag, he doesn't need to retaliate right away. I mean, he could play the statesman. He's been very good at that. You have to posit strong opposition within Russia from the

crazies, from the hawks, you know, you got to do this, like the TV guys, okay? I don't think, you know, with a 70% approval rate and his proven record of being judicious about not rising to the occasion, you know, I don't think he's going to let himself be provoked. And I would see that he would look on this as a provocation for Russia to do something he's not quite ready to do. Thank you very much. Things are going quite well for us in Ukraine. We're not going to upset the apple cart. That's my diagnosis. All right. Well, he can be good guy to his predecessor, Dmitry Medvedev's bad guy, a former president, Medvedev, who succeeded President Putin and then was succeeded by President Putin, another story for another time,

said this was an assassination attempt and it's time for Zelensky to go. That talk, you know, died after the first 24 hours, whether it was intentional to make President Putin appear state-like and restrained or whether it was just an outburst on the part of President Medvedev, we probably won't know. But Larry Johnson, I'm sure Colonel McGregor, I haven't spoken to the Colonel about it, would say that this has galvanized Russian opinion behind President Putin, even though he didn't need, as you just pointed out, didn't need the galvanizing. I mean, have the Russians learned how much the West hates them? I think so. The record's been pretty clear. Now, talking about Zelensky going, well, he did go. He went right away to Helsinki, to Finland. And now apparently he's on his way to Germany, but the Germans didn't know about this. I mean, this is news to the Germans.

And how did he get from Helsinki to Germany? Good question. U.S. aircraft. Wow. U.S. military aircraft. Yeah. So, you know, that reinforces your view that somebody in the State Department knew it. I mean, this is right up, she's going to hate me for this, but this is right up a Victoria Newlands alley doing something like this. On the other hand, those drones, could they have destroyed that building? Could they have killed President Putin if he had been in that building? You know, we're likely to find that out as things go along here. With the kinds of GPS or that kind of particularity and accuracy, if these things were guided by that kind of system, they can be extremely precise. Witness how they shoot missiles in very precise manner.

Missiles originally developed for tank, anti-tank missiles, these Hellfire missiles. Are they accurate? Man, are they accurate. Are the targets usually the exact ones we want? Not so much. Could the CIA have been involved in this? Victoria Nuland knew about it. Could or would the CIA have provided technical assistance, sort of like the assistance they provided in the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline? It's all one sort of conglomeration, Judge. The CIA, the Navy, the Pentagon, these super secret guys

that not many people in the Navy or in the Pentagon know about, they can work very closely with CIA or with the satellite people to cause this to happen. So So no, it's not at all impossible. Whether the Ukrainians themselves on site have this capability, that's possible too. Witness the hundreds of Western advisors that are there in various bunkers inside Ukraine. And these drones are capable of being launched in Ukraine and reaching Moscow? Yes, I believe so. You know, there are various kinds of drones. And as I say, we can expect the Russians to flesh that out, what kind of drone it was at least they will be claim the they can

look at the debris here and pretty much figure it out I would expect that to come probably after the anniversary celebrations on the 9th now like Timothy Snyder of Yale I could be wrong we could see so let's get killed in Berlin today for God's sake. I don't think so. Putin is smarter. He doesn't need to do this kind of thing. Here's President Zelensky yesterday in Helsinki.

We don't attack Putin or Moscow. We fight on our territory. We're defending our villages and cities. I guess he felt the need to say that. I mean, there are rogue elements in his military. I don't know if they have how rogue they are, the so-called Nazis in his military. I don't know if they have the ability to fire a drone at the Kremlin, but you seem to think that the appropriate people in the American State Department and in the Ukraine political leadership knew about this before it happened. Yeah, if you mean Victoria Nuland as an appropriate person, in this case, I guess you're right. Zelensky is pretty disingenuous. The Ukrainians have been attacking Russia proper for months.

Bryansk, they killed a bunch of civilians in Bryansk and Russia retaliated and said it was retaliating by hitting a bunker said to include maybe 300 high-level Ukrainian and NATO officers in the western part of Ukraine. So these things are real, the attacks on Russia proper, and I just don't mean, I mean, I mean not just Lugansk and Donetsk, but Russia proper, Bryansk and the other towns there, just maybe 10, 15 kilometers from Ukraine have all been attacked by saboteurs or by little missiles and stuff. You recently informed me of offensive strike missiles near Ukraine. Where are they? They're already in Romania and they were slated to be completed, these bases in Poland at the end of last year, 2022. They've been a bone of contention with respect to the Russians because they pretty much vitiate all the success made by the INF Treaty, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. They put, well, you don't have to take my word for it. What Putin said at the end of December in 2021 was with the missiles now available, they can hit Moscow within seven to 10 minutes.

And when these hypersonic missiles become available to the U.S., five minutes. Now, the problem is they don't know what's in these capsules that are in place in Romania already and probably also in Poland. They could be cruise missiles. They could be advanced strategic missiles. If they're hypersonic missiles, by and by, when the U.S. gets those, five minutes. Now, if you're a Putin, well, I think you'd like to have a little bit more than five minutes to decide whether to blow up the rest of the world, right? So this has been a bone of contention since 2015 when these sites started going in there. And he's explicitly made these points. last Tuesday in which I laid it all out with the help of some really good technical experts,

people who know about these missiles, people who used to be chief advisors to the chief of naval operations. That fellow's name is Ted Postel. He helped me compose some sexy slides which showed how long it would take for missiles to get from Poland, from Romania, and also from around Kiev. And then we compared that to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the SS-4s and the diameter that they had, which could include Washington, D.C., naval bases in Savannah or Norfolk, and some think SAC headquarters in Omaha. So it was all laid out. And I thought that people needed to know that, you know, there are various reasons why Putin made that decision to invade Ukraine. This is one of them. It's the least well known of them. And there was one comment in the chat.

They said, well, now you're just you're an apologist for Poochie. And another fellow answered. He said, wait a second now. McGarren didn't say anything about apologizing for Poochie, but he laid out the facts. So are you saying that the facts suggest to you that he's apologizing? That's very interesting from a psychological point of view, and it is. So there are lots of people still from Missouri on that. I laid out the facts the way, hypersonic? We can't defend against hypersonic. You'd have to ask a real expert on this. But if you have them coming in from Romania

and from Poland and now from Finland, the latest news is we're negotiating with the Finns to put in NATO infrastructure in Finland. Finland has a common border with Russia that's 800 miles long. That's right. That's like Newark, New Jersey to Chicago, 800 miles. Wow. Yeah. So the point is, when Finland decided to join NATO, Putin himself warned, look, we don't have any problem as long as no NATO infrastructure goes into Finland. NATO infrastructure, the kinds of infrastructure that's already in Romania, going into Poland, and they tried actually to put them in Ukraine. That's not going to happen now. So these things are legitimate worries. I made the point of saying,

look, this isn't the only reason that Putin decided to invade Ukraine. There was the threat of a NATO armed and supplied and trained army about to pounce on the Donbass. And then most important of all, he got buy-in from Xi Jinping on the 4th of February in Beijing. He told him what he was going to do. This is my analysis here. This is not written down anywhere. But I don't think Putin would have dared do what he did if Xi Jinping didn't give him a waiver on Chinese policy on non-interference in the affairs of other people. Yeah, you could do it.

You have a what? You have a waiver on Westphalia. Go ahead and do it because they're after us next. We share a common enemy. Go ahead and do it. Without that, I don't think Putin would have moved in. So why is NATO provoking him like this? Why are they deliberately negotiating to install offensive weaponry

in Finland? Well, we're not quite sure what these sites look like, but even the Finns have not ruled out the emplacement of nuclear storage sites such as already exist in Belgium, Germany, Holland, Turkey, Italy, and Germany, five other places. So, you know, it's a, with that border that you just mentioned, and with the history of the Finns, you know, the Finns joined Hitler for the first couple of years, didn't they, right? And, you know, it's a kind of a nasty sort of relationship. It's been quiescent since the end of the war. Why the Finns do these things? I've asked a psychiatrist to try to explain that to me.

All right. President Zelensky, two days before the statement that we just showed you that he made that he and his government had nothing to do with the drones, complained bitterly that he learned about the release of the top secret documents, the ones that the government says were released exclusively by Jack Teixeira, the young man from the Massachusetts National Guard. The President Zelensky learned about this in the news media that even his buddies in the American State Department didn't tell him ahead of time. What does he gain by complaining publicly like that? Well, it's really hard to discern the definitive answer to that. I believe it could be quite

correct. Nobody knew what was going to appear in the Washington Post and the BBC, these headlines immediately after that leak. So I think he just started complaining and saying, look, the Americans don't tell us everything. And of course, these things are very damaging because they show that Ukraine is losing and that there's no prospect at all of this. And that the senior American military leadership, notwithstanding what they tell the Congress and the public, knows this as well. That's correct. And that makes it very clear in the testimony of the head of NATO, the military chief of NATO, just this past week, sure gives the lie to what his supporters have been saying. Austin and General Milley, the Russian capabilities have not been diminished.

Actually, they're better than they were before. Soto-Voce, Ukraine, doesn't have prayer of winning. We'll have to see whether they're counter-offensive. If it ever takes shape, we'll do anything. And, you know, just a last thought. As an army intelligence analyst, I know before you do a campaign, you look at things like the territory, the terrain, and the weather. You think about the weather, too, as well as enemy forces. Well, didn't they know? Didn't they know what the mud would be like now?

I mean, hello? So is the spring offensive going to be a summer offensive, or will Ukraine be so diminished and degraded by the summer that they won't be able to have an offensive or a defensive? I think there will be probes. I think they will make the best show of it simply because they have to. I mean, lots of people have said, you know, congressman, influential congressman, this is the last gasp. If the Ukrainians don't win this one, no more aid. So, you know, the glove has been thrown down. They've got to do something. But my fear is that as soon as they try something big, the Russians are going to come through and break them apart and go all the way to the Dnieper, which they are capable of doing.

And then what will a ceasefire, what will talks, what will negotiations look like? Cardinal Pietro Peralin, who is the Secretary of State of the Vatican yesterday said he was surprised that Americans, Russians, and Ukrainians are denying the existence of secret Vatican-organized negotiations. Are these things, to the best of your knowledge, going on? And is Cardinal Perelin and the Pope, are they the only ones talking about this? Well, the Pope made an overture several months ago saying Vatican offices are at your disposal if you want to talk. There have been a lot of things going on in the Vatican, I'm told, but like everywhere else, there are factions, so people don't know. You have to support the Ukrainians. So it's not

clear. What I would like is the Pope to just get on his own two feet and say, look, we have to have a ceasefire. I'm going to go to Kiev. I'm going to go to Moscow. I'm going to figure out how to do this because we have to stop the bleeding. Okay, we have to stop what's going on. It makes no sense. Now, if he did that, that would be rising to the occasion, unlike previous popes during World War II of recent lamentable memory. The Russians claim that they killed 15,000 Ukrainian troops in the month of April alone, the month that just ended four days ago. Is that credible? I don't know. There have been a lot of losses around Bakhmut.

15,000 sounds very high. But, you know, these, what do they call them, Wagner troops, a lot of them are sort of expendable or looked on that way. I just don't know. What I do know is that the Ukrainians have lost many more, a factor of seven, in my view, seven Ukrainians to one Russian killed in that struggle. And that's just one of the diminishments that the Ukrainian forces. So the documents indicate seven to one kill ratio. Colonel McGregor argues that a two or three to one kill ratio is decimating, that seven to one is really unheard of in modern history. Your former colleague, Jack Devine, hold your breath,

claims it's seven to one the other way. Seven Russians killed for every one Ukrainian, but all the rest of us, you, Larry Johnson, Colonel McGregor, Colonel Schaefer, me, everybody else, including neutral people from the Washington Post, including pro-Ukrainian, pro-Biden people in the Washington Post, have misread and misconstrued the numbers. Well, there's a dichotomy here, Judge. Jack Devine is not an intelligence analyst.

He's an intelligence operative. He thinks that was a dandy idea that we went into Afghanistan. He thinks it's a dandy idea that we did all kinds of things that operatives can do. He's working now for a consulting firm that is telling its clients what they want to hear. He's not an analyst. Let's get over that. The rest of us are or have been or have been direct military experience like Colonel McGregor. You can pick whom you want to listen to. Got it. Ray McGovern, always a pleasure, my dear friend.

Thank you for all the great analysis. Thank you for all the wonderful materials with which you keep feeding me. I see you're very much in demand. I'll let you go. We all appreciate your time. Thank you, Ray. Until next week. Most welcome. Of course. If you like that, like and subscribe. Judging Freedom approaching 150,000 regular YouTube subscribers. We're pushing to break that threshold in the next two weeks. Judge Morris, we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.