Judging Freedom - Patrick Lancaster: Live from Russia/Ukraine Eastern Front

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

Patrick Lancaster: Live from Russia/Ukraine Eastern FrontSee 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, May 23, 2024. Patrick Lancaster joins us now live from the Ukraine-Russia war zone. Patrick, always risking your life to be our eyes and ears. We are deeply and profoundly grateful when you call us at three in the morning Eastern Time saying, I have some news for you as soon as you can get the cameras up. The cameras are up and we welcome your intellect and your persistent courage. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you very much, Judge. Sure. Let's start with some basics before we get into the specifics of what you have been telling us. How fragile is the Ukraine military at this point in time, late May 2024? Well, first of all, thanks for having me on again, Judge. It's always great to be able to show the world what's happening here together. As far as the situation on the ground, as the last time we've been on, Russia is making continued major advances on the ground. villages and towns, cities getting taken control of by Russia and the Ukrainian forces withdrawing from these villages. Just days ago, we had the village of Volchansk in the Kharkov region taken

full control of reportedly, which was reported by the Russian forces by Russian forces and this doesn't just go for the northern area for the as far as the Harkov region goes this goes for the territories that Russia claims is part of Russia by Russian law which is the what Ukraine calls the Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhian, Kherson region, what Russia calls the Lugansk People's Republic region, Donetsk People's Republic region, Zaporozhian, Kherson. Now, just today, the Russian Ministry of Defense has claimed full control of the Andreevka town in the Donetsk region or Donetsk People's Republic region, however you want to look at it. And again, this is territory that is looked at by the West and both Western Ukraine and Western countries and NATO and internationally as part of Ukraine.

But these are areas that as far as Russian law goes are part of Russia, regardless what side you take. This is one of just the latest villages that has been part of the continued push by Russian forces. As we know, just about two months ago, Russian forces took the major strategic and symbolic city of Avdiivka, a suburb of Donetsk, which had Ukrainian forces had been shelling Donetsk for literally almost a decade from. And that almost seemed, as I said before, a turning point as far as Russia just plowing through massive amounts of territory and taking control. You sent us a photo of a Russian soldier

inside a liberated courthouse. There's the photo. His face is pixelated out. What does that sign say? Did you take this picture? No, no, Judge. I did not take the picture. This is a picture that was released by Russian forces, And it is purportedly to show control of the center of the Volchansk town and particularly the courthouse. That says in Ukrainian language, Ukraine, and basically the district courthouse of the Kharkov region. And that's for the Russian soldiers to show that it's under control of Russian forces. Okay, so when the Russian soldiers liberate a government building like a courthouse, what happens in the building? Do the judges and the officials in the courthouse suddenly show their loyalty to Russia, or are these people out of

jobs and they are replaced by Russians? Well, it's an interesting question. As far as what I've seen myself in the Donetsk and Lugansk areas, the vast majority of these areas are Russian people, and in Mariupol as well. They just, when Russia comes, they say they've been waiting for Russia. I interviewed the civilians that were left in Avdiivka and said they'd been waiting for almost a decade for Russia to come. Because, I mean, these, you know, are Russian, ethically Russian people, even though they had Ukrainian passports. These are people that don't want anything to do with the Ukrainian government. All right. So the people running the courthouse, the administrators, the clerks, the armed guards, and in most of the times when the frontline changes like this, the workers have long left because, I mean, this is an active frontline and it's not like, you know, the Russian forces show up and close the courthouse i mean these

many of these buildings are destroyed from the ongoing fighting so a lot of these villages that are taken are symbolized symbols that are being taken a lot of the village is destroyed some not but yeah okay you you sent us uh an apartment apartment strike and a building collapsing. Chris is going to run it now. What are we watching? What are we seeing here, Patrick? This is an apartment building in the city of Belgorod, in the Belgorod region of Russia, not a disputed region of what some consider Ukraine, some consider part of Russia. This is Russia proper. And this particular attack on the

12th of May, as you see in the screen, was a type of attack that ukraine has been doing on the belgrade region every day for those who have seen my most recent uh film full documentary film on belgrade you see every day ukraine launches rockets across the border because this is a border city about 30 kilometers from the border, and hammers the city, just random attacks on the city, civilian areas, whatever they can hit, hospitals. And as we see, nine floors of this apartment building collapsed as a result of this attack by Ukrainian forces. And it reported 18 civilians were killed when this nine floors came down on them. All right. Let me just clarify a couple of things. For those watching this, as opposed to just listening to it, it says 12-5-24, but that's the European style of dating. That's May 12th, 2024. It's obviously not December 5th, 2024, because that day hasn't happened yet. So 12-5-2024 is two weeks ago. would the Ukrainians, other than to be causing terror, why would the Ukrainian military be attacking Russian civilian structures, Russian civilian residences in Russia proper? Why would

they be doing this? It's a good question. There's no question that it's a war crime. And at least the minimum is that they're just lobbing these rockets into these civilian areas to. Let's attack it, which is war crime either way you look at it. Now, the most important thing about these attacks is that, unfortunately, many of these daily attacks on the Belgrade region of Russia and the city are attacks with the use of Western supplied weapons. This attack in particular was the vampire rockets, Czech supplied vampire rockets were used in conjunction with ballistic, Soviet made ballistic missiles, reportedly the Tochka-U. And so they used a mix of the Ukrainian weapons and the Western used by Ukrainians or others working in tandem with the Ukrainians to attack and kill Russian civilians in Russia proper. Do we know that? I can say we know for 100% fact that's Western-supplied weapons. If we're going to say specifically the United States, I myself have not seen pieces of United States rocket, but I've seen pieces of a Western supplied,

Czech supplied vampire rockets laying in the yards of civilian homes in the Belgrade region of Russia that injured and killed civilians. There's no question about that, that these weapons, and if we look at actually deeper into the war zone in the disputed areas, I have seen United States HIMARS rockets kill dozens of civilians and damage dozens of homes, not just in a one-off, but over the last two years. There's no question that United States weapons are being used to target and kill civilians in the war zone overall. And these civilians are either Russians in Russia proper or cultural Russians in the areas that Ukraine says are Ukraine, but Russia under international law says is Russia. Do I have that correct? Well, under Russian law, yes.

Correct. Okay. Now, at some point in Russia, you befriended a British school teacher, did you not? Yes, Ian Turner. He's a British man that has been living in the city of Belgrade for many years and very intelligent man and had a lot of interesting things to say about the situation in the war as far as coming from the eyes of a local foreigner in the Belgrade region, what he had to say about what Ukraine was doing to the people of his new city. Okay, so we're going to run the brief interview you did with him, and then you and I will talk about it. So this is Ian Turner, a British teacher living in Russia,

who's about to give an eyewitness account and comment on the use of Western-supplied weapons to kill people around him. This is as close as we can get to this disaster zone, courtesy of the British and the French and the Americans. This is where people died in large numbers. There's no military target anywhere near us. No one's allowed in Belgorod.

This is the result of a missile attack that hit the second story above an archway which collapsed the whole building. The whole city is in mourning. We're all in shock. This could have happened anywhere in the city. We're all victims of this. And this war needs to stop. This is a civil war between the Russians and the Ukrainians. Any outside help is just helping to kill innocent people.

Babies, women, children, old two weeks ago or 10 days ago. Is that right? Actually, Judge, no. That video was made at the time, of course, that horrible attack. I wasn't actually in Belgrade, but because weeks before, while I was filming my full film on the situation in Belgrade and met Ian, I had his contact. And as soon as this horrible attack collapsed that apartment building and killed and injured so many people i knew we needed to get something in english off from the situation and i called him and he filmed that situation and we've been in contact

uh since and if anybody wants to see his full interview, you can see that on my full film on Volgorod. Is he correct when he says there's no legitimate military target that the Ukrainians have attacked? Yes. I mean, that apartment block is one of the many apartment blocks and residential areas that I've seen hit and targeted by Ukrainian forces. As he expressed in our interviews that we did in my film, it just seems like they're launching these rockets as far as they can go and letting them land where they land, regardless what they hit, but just to cause as much damage as possible to the civilians and just the overall city of Belgorod. Do you have a sense that the Ukrainians are desperate and realize they're at the end of their rope well at the rates that russia is taking so much new territory um it seems like now it's just a waiting game until the united states realizes that this is a bad investment and pulls the plug.

And then things are really going to start moving fast because the only reason people are still dying in this war right now is because the United States and the West is supplying these weapons. If they would not have been doing that, regardless what side you favor, people would have stopped dying a long time ago. And people are still dying because the United States is supplying these weapons. The United States knows that by Russian law, nothing can be done to stop Russia from pushing until they take full control of the territory

that Russian law considers as part of Russia. So the United States knows this, that people are just going to keep dying as long as they keep pushing funds to continue this war. Do you sense that the Russians have become more aggressive and are taking advantage of the Ukraine desperation? Question one. Question two, are the Russians still attempting to concentrate their fire on military as opposed to civilian targets? The Russian forces now, in my opinion, have fully moved, and this has been going for a while after taking control of Dnipro,

moved into, as they call it, the storm mode or the assault mode, where the point now is not just to stabilize the situation, stabilize the front, but the point, it seems now, is to push and to take as much territory as possible. So they've opened the floodgates, as far as I see. And as far as Russia attacking civilians, there's no real purpose for Russia to be targeting civilians. Right now, Russia wants to target military and infrastructure. As far as just going out of their way to target civilians, it would just be a waste of resources. So that's my thought on that. Okay. I'm going to run a clip for you now and ask for your opinion on it. This is the famous or infamous, depending upon which side

of this argument you stand, Victoria Nuland, the well-known American State Department official who's been accused of orchestrating the coup in 2004 and the coup in 2014. And then she was recently dismissed from the State Department and given a teaching position at Columbia University in New York City alongside her longtime friend and colleague Hillary Rodham Clinton. But Victoria Nuland appeared on the Sunday talk shows last weekend, and we're going to run two clips. She appears to be out in the countryside somewhere. She's not in a studio when she made these statements, but these were parts of international interviews that have caused some controversy,

and I'd like your thoughts on them. So, Chris, run them in tandem, please. Cut five and cut six. They need to be able to stop these Russian attacks that are coming from bases inside Russia. So I think there's also a question of whether we, the United States and our allies, ought to give them more help in hitting Russian bases, which heretofore we've not been willing to do. I think if the attacks are coming directly from over the line in Russia, that those bases ought to be fair game, whether they are where missiles are being launched from or where they are where troops are being supplied from. I think it's time for that because Russia has obviously escalated this war,

including, as you said at the beginning, attacking Russia's second city, Kharkiv, which is not on the front lines and trying to decimate it without ever having to put a boot on the ground. So I think it is time to give the Ukrainians more help hitting these bases inside Russia. If she's talking about whether the Ukrainians can lawfully attack Russia, well, they can as part of war. But if she's talking about American military equipment and ammunition being used to attack civilians in Russia, not only is that a war crime, that's risking World War III. Yes. Biden, I believe, from the get-go was clear about U.S. weapons being used to cross the line into Russia, and he was against it, made a line for that. But now it

seems like he's getting pushed into letting this happen more and more. And it seems a very dangerous line to cross because once you get to the point of Western-supplied, United States-supplied weapons being used to kill Russian civilians, even Russian soldiers, but killing Russians. Soldiers are civilians inside of Russia, not inside of the disputed area, but inside of Russia and even deep inside of Russia. You know, this can trigger a serious response from Russian forces and Vladimir Putin. So I think Biden needs to really consider how carefully to move forward

and what he lets Zelensky do with these weapons. Do you think that the West understands that President Putin doesn't bluff, that when he threatens to do something, if a tripwire is reached, he'll do it. Yeah, I mean, I think definitely the West should not underestimate Putin. I mean, he's definitely got the experience. And, you know, it's a dangerous game that's being played right now. I think the most important thing right now is that the United States is' most important thing.

All right. Last question. We'll have to see how this plays out. Last question, Patrick. Where can Judging Freedom viewers see you, find you? Where can they download your work? Where can they catch your full interview with the British teacher? As normal, my major reports, I post it to my YouTube channel, Patrick Lancaster.

And my film on Belgrade is the last video that I posted. You can check that out and see our full full interview and much much more in Belgrade and um I also post on Twitter and telegram as Patrick Lancaster news today or at PL news today and as always I'm totally an independent crowdfunded journalist um I believe people can find my link to help support my work in the comments below. And, you know, I stay that way. So I'm only funded by my viewers. So I can show you exactly what I see with my own eyes. And I don't have to tweak my work because of some editor or something like that. I show you the real facts on the ground and I'll continue to that, no matter how much I get pushed in the other direction.

Patrick, you are a model of courage and intellectual honesty. I am personally, eternally grateful for you, as I know our viewers are as well. Godspeed, stay well, travel safely, come back to us again whenever you want, whether you call us at three in the morning or three in the afternoon. We're happy to have these interviews. All the best. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much for having me as normal, Judge. I appreciate it. Of course. Wow. What a courageous guy. Coming up later today at two o'clock Eastern, Professor Michael Rechtenwald, the likely libertarian nominee for president of the United States. At three o'clock Eastern,

Kyle Anselone from antiwar.com. At 4.15 Eastern, Matt Ho, who just returned from all the hoopla surrounding Julian Assange in London. And at five o'clock Eastern, the one and only Max Blumenthal with some fascinating new reporting on lies the media has been telling everyone about October 7th. See you later. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Altyazı M.K.