Judging Freedom - Pepe Escobar : Russia Readies War With NATO

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

Pepe Escobar : Russia Readies War With NATOSee 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, June 13th, 2024. Our special guest today is someone I have longed to interview and whose work I have admired from afar for many years and with whom I thought I would be dining in a 1905 Art Deco restaurant in Moscow until my end of the trip was canceled. recognized Brazilian journalist Pepe Escobar. Pepe, thank you very much for your time. Thank you for coming on the show. The audience anxiously awaits you. My enormous pleasure to be with you. Thank you. Thank you, my friend. Let's start right off. Is Russia preparing for a European war against NATO? Yes. Let's say the headline would be in the corridors of power from the Security Council to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Defense. They are ready. Their interpretation is that the order has been given without details for a hot war of Europe against Russia. So all their decisions follow this parameter. It's very, very serious. They have been considering for months. They have seen red line after red line being trespassed. President Putin in St. Petersburg last week, in fact, he talked about symmetrical responses to this authorization, which we already know has been given months ago to attack assets of the Russian Federation inside Russia.

So the escalation is inevitable and Russia is prepared for the escalation. This is extremely, extremely worrying. I was talking to a high official from the Ministry of Finance yesterday night and they are afraid and at the same time there is internal dissent on how best to proceed to fight the new tsunami of sanctions. Let me follow up a little bit. When you say the order has been given, do you mean that the Russians believe the Western order has been given to escalate this, or the Russian order has been given to prepare for this, or both? No, it's defensive. Their strategy is essentially defensive. They assume that the people who actually run the show, I'm not talking about emissaries or vassals or paid functionaries like Sullivan, Blinken, etc.

The people who really run the show, the Atlanticist show as a whole, especially in the US. The anathema, the absolute anathema is that the defeat in Novorossiya is practically inevitable. All our friends who come to your show, they know that and everybody talks about that. And here in Russia, they are pretty confident that it's a matter of time of when and how they're going to finish, when and how it's going to be the end game. The problem is they also know that this anathema from the point of view of the U.S. and NATO is stratospheric. And there was never a plan B. The plan B, which we are seeing now, is this ramping up of terror attacks against Russia. Like you have, for instance, Kiev's goons, let's put it this way,

with cluster munitions exploding in parks in Belgorod. And the targets are going to be children who play in these parks. And they are attacking civilian targets around, on the other side of Kharkov, and especially in Belgorod and in Sumy as well. And there is now a consensus, even a popular consensus in Russia, that this has gone too far. So there are people actually claiming out loud for a decapitation strike or to finish it off. And in terms of businessmen, this is something that you could hear on the sidelines in St. Petersburg last week. Why don't we finish this thing now? Because this

almost war, this is the current term in Moscow, has gone too far. We, from time to time, have an American scholar of Russia who understands Russia very well. I think you know him, Dr. Gilbert Doctorow. Of course. Right. And he has told us he expects the decapitation,

and the decapitation would be the leveling of Kiev, and it would be done in a couple of days. Is that something that the Kremlin is considering in order to bring this war to a termination before it's escalated into a NATO versus Russia land war? I would not say in a couple of days. Well, I'm sure Gilbert has excellent sources, of course. But what some of us have been hearing is something that could happen in the window of the next three months. One of my latest columns I titled The Summer of Living dangerously. Dangerously because of the NATO escalation and dangerous because

of the possible Russian symmetric and asymmetric response, right? So, by the way, in the next two or three days, do you know where Vladimir Putin may be? Where? North Korea.

Wow. Are the North Koreans we're going to veer off for just a little bit because I'm going to play a clip from Jacob Sullivan, which will raise your blood pressure, but are the, from friend to friend, are the North Koreans supplying munitions or equipment to the Russians? According to the Ministry of Defense, this is a state secret. So for all, especially for all of us foreigners who are welcomed here, they trust us, they believe that we are not going to propagate fake news, etc.

But there are some fields that are absolutely off limits. Example, assets inside the Russian Federation, very sensitive assets that are struck by Kiev's missiles. We cannot talk about that, really. So it's complicated because the Ukrainians, they control the PR and the PR offensive essentially. And what they say is what is reproduced by news agencies all over the world. And the Russian Ministry of Defense is silent about that. This is a serious problem that Russian military correspondents on the terrain, when they meet with the Ministry of Defense, they fiercely criticize this approach. He says, look, you're leaving the initiative to the enemy.

This is very, very dangerous. Here's the clip that I thought might raise your blood pressure. This is Jacob Sullivan purporting our guests, your colleagues, many of whom you know, Larry Johnson, Colonel McGregor, Scott Ritter, have derided this, but I'm anxious to hear your thoughts. He is purporting to justify to justify the use of American offensive weaponry to attack sites inside of Russia. Cut number four. From the president's perspective, this was common sense. What was happening up around Kharkiv, which was new just in the last couple of months, was a Russian offensive where they were moving from one side of the border directly to the other side of the border. And it simply didn't make sense not to allow the Ukrainians to fire across

that border to hit Russian guns and emplacements that were firing at the Ukrainians. So the president authorized that. The Ukrainians have carried out that authorization on the battlefield. And one thing I will point out is that the momentum of that operation in Kharkiv has stalled out. Now, Kharkiv is still under threat, but the Russians have not been able to make material progress on the ground in recent days in that area. And the United States will continue to support Ukraine in holding the line and pushing back against the aggressing Russian forces. Pepe, is this credible or is it White House propaganda?

I think I need to go to the hospital. With a blood pressure. Look, it would take half an hour to debunk sentence by sentence, but it's a waste of time anyway. Okay, obviously, it's total propaganda because this has been happening for months now. It's not only around Kharkov. It's way beyond. It's all over Belgorod.

And the attacks on the raiders, they were near Krasnodar. And another one, a failed attack, was in Orenburg. Orenburg is 1,500 kilometers away from the front lines. And this has been happening for weeks now. So the narrative that is being built by the White House, by Sullivan and company, is that this is perfectly legitimate because it involves the battle for Karkov. The Russians don't want a battle for Kharkov. It's a trap. They want to make the Ukrainians believe that they are going after Kharkov now. So then when they have all the Ukrainians in the same place, they're going to

incinerate them, which is what they are already doing methodically. It's once again building a cauldron with Kharkov as the excuse. Any good military analyst will know that. Our friend Scott Ritter, of course, will be the first one to understand. Right, right. Our friend. The Ukrainians don't. And NATO doesn't. Right. Is there a perception amongst the Russian people, comma, or in the Kremlin that Americans are attacking inside of Russia because it is American equipment, some so sophisticated and requiring top secret clearance to use it, that they're actually being operated by Americans.

Absolutely, yes. This has been confirmed post after post by Dmitry Medvedev. And it's great because he's always unplugged. He can say things bluntly in a very colorful manner that Putin and the people in the Security Council or even the Minister of Foreign Affairs cannot. At the level of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lavrov is already saying that in public. He actually said that in his two latest press conferences, before and after the meeting of the foreign minister of BRICS earlier this week in Nizhny Novgorod. The Security Council as a whole, when they say something, is along the same lines.

And the Ministry of Defense, when the problem is their press conferences were boring to tears and they have no idea how to deal with soft power session. But when they say something reasonably intelligible, they say basically the same thing. And the perception in among the best Russian analysts, diplomats, and when you look at the geopolitical shows on Russian TV at night. Wow, that is even more hardcore because they state explicitly and showing the weapons that are being used that this is a direct NATO attack against assets inside the Russian Federation.

So for all practical purposes, the consensus from the corridors of power to the media and now at a popular level, is that NATO is already engaged in a hot war against Russia. And that's what makes it so incandescent, the whole thing. Because then public opinion starts asking, okay, what about the red lines? What about the decapitation strike?

What about the symmetrical and asymmetrical responses? And for the moment, there are none. Well, President Putin is a far better diplomat and geopolitical strategist than anybody in the West. He's also far more patient, I think, than many of the folks that you're talking about who want him to do the so-called decapitation and get this over with. You mentioned another superb diplomat, Sergei Lavrov. Here's what he said in that press conference you were talking about. Now, he's talking a little bit about BRICS and the transformation of culture and economy.

But he's talking big picture, the change that's happening before our eyes. Cut number five. A profound transformation of international relations is taking place in front of our eyes it is associated with the formation of a more just polycentric system of the world order which would reflect the entire palette of cultural and civilizational diversity of the modern world ensure the right of the people to determine their own destiny and their own path of development. The main trend is the strengthening of the voice of the world majority, states outside the collective West Caribbean.

It's almost as if, if the war were over tomorrow, if Ukraine surrendered tomorrow, if Ukraine became neutral non-NATO tomorrow, things would never be the same as they were two and a half years ago. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because now, and this was something that we saw in a matter of a few days between the St. Petersburg forum last week and the meeting of the BRICS foreign ministers in Nizhny Novgorod on early this week, Monday and Tuesday, essentially. Lavrov's address at the meeting of foreign ministers and then the Q&A afterwards was absolutely priceless because he managed, in a manner of, I would say, maximum 10 minutes,

the whole agenda of the drive towards what President Putin, the last phrase of Putin's address last week in St. Petersburg. Russia now is the capital of the multipolar harmonic world, which is a very Chinese concept. Harmony is a very, it's Chinese culture, essentially. It proves once again that Putin and Xi are discussing at the highest levels. And the key words that we were listening to in St. Petersburg were polycentric world. terms of nodes that intertwine and talk to each other, much more than poles.

I think this terminology is absolutely perfect. And the Russians, they have already adopted the multi-nodal perspective. And at this meeting of the foreign ministers, there were invited BRICS plus observers as well. Thailand was there, Turkey was there. Thailand now, and this week Thailand said we want to be part of BRICS as well. Turkey, well, we know Erdogan, he's a dribbler in football, soccer, he always dribbles. And people in Istanbul... Never scores the goals. Never scores a goal! But people in Istanbul,

very good academics and diplomats are saying, does he really mean that? Because obviously, he's looking at the chessboard, he's looking at NATO, and he's looking at Eurasian integration. He saw what happened at the St. Petersburg Forum, and he saw what happened at this meeting of foreign ministers. He saw that there are 59 countries that want to be part of BRICS, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and Eurasian Economic Union.

So Turkey has to be part of it or Turkey will be left behind as a spectator. Well, Pepe, this will be profound because not only will Turkey be joining it, but in order to do so, it has to formally leave NATO, which as far as I know has never happened since they started NATO. Exactly. I know that Sullivan got under your skin a little bit. We have a spokesperson in America who's a retired admiral who's a bit of a clown. He's probably going to get under your skin even more when we play this. So this is Admiral John Kirby, whom I met many times when he was around, and I was at Fox, but he's claiming

that the Russians haven't made much progress and they've stalled. But hold your fire. Cut number eight. I do think it's important to remember they haven't made much progress. For all the effort and the ballyhooing about what they were doing or trying to do at Kharkiv, they've basically stalled out. Once they hit the first line of Ukrainian defenses, that was kind of it. And now they're reassessing, we think, about what they might do next. So they still can be within range of Kharkiv. I don't want to diminish that. That's why we're giving the Ukrainians permission to strike across border at imminent threats. But they

have largely stalled out. And Mr. Putin has achieved none of his strategic objectives. How can he say that? This is the official spokesperson for the government of the United States of America. Quote, Mr. Putin has achieved none of these strategic objectives. Well, as if this paid shill would know what strategy is, and especially what kind of strategy is devised by Putin, the Security Council, and the Russian Ministry of Defense? Okay, that's number one. Number two, in fact, the strategy has been announced since February 2022,

the basic strategy that they are fine-tuning for the past two and a half years. Demilitarization of Ukraine is proceeding the way the Russians wanted. Crawling like crabs, the meat grinder approach, and then, of course, that absolutely astounding artillery barrage. That's the way they do it. And minimizing Russian casualties. The other part of the strategy, which is the denazification of Ukraine, is way more complicated because it's a matter that could last one generation, maybe even two. And now we see, for instance, the Americans re-weaponizing the Azov battalion.

Yes. the Americans re-weaponizing the Azov battalion. Yes, I wonder if this is done just to irritate the Russian people and the Russian culture because we all know what those swastikas tattooed on people's arms represent. You're totally right. I went to Mariupol twice this year, in February and in March. They showed me around. They showed me all the progression of Russian forces until the liberation of the Azovstal ironworks. And I talked to the local people

who actually witnessed it and survived all that. And of course, they said, look, of course, these are neo-Nazi battalions and the way they treated the people who they made hostage before they were liberated by the advancing Chechens and militias from Luhansk and Donetsk and the Russian army, etc. These people will never be forgiven. And many of them, they grew up here. They didn't come from Western Ukraine.

So there were pockets of neo-Nazism in Donbass all these years. And they were cultivated since the 90s. Because the Ukrainians, since the 90s, since the beginning of Ukrainian independence, they had a very dodgy relationship with their Nazi past in all Ukrainian latitudes, including Donbass. So from the point of view of the whole of Donbass, Novorossiya as a whole, this is worse than Nazism in the Second World War. And these people are now being rearmed by the United States. Let me raise what we call in America the third rail.

That is the use of nuclear weapons. First, does the Russian hierarchy, the Security Council, the Ministry of Defense, etc., the folks you were mentioning earlier, fear that the Americans are foolish enough to do this. Yes. They do. Oh, my God. That must mean that the Russian hierarchy is prepared to respond in kind. It's true. They don't want to do it, but it's a contingency and there are several scenarios for a contingency like this. would be a tactical nuclear weapon attack profiting from raiders that would be incapacitated

before, installing doubt on Russia. Is this a nuclear attack or not? Or is it just a ballistic missile or a series of ballistic missiles? And this Ukraine attack on these two raiders a few weeks ago, they were probing. One of them was totally failed, but the first one, they didn't manage to incapacitate the raiders. They incapacitated a little bit of the towers, according to the photos that we saw. But this was already a test. And the Russians took it very seriously. That also explains the censorship by the Minister of Defense.

We cannot talk about this because this is extremely, extremely sensitive. And of course, now they are preparing for these eventualities. So Putin was relatively cryptic when he mentioned symmetric responses. He was trying to imply that the responses could be also asymmetric without giving any details about it. And of course, he let it... In fact, it was more or less obvious that Russia could experiment with providing long-range weapons to allies in different parts of the world that could target the 800-plus American empire of bases as well.

It could be in the Caribbean, it could be especially in Syria. The number one scenario circulating here is that these weapons could be sent to Syria as soon as possible. But the whole nuclear charade is the Russian doctrine remains the same. As Putin in the Q&A after his address in St. Petersburg, he was very clear. And the guy who was interviewing him, Sergei Karaganov, Karaganov is a decapitation strike guy and is a nuclear first strike guy as well. He's very good. He's very knowledgeable, but he already lost his patience. And he says it publicly because he has enough clout to do that.

And he was interviewed in the president of Russia, and Putin was, we can venture to say that he was slightly uncomfortable with that, because he had to repeat that the Russian nuclear doctrine has not changed. It's a defensive doctrine if we see that we are under a nuclear attack, or if we see that we are under an attack that threatens the stability or a existentialistential attack against the Russian Federation, which could be, for instance, if they suspect that this is an F-16 carrying nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. And now that they know that this could happen, it's part of the beyond red line scenarios. And it's right in front of them.

Yes, go ahead, please. Now, here is President Putin making those comments on the use of nuclear weapons. Number 13, Chris. The use of nuclear weapons is possible in the event of an exceptional threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country in exceptional cases i don't think this is such a case right now there is no necessity for that very uh short sweet success we should right now should the amer. You're not there right now.

PASTOR MIKE. Should the Americans... PASTOR BARRY. Right now. This means we are not there yet. PASTOR MIKE. Right. Do the Americans understand that Putin and Lavrov don't. They don't. They simply don't. First of all, because of the shallowness, the intellectual shallowness of the White House, National Security Council, Pentagon, spokesmen, CIA, etc. And the people who we would assume have learned something about Russian culture.

Take William Burns, for instance. Apparently, he didn't learn much when he was stationed here. Right. No, they don't bluff because people need to bluff. Their agenda is very clear even before the beginning of the SMO in February 2022. So we have to go back to the end of 2021. Those famous letters about indivisibility of security sent to the Pentagon and NATO, and they were met with a non-response response.

This is the Russian strategy. Let's sit down on the same table and talk about security for everyone. U.S., Western Europe, Eastern Europe, post-Soviet space. Last subject matter. What is the story with Russian ships and a nuclear-powered submarine in the Bay of Havana, Cuba, as we speak? This was something that was already organized months ago. Of course, it's an exercise. It's a symbol of Cuban-Russian friendship, of course.

They are not carrying nuclear weapons, but they are carrying a lot of hypersonic zircons. So this is a demonstration. And no wonder the Pentagon is freaking out about it. And they simply don't know what to say or what to do. The Russians go there, they go to Cuba, they're gonna do some exercises. This fleet is going to stay in the Caribbean for a while, maybe for another month or so, and then they're coming back to Russia. It's a demonstration saying, look, and this is not even what, you know, the cream of the crop, it's our submarines, our invisible submarines that you don't even know where they are. The American fleet has been in the Black Sea since 2007, undergoing regular, consistent, systematic preparation for whatever. How much longer? You mentioned three months earlier.

I don't want to pin you down unless you have a strong feeling about this. How much longer do you think the war in Ukraine will go on before Zelensky's gone and somebody's willing to talk to President Putin about ending it? Well, when Shoigu was a minister of defense, he actually gave a date. The SMO will go to 2025, he said on the record. Now everything is being revamped at the Minister of Defense. Now we have an economist as a Minister of Defense, and he is organizing Russia to be extremely efficient economically

in a situation of war. Russia is at war, even though the average citizen walking in the streets of Moscow doesn't notice it. But the economy is largely militarized in a sense. And at the same time, the impulses to the different regions of Russia continue at the same time. So they are capable of doing everything at the same time, which they proved in St. Petersburg. And when you talk to regional representatives in St. Petersburg last week, they were confirming, look, there's a lot of federal investment everywhere, you know, in Siberia, Yamal, a peninsula, Kamchatka, Sakhalin Islands, Buryatia, everywhere. So this is what's fascinating.

They are economically, geopolitically, military. They are reorganizing and solidifying the country in every aspect. And that's what makes it very impressive, especially for us foreigners. And when we compare what's happening here to what's happening in the West, the contrast is mind-blowing. But these three next months are going to be crucial because there's a discussion here, a very lively discussion, that if the Americas want a false flag, it's going to happen this summer because after September, we took close to the American elections.

Right. And that's why we are in the summer of living dangerously, literally. To bring us back to your column, Pepe, this has been a terrific and most informative, most authoritatively informative conversation. I'm deeply grateful, as are the many, many folks watching and who will be watching. One more question. Will you come back on this show, my friend?

Anytime you want, Judge. You are the judge. Thank you, Pepe. God bless you. Godspeed. God bless you, too. Thank are the judge. Thank you, Pepe. God bless you. Godspeed. God bless you, too. Thank you so much. Thank you. Wow. What a remarkable conversation in which we all

have been privileged to participate from a truly remarkable world-renowned man, and I hope many people watch this. In the meantime, Max Blumenthal, 4 o'clock Eastern. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thanks for watching!