Judging Freedom - Pepe Escobar: Putin’s Next Moves

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

Pepe Escobar: Putin’s Next MovesSee 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, June 25th, 2024. Pepe Escobar joins us from Moscow. Pepe, a pleasure, my dear friend, as always. Enormous pleasure, Coach. Thank you. Thank you for your time. We have a lot to talk about, principally the American attack on sunbathers and children on the Sevastopol beach. But before we get there, the breaking news this morning, of course, is that Julian Assange has been released from prison in London and is either on a plane on his way to Bangkok and then to the Mariana Islands or is already in Bangkok, one or the other. Your thoughts on the indictment, prosecution, persecution, and horrific confinement

of Julian Assange? Wow. History will be unforgiving because what will be ended with the stroke of a pen in the Mariana Islands tomorrow and then Julian were able to fly from Saipan to Sydney could have they could have

done it five years ago or even before that but first they needed this long psychological physical torture of Julian to be sent all over the world non-stop on an everyday basis as a warning to all of us journalists, analysts, independents. And well, RFK Jr., he may have messed up on Gaza, but at least he got this one right. In the end, the empire managed to criminalize journalism because Julian has to plead guilty to at least one of the counts. And that is exactly illegally collecting national security information. This is, in fact, criminalization of journalism. But he had to do it.

He's ill. His health is terrible. He needed to get out of jail. He wouldn't stand another six months in Belmarsh. Absolutely impossible. Which is a high security jail for hardcore terrorists, essentially. So the whole process is

for all of us involved in the information war, let's put it this way. We learned everything we needed to learn about how to deal with the United States and their Justice Department. And the final message still lingers on. Don't mess with us or we'll go after you and we will break you. And Julian said to the whole planet, you will not break me. You can wear me down, but you'll never break me. And in the end, he's going to be free.

That's a very lovely and articulate summary. I would be a little harsher. I have two feelings this morning about this. I'm ecstatic that he guilty pleas, and I understand sometimes people plead guilty to things for which they are not in fact guilty in order to avoid other consequences. In America, the federal government always does what we call over-indicting, indicts for far more than it can actually prove to terrify the defendant. So the defendant will plead guilty to some lesser offense, which is closer to the facts in the case.

And the feds can get their pound of flesh. The defendant in jail, they don't have to go through the expense of a trial. But what he did was not a crime. Exactly. It is absolutely protected directly on point by a very famous American Supreme Court opinion known colloquially as the Pentagon Papers case. Exactly. The actual name of it is United States of America versus the Washington Post

and the New York Times. This is Daniel Ellsberg releasing the Pentagon Papers, which he stole. But the Supreme Court said if a publisher or a person in the media acquires information of material interest to the public, no matter what it is and no matter how he acquires it, material interest to the public, no matter what it is, and no matter how he acquires it, the publisher is immune from criminal and civil liability, period. No exceptions. That's been consistently the law in the United States since 1973. The government hates that, and it still pursues journalists, and what they did to Julian was reprehensible. But he's turning a new page. I hope at his first press conference in Sydney, maybe after his health returns. So I don't know if it's going to be this week. He looks right in the camera and says,

I'm not guilty. I played along with this ridiculous game that they wanted me to play so that I could be set free. He'll probably say something along these lines, Judge, maybe slightly more diplomatically. Yes, like I said, I'm angry. There are a lot of constraints in this whole arrangement, of course, so he had to take it. But the message will be instantly grasped by the global majority, especially. Julian is a hero from

Argentina to Somalia. Yes. Well, these images that you're showing, this is still in London. He's taking the private jet to Stansted Airport. Then they took a flight to Bangkok. As we speak, they might be still in Bangkok,

which is the layover. And then they'll take another flight to Saipan. And the whole procedure is going to be tomorrow in Saipan. And then he can fly to Sydney from Saipan probably tomorrow, Wednesday. You know, I'm an expert. I hold myself out as an expert in the American judicial system, having been part of it.

I did not know there's a federal court and a federal judge sitting in Saipan. Wow. Wow. And that is technically not the United States of America, which is was indicted, for fear that the government would not honor the agreement and would seize him in Virginia, and this whole mess would start all over again. Exactly. Apparently, this was an agreement between Julian's lawyer and the American prosecutors finding a territory where they could conclude the plea deal formalities. And obviously it was Saipan and North America. Correct me if I'm wrong, Jug, the Marianas are incorporated to the U.S., right? Yes, yes. Okay.

So technically the FBI can be there and in fact probably will be there. Will be. But these agreements, A, are reduced to writing. We just showed you part of the agreement. Exactly. They are internationally announced. It would be extremely unlikely that there would be a hitch. The key is, will he be under oath when he pleads guilty? In most

federal courts, you are. If he is under oath and pleads guilty and then goes home and says, I'm not guilty, he's admitting to perjury. I don't think they'll pursue him for perjury. I don't think Australia would ever let the U.S. have him, but why have that hanging over your head? Everybody who follows this case, which is most of the world, knows that what he did was absolutely protected journalism. He's playing the American game in order to get out of a hellish, hellish prison. It's what all of us independent journalists do, Judge. We protect our sources.

And Chelsea Manning was a high-ranking, high-quality, high-clearance source. Yes. He gave materials to Julian. He examined everything. Everything that he published was not incriminating anybody from the United States government. So this was journalism with high-level sources works for all of us. Yes, yes. President Obama commuted the sentence of Bradley slash Chelsea Manning. I wish he had pardoned Julian, although Julian hadn't been charged. Julian was indicted by the Trump administration. So I had a conversation about this with President Trump shortly before he left office.

We talked about a number of things, but the three most memorable are, would you please pardon Edward Snowden? Would you please pardon Julian Assange? And would you please release the JFK documents? I've already talked about the JFK documents on air and what he said to me. It's rather startling. We don't need to go through it again. But he did tell me he was planning to pardon Snowden and Assange. And then the same people that talked him out of releasing the JFK documents, talked him out of pardoning Assange and Snowden. And I said, well, why did you even authorize the indictment of Assange?

And he said, well, they talked me into it. They talked me into it. I wish I hadn't, and I'm going to undo it before I leave office. Of course he didn't. Talked into it in the sense of he was forced, Judge? I don't know that he was forced. I think Bill Barr and Mike Pompeo browbeat him a little bit. If you can imagine anybody browbeating Donald Trump, I think they did. Let's turn our focus, Pepe, to the devastating events over the weekend. On a beautiful Sunday on one of the most beautiful

beaches in the world on the Black Sea in Sevastopol, an American drone dispatched cluster bombs and injured 100 people and killed six, two or three of whom I'm not sure of the number were children. How is this being, you see a picture of the beach in the foreground and the explosion in the background. How is this being received in Russia in general, in Moscow in particular, and especially in the Kremlin? People are absolutely furious. It's the only topic of conversation since Sunday.

I arrived back in Moscow on Sunday. I was in Kazan. I will explain to you in two minutes what I was doing in Kazan. Since Sunday night, it's the only topic of conversation. And on military channels, there's a clamor and public opinion in general. Okay, what about if this is not the ultimate red line, what is it? Right? Well, we just had a report which is unconfirmed and this is quite striking by a Russian military channel on Telegram called Fight Bomber. They say that the first American global hawk was already plunged into the Black Sea. There's no confirmation anywhere from the Ministry of Defense or from the US, from anybody.

So we are waiting to see if this is what happened. And now military analysts in Russia are already expecting the American response if this was the case. Are they going to double down or are they going to remain silent? So this might be a first move related to what I would say 90% of public opinion here is claiming. Look, turn the Black Sea into a no-fly zone. That's it. And then there won't be any attack MS directed against civilian areas in the Russian Federation. What happened on Sunday was five attack MS, $1 million each. Four of them were intercepted by aerial defense near Sevastopol.

One of them exploded in midair and the debris fell on the beach, in fact. So it's not that the missile hit the beach. That's the real story. And this was timed specially, very viciously, because Sunday was a Christian Orthodox holiday here. Why everybody was on the beach? Most of all because families had a day off and they were celebrating a very important Christian Orthodox holiday. Like, you know, I was in Tatarstan. The Tatarstan over there was a Tatar folk holiday coinciding with the Christian Orthodox holiday. And this gives to all of you in the audience the framework of a multipolar country where different faiths celebrate the same holiday

in different ways in different parts of the country. So this was particularly vicious. And coupled with that, the terror attack in Dagestan. Dagestan is extremely complicated because it's a maze of extremists. You have remnants of Al-Qaeda. You have remnants of Islamic State. You have people who are migrating to ISIS-K, ISIS-Khorasan, which are dropped here. They come from Syria. They can come from Chechnya. They can come from Dagestan, and then they end up here doing attacks inside the Russian Federation. And this was a real...

When I say they, these are suspects, MI6 and CIA. They reactivated one of their cells in Dagestan. These people went on a wild spree, and they killed at least 20, including slitting the throat of a Russian Orthodox priest. So a more graphic message than that, it's absolutely impossible. What is the objective? Divide and rule, beating ethnic groups and different faiths against each other. Beating Christian Orthodox against Muslims. Let me back up a little bit. Are you of the view, is the Kremlin of the view,

that what happened Sunday on the beach was an accident? Or was intentional? Or was caused by the Russians attacking the drone? No, it was intentional because they launched five missiles guided by this global hawk, which was loitering in the Black Sea close to Crimea. Everybody saw this on Flight Raider. Well, five missiles, four were intercepted the um uh the air defense around sevastopol is quite good actually but it's not perfect but probably the

system was overwhelmed and the first one went through was shot in mid-air and then the debris fell on the beach. But the attack, apparently, this is not confirmed yet, there is a military field near Sevastopol, but there's practically nothing over there. Everything that is important in Sevastopol concerning the Black Sea Fleet. And I had a confirmation about this one day before, Judge, by accident. I was on a cruise in the Volga and I shared a table with Mikhail Solomensev. Mikhail is nothing less than the permanent representative of the Republic of Crimea with Putin. We were talking for three hours at least about his diplomatic career, he's a specialist in Africa, and mostly about all things Crimea. And he told me one day before, look, everything that is of value regarding the Black Sea Fleet is in Novorossiysk. It's not in Sevastopol anymore. Sevastopol literally now is a totally civilian place.

But that does not matter for the gang in Kiev, because they are saying it openly, like the people from GUR in Kiev, or Podoliak, one of the top advisors to Zelensky, they say, ah, there are no civilian beaches in Crimea. Everything is occupied land. So this means they were attacking civilians on purpose. civilian beaches in Crimea. Everything is occupied land. So this means they were attacking civilians on purpose.

So this is the true story of what happened on Sunday. And that's why the Kremlin and everybody else is totally infuriated because this goes way beyond the authorization to hit deep inside the Russian Federation, but civilians on purpose. Here's the Russian ambassador to the United Nations yesterday, cut number 10. Kiev regime supported by the USA carried out a heinous attack against civilians in the Russian city of Sevastopol in Crimea. Ukraine launched five U.S.-supplied attack MS missiles armed with cluster munitions. An American Global Hawk UAV was patrolling the airspace over the Crimean Peninsula. There will be measures in response.

The Russian Federation will continue to protect its people and its national security until no threat is posed by the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv that was breeded, raised, and financed by the West. Breeded, raised, and financed by the West. Is the Kremlin response going to be purely defensive, the no-fly zone? Or are they going to give either Kiev or the Americans a dose of their own medicine? Well, that's the 100 trillion question. Let's put it this way at the moment.

Public clamor is for everything around and including decapitation strike and destroying Kiev's infrastructure even in Kiev itself Putin doesn't work like this. Putin is a legalist, he calculates every

move very very very carefully. What we learned from diplomats is that first they want to present irrefutable evidence at the UN Security Council that the US is behind the whole operation. Then it will be on the record at the UNSC. And then they will do something about it. So this might take a few days or maybe a few weeks. Let's say two weeks maximum. But this is what's going to be the procedure from now on. This non-confirmed strike against the Global Hawk,

if it's confirmed, this is already a game-changer, because finally they are doing what everybody has been saying here for months, you know. And everybody, of course, is waiting for the American reaction, if this is true. So this is proceeding in two parallel levels, right?

Nothing groundbreaking or striking or even astonishing for all of us. No. They prefer to concentrate on what's happening in the battlefield. And every day is completely crazy. Every day you have 2,000, 3,000, 5,000 Ukrainians dead. I want to read to you a statement from Foreign Minister Lavrov, which is a little harsher than what we just heard from the UN ambassador. This is Sunday night. The US is responsible for this massacre and they will get an answer. All flight missions for American ATAKOM's missiles are programmed by

American specialists based on their own U.S. satellite intelligence data. Therefore, the responsibility for the deliberate missile strike against the civilian population of Sevastopol lies primarily with Washington, which supplied this weapon to Ukraine, as well as with the Kiev regime from whose territory this strike was launched. Such actions will not go unanswered. Sergey Lavrov, June 23, 2024. Sounds a little more on the stern side than ominous side, than what we heard from the UN ambassador. Judge, when you see a gentleman like Sergei Lavrov, who has the patience of a Taoist monk to deal with his lunatics from the Beltway to Brussels, speaking in these terms, it confirms what he told us personally two months ago here,

when we had a meeting, eight, ten of us with him on the table, and he was listening to our questions and answering to our questions. He said, none of us could ever imagine that we would have absolutely no dialogue with the collective West, not only the Americans, but the Europeans as well. And the fact that they don't listen to us and everything that we say is automatically dismissed and they automatically say that we are lying. So this is the diplomatic state between the collective West and Russia nowadays. So no wonder they are exasperated. And when you have deliberate attacks on civilians, which for Russian public opinion is the ultimate red line, you know, they have, this is the least that they could say under the circumstances.

I want to switch gears for a minute to other, actually, no, let me run another clip from the Russian UN ambassador arguing we do not attack civilian targets like the Israelis do in Gaza, cut number 11. Recent actions by the West when they permitted Kiev to attack targets inside the russian territory their their missions their their personnel including military personnel that is helping in directing you directing ukrainians in in operating their weapon systems that they supply. These are steps that definitely lead to the escalation.

We do not deliberately target any civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. Only that infrastructure that relates to the military-industrial complex of Ukraine. We do not bomb cities. We do not bomb civilians. So that's it. We are not doing what Israel is doing in Gaza. This has to rub the Russian people raw, the fact that these were civilians and in some cases, babies. Absolutely. And Nebensia, just like Lavrov, he's an extremely rational character. They don't bluff. They don't tell lies. They stick to facts. What he said at the UN Security Council, it's facts.

If Russia wanted to pull a shock and awe against Ukraine, they could destroy the whole of Ukraine in one day. Everything from Kiev to Lviv and everything in between. That's not the point. The point is demilitarizing Ukraine and later denazifying Ukraine, which will be a task for one or two generations. They don't attack civilian installations, never, because essentially the Ukrainians, for all their faults, they are considered brothers, cousins, etc. It's basically more or less the same big Slavic family. But obviously, the people who are in power in Kiev, controlled by these oligarchs and hostages to neo-Nazi groups like the Azov Battalion.

These people are fanatics. It's a completely different story. They were brainwashed by American and collective West propaganda, but they were already brainwashed before. This comes from decades. This comes from the 90s as well. Their notion of independence is a very twisted notion. It's again, it's russophile and against Russia essentially. Switching topics, this morning the International Criminal Court, the ICC, issued arrest warrants for former Russian defense minister, and now I'm not sure what his title is at the present time, head of the Security Council. He's a member of the Security Council, Josh.

Yep, Shoigu, and for General Gerasimov. These arrest warrants are accompanied by indictments accusing them of war crimes, and the war crimes are just what we're talking about, for which I know of no evidence, the Russians intentionally targeting civilians in Ukraine. What is the significance of anything of this? Propaganda. It's another PR coup. If the ICC was really serious, or the ICJ, or both, there would be arrest warrants for the whole gang in Kiev, from Zelensky to Bodunov to everybody else, military intelligence, civilian intelligence, everybody. These are people who are intentionally killing civilians following the so-called Plan B that came out only a few weeks ago, in fact. Since they are being decimated in the battlefields, the Plan B is terrorism.

It's a war of terror against civilians inside the Russian Federation with the absolute OK from Sullivan, Blinken, and everybody else. This is the reality. And this is what Navarro and Ebensia, more or less, are saying it without naming names. They don't need to. Everybody knows the names. And everybody knows this charade of authorizing Kiev to strike inside the Russian Federation. This order was given months ago, not weeks ago.

And they also know that from now on it's escalation time. And it's slightly more complicated, because now it won't be escalation time in the battlefields. It will be escalation time in terms of a war of terror against civilians inside Russia. And that's why public opinion here, who instantly grasped where this is all leading, is asking for a radical solution, which is exactly what the Kremlin doesn't think along these lines. And that's the problem. So there is a rift at the top, we can say. There are some people at the Security Council, Medvedev for instance, who are much more radical than, let's say, classic Putinology, let's put it this way. But now, events on the ground in terms of...

There will be more attacks against civilians inside Russia throughout the summer. It's inevitable. So we are approaching a definitive response and then it's... Shoigu is not over there, but our friend to the right, Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, well, he has a few things under his sleeve. And it's not going to come from the minister of defense which is basically an economist it will be gerasimo himself with putin and say look shall we go for you know the head of the snake or at least some of the heads of the long snake it will happen and it's going to happen this summer wow pepe thank you very much my dear friend. I know you're traveling soon. I hope you can still continue to be with us on a weekly or biweekly basis. The audience loves you.

I love you. You're quite unique, and your knowledge is extraordinary, and we're deeply grateful that you're able to share it with us. Thank you, Judge. You're the best. Thank you so much. Thank you, my friend. Safe travels.

We'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Cheers. Bye you, my friend. Safe travels. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Cheers. Bye-bye. A great man with extraordinary contacts throughout the East and really throughout the world. Professor Jeffrey Sachs. At 11 o'clock this morning, Eastern, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski. At one o'clock this afternoon, Eastern, Matt Ho, longtime friend of Julian Assange. We will rejoice and we will lament and we will explain. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm