Judging Freedom - Patrick Lancaster: LIVE from Ukraine war Frontline - Reports from the Russian Frontline

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Patrick Lancaster: LIVE from Ukraine war Frontline - Reports from the Russian FrontlineSee 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 Tuesday, March 12th, 2024. Patrick Lancaster joins us live from Donetsk on the side of the divide between Russia and Ukraine that Russia says is legally part of Russia and where Patrick has courageously been spending his time and from which he's been reporting. Patrick, it's a pleasure. My dear friend, thank you for reporting to us. You reached out to us at 3 o'clock this morning, Eastern Time, because you had information and tapes that you wanted us to show and discuss with you so that the viewers and the people that regularly watch Judging Freedom could hear what you had to say. Why did you call us? Well, first of all, thanks as always for having me,

Judge. It's always a pleasure to be on and to show your audience what we can on the situation here. But yeah, I reached out again to you guys because I thought your audience would need to see some important events on and around the front line and kind of discuss what's been happening and what is soon to happen, particularly the Russian presidential elections that's going to be happening for the first time in these new territories of Russia by Russian law. These are going to be the first presidential elections, and I'm going to be covering those as well. But it's pretty interesting for the time for the local population in these areas. But yeah, so this week, I've been on the front line and several front lines,

and just kind of trying to understand what's really happening, because there's so many reports of Russia capturing new territory from Ukraine, specifically starting with Ivdivka, the suburb of Donetsk, and they just kept steamrolling past in almost every new area or every, all of these new territories that Russia claims is part of Russia, which of course the West claims is part of Ukraine. But I think the most important thing is what the local populations say. And I've done literally thousands of interviews with the local populations in Donbass and they claim to be part of Russia and want to be part of Russia. This is what the residents of these areas say. We have to think that's most important. How unanimous or how overwhelming or how one-sided, choose whichever phrase you want, Patrick, is the feeling amongst people in where you are that they are Russian-speaking, Russian-culturally,

and part of Russia? I mean, it's almost 100%. I mean, this war in Donetsk has been going on for 10 years. It's not just a two-year war like the West would like people to think. I mean, every residence of Donetsk and Lugansk, for that matter, Donbass pretty much, has a family member or friend that has been either seriously injured or killed by Ukrainian attacks over the last 10 years. I mean, like, just for example, my wife is from Donetsk, and her childhood home and childhood neighborhood has just been destroyed by Ukrainian attacks over the last 10 years. And this is just one example of the thousands, tens of thousands. Just so everybody understands exactly where you are is part of Ukraine.

And in order to suppress where you are from joining Russia, it has bombed and shelled it. So Ukrainian government, Ukraine bombing parts of its own country or what it claims it's its own country and killing what it says are its own people. The Russians say that this is historically Russia. It is culturally Russia. It is religiously Russia. It is linguistically Russia. And the last time there was a referendum there, it was overwhelmingly Russian. And the Russians are trying to protect these people from being attacked by the Ukrainian government. So far, so good, right? You got it right on. Okay. How critical to the big picture here of Russia wanting to recapture for itself what it says is historically Russian, was the Russian triumph and the Ukrainian defeat in the last week or so in Avdika. How critical was that? Well, I think both strategically and as far as the morale goes, it was a huge boost, and it literally like a switch getting flipped to a different time in the fighting situation for Russia.

It seems like they're really pushing forward now. Virtually every one of these four territories, Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, and her son, there's reports of the front line getting changed as far as Russia taking more territory. And this has started because and when of DIVKA was taken just weeks ago, virtually every day. So it's a huge thing. And now it's not only a morale booster for the soldiers, but also for the residents of Donetsk and Donbass. I mean, before Avdiivka was taken, Ukraine territory was just about between 8 to 11 kilometers from the center of Donetsk. And literally, Ukraine had been bombing the center of Donetsk and other parts of the city from Avdiivka for the last 10 years.

And now, luckily, the shelling has decreased in many of these areas because Ukraine is no longer in Avdiivka. And the front line has been pushed back from the center of Donetsk to about 20 to 23 kilometers. So now the main majority of the weapons that Ukraine has, the only ones that can really hit the center of Donetsk now are the weapons that have been supplied by the West, particularly as we saw just weeks ago, the last time I was on was the 155-millimeter artillery shells and the HIMARS rockets given by the United States. So, I mean, these are the weapons, the last ones now, that are actually killing the civilians in Donetsk. And, of course, a mixture with those and the increased use of drone warfare,

where literally every day Ukrainian drones are dropping bombs on civilian areas and are doing kamikaze attacks. All right, we're going to show in a few minutes you and your wife distributing aid to people whose homes have been destroyed and a drone comes by. But before we do that, we do have a clip of you at the Zaporizhzhia front line. It looks like you're in a tank or an armored personnel carrier. So before we run the clip, what kind of a vehicle are you in and where are you and where are you going? Well, I was with Russian forces heading to the front line on the Zaporozhye front. And we were headed there going fairly fast because of the threat of Ukrainian attack drones as normal.

This is the big thing, big mental anguish, you could say, going anywhere near the front line is the possibility of any second a drone hits you. But in this clip, we're on the way to the Zaporozhye front line to see what the real situation is on that front. All right. Before we run the clip, what is the vehicle that you're in? Is it what we would call an armored personnel carrier or a tank? What is it? No, actually, it's a military van.

We're a little bit farther away going forward, so we weren't actually in an armored personnel carrier. It was just a military van, basically. Got it. All right. So we'll run this clip, but just a little heads up for those who are watching, as opposed to just hearing. The lighting is not that good, but you can see that it's Patrick. You can see that it's a military vehicle.

And if you know Patrick, you know how excited he sometimes gets when he's close to death. It's compelling, compelling watching. P1, Chris, here we go. I'm Patrick Lancaster. Right now, we are in the Zaporozhye region with Russian forces. Now, Zaporozhye region is one of the four regions that Russia has declared as part of Russia by Russian forces over the last two weeks, starting with the taking of the Donetsk suburb of Divka. And they have just been going farther and farther after that. It seems like somewhat of a switch has been flipped by Russia into the charging or storm mode. And we're here to investigate reports

of new territories being taken by Russian forces here in Zaporozhye on the Zaporozhye front line. And you see, we are headed to the front right now with the soldiers. We're gonna be bringing you as much information here on the ground as we can because no one else shows you what we show you. Very passionate and very daring and very daring. I'm smiling a little bit because one of the viewers wrote in and said,

Judge, it sounds like he's in a New York City bus, which are not known for that kind of danger, but at times can be very loud. Where were you? Where were you going? We were leaving the, well, before that, we were, at that point, we were almost to the positions themselves, but we had left the southern part of the Zaporozhye region and went north to the Zaporozhye Front. And soon after that video ended, we arrived on location at the Russian forces' military positions bordering Ukrainian territory, just across a little fielded forested area from the Ukrainian positions themselves. We're going to now play a clip where I think it's where you arrived.

You're actually on a battlefield. You're within just a meter or two of Ukrainian soldier who's firing an automatic weapon. Russian soldier. God forgive me. Excuse weapon. Russian soldier. God forgive me. Excuse me. Russian soldier. And there appear to be some fire coming towards you, but I'll let you describe it as soon as it's over.

This is Patrick Lancaster on the battlefield in real time. P2, Chris. As you hear, there is reports of a sabotaged Ukrainian Ukrainian team or spy team basically uh so it seems to try to engage uh that Ukrainian soldier team to bring this out into the open.

How dangerous was that position where you were in just there, Patrick? Well, it was just under between 500 meters and a kilometer in different directions from the Ukrainian positions themselves. So, and the soldiers there at the time said, every day there's incoming drones and incoming artillery. Now, the situation that was actually going on there, we were in the trenches. That's what that is. That's just on the edge of a trench system that's like a bunker systemroachment team spotted coming towards that position through the forested area and the area between the actual Ukraine and Russian positions. So basically these soldiers had the general direction that the intelligence said that these Ukrainian soldiers were coming from. And the point, as the soldier told me before, because at the time it was a little bit,

I was a little bit confused on exactly what was happening because everything just started going. But as they explained after, they had the general direction and they knew as part of their tactics that they could do a couple of different things. But by firing the weapons in that direction, because it wasn't only that one gun place, it was another couple of positions as well, all firing in a specific direction. And they said they were doing one of two things. If there was a Ukrainian soldiers team coming from that direction, which at the time they said they couldn't actually see, I wasn't really trying to stick my head up and see for myself too much. In that clip that we just played where you were next to that Russian soldier, how close were the two of you

to Ukrainian soldiers actually or potentially firing at you? Well, it's a little bit unknown. I'm not sure exactly. But the idea is that from that direction, Ukrainian soldiers were coming and they were trying to basically either eliminate them or scare them off from coming in that direction strategically. So I would expect from what they were telling me that the other soldiers were somewhere around 500, 300, maybe even 600. I'm not really sure. It's kind of sometimes a hard way to tell exactly how close you are to these different forces. Got it. Got it. The last time you were on with us was in real time, a short distance in time after Ukrainian forces had sent American ammunition to bomb civilians in Donbass. As I recall, you were

close to a pizza parlor and a library and a crosswalk that the Ukrainians had shelled, trying to kill the people that they claim were their own and maybe even trying to kill you. We now have you and your wife giving aid to people in this area whose homes were shelled by their own government, by the Ukrainian government. This is kind of compelling. It's very compelling because in the midst of giving the aid, a drone shows up. And I guess you can tell me why that no one on the ground knows, is this a friendly drone or is this a drone that wants to kill us? So when these drones come, I guess you really can't tell from looking at them who sent them and what they're there to do. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, it's kind of hard sometimes. And this in particular time, like you said,

me and my wife were giving aid to this village and the drone came overhead and there was actually in the distance, we could hear some Russian soldiers firing at the drone. So that kind of gave us the impression that it was in fact a Ukrainian kamikaze drone that could potentially impact and then everyone ran inside. But to give a little idea of what we were actually doing, and as you said, me and my wife were given aid. Now, this village is a village that has been getting hammered by Ukrainian artillery for the last 10 years. It's the village called Spartak, which is actually a suburb of Donetsk, just like Avdivka is, but it's actually in the middle, right between Donetsk and Avdivka. Now, this village before the war, this 10-year war, had a population of thousands. Now it only has 45 people left. And I've actually, me and my wife, been coming to this village often over the last 10 years,

giving them aid because it's one of the hardest hit areas right next to Donetsk. This village, no water, no electric, no gas, and several kilometer walk just to get to a shop that might have something for them to buy and be able to spend it. Let's show the clip of you

and your wife handing out food supplies and water when the drone arrives. This is P3, Chris. All right, so we're getting started, giving the people the aid they need. We have one big bag, about 40-50 kilograms of carrots here that my wife is distributing. Then we have two big bags of onions and over a hundred kilograms of potatoes. Two large bags of red beet. 45 heads of cabbage and 45 whole chicken. Basically this is everything they need to make borscht. We also have 450 liters of water because in addition to not having widespread electric Мы также имеем 450 литров воды. Потому что в этом городе не имеется электричества.

Только один или два дома имеют электричество. Это произошло неделю назад. Здесь нет воды. Как дома? Ты видел? Это точно? Вот, вот, вот Вон, вон, вон он Ребят Охуеть пошел красиво Ребята, а вот тут дрон летит

Вон он Уходите, уходите все Ёбый машина! We looked up and saw a drone overhead. So everybody's running in the building. It's a little unclear whose drone it is, if it's a Ukrainian kamikaze drone or a Russian drone. We're not sure, so we're going to go inside and just get a little safe. We got most of the aid out, but there's still some. But lives are most important. Now, you several times used the phrase kamikaze.

You know, we all know what that is. Is that what Ukrainian drones are, that the drone just crashes itself into human beings or into a building rather than shooting a missile and taking off? Well, as far as the drone warfare goes now, there's three different types, and all the different types have different variants. But the one, kamikaze, it's the FPV kamikaze, where the drone operator has the glasses on, like reality glasses, and they fly the drone, and on drone. There is a ammunition of some type that is designed to explode when the drone impacts. Now, they fly this with another drone that is a reconnaissance drone. And when they see a soldier or maybe a bunker or something like that,

they attempt to hit that and kill or destroy whatever they're shooting, maybe tanks or something like that, they attempt to hit that and kill or destroy whatever they're shooting, maybe tanks or something like this. Now, both sides do this. They're basically homemade or hobby drones, you could say, that are turned into these kamikaze drones. And then those are also used with another type, the reconnaissance, which either does reconnaissance for these drones or could also do reconnaissance to give information for targeting using artillery or mortars. And then the third type is a drone, which actually many DJI drones are used for, the normal helicopter types, and those have a grenade or mortar or something like that attached to it, and then there's a button on the controller that is used to drop the grenade or whatever it is once they see the right over top of a soldier or a bunker or something like this

or maybe some sort of military equipment to destroy it that way. So those are the main three types that both sides are using in those ways. We're going to run the final video that you sent us, which appears to be in a trench hole with soldiers. We're going to lower the volume of their speaking so that you and I can talk over it. And you can just tell us what we're watching. Now, that's not you,

is it? That's one of the people to whom you're speaking. Yeah, no, that's one of the Russian soldiers. Basically, this moment is just after that little battle that took place. And he's explaining what happened why they were shooting because at the time when everything just kind of kicked off it was a little a little confusing sometimes when you're not sure exactly what's happening

but he's explaining how they got the order that there was a Ukrainian encroachment team coming towards our positions and they just had to fire in the general direction to try to either one eliminate the problem or to scare the problem off and uh he's basically saying now they're waiting the Ukrainian soldiers might continue to come or they might this position might actually get engaged by drones or Ukrainian artillery. He was explaining how it's a dangerous situation that we're in right now. Now, Patrick, why are they wearing masks? Is that for sanitary reasons or so that they hide their identity?

Yeah, some soldiers don't really like to have their identity put out for safety of their families and things back home. And that's why some of them wear masks. And sometimes soldiers don't wear masks. It's just kind of I give people a choice to be as safe as they want. Here on this part, he's explaining to us that there might be drones incoming and we have to move fast to get out of there. Where is this? I mean, this

appears to be literally a trench hole. Literally a trench. Yeah, this is right in a trench system on the front line in Zaporozhye. I mean, some of these trench systems go for kilometers and kilometers. I mean, you know, before I was in this war, I used to think trenches were something they used back in the world wars, but trench warfare is a huge thing in the Ukraine war. I

mean, it has been for the last 10 years. And surprisingly, it makes you feel a lot better when you're in one of these trenches and shells are coming down around you. I remember the first time in 2014, I found myself coming under a white phosphorus attack from Ukrainian territory. And I was so happy that I was able to be down in one of these trenches. Patrick, how much longer do you think this military conflict will go on? It's hard to say i mean there's no way that it can end before russia controls all of the four regions that russian law considers part of russia i mean even if putin wanted to i don't think he could say okay well let's give you know let's just cut the lines where it is no it's like by r law, there's territory of Russia right now controlled by Ukraine.

And Russia just can't let the war end if that's still the case. Now, how much farther it will go than that, I think that's up to Ukraine in the West. Patrick, you are a hero. You are the journalist of the year. There isn't anybody who is more daring, more courageous, and speaks more truthfully in our profession than you. I am deeply grateful for all the time you spent with us. Thank you for the three o'clock phone call. Of course, it woke up Chris where he lives. But thank you very much for it. Thank you for your courage and thank you for all the tips.

Before I let you go, I want everyone to know that we have a lot more video from Patrick. We're posting all of it at my website which is judgenap.com. You know how to find that. J-U-D-G-E-N-A-P dot com. Go there if you

want to see a lot more of this daring video from Patrick. Patrick, stay well. Our best to you and your wife. And we'll see you again soon. All right. Well, thank you very much, Judge. And with all respect, thanks for your kind words. I just try to do my best.

And thanks for helping me to show the world what's really happening here. Of course, your best is truly outstanding. Thank you, Patrick. So we have a full day coming up for you today, starting with at noon Eastern, Colonel Douglas McGregor, and then Matt Ho, and then Karen Kwiatkowski, and then our new guest, academic and journalist, Justin Politano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.