Judging Freedom - Pepe Escobar: What Does Putin Want?

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

Pepe Escobar: What Does Putin Want?See 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, September 19th, 2024. Joining us from Moscow is our dear friend and dear friend of the show, Pepe Escobar. Pepe, I know it is midnight where you are. Thank you very much for staying up past your bedtime. I know it's not past your bedtime. The action is just starting here. We have a lot to talk about. And the laugh that we just had may be the only laughs that we have during the show. State Blinken and his British counterpart, Foreign Minister David Lamy, made it unmistakably clear

that they expected Prime Minister Starmer and President Biden to authorize the Ukrainians to receive and use long-term missiles that could reach deep into Russia. Something happened. By the time Prime Minister Starmer got to Washington the next day, a very angry President Biden said no. In the interim, President Putin had given a very mild-mannered but clear and unambiguous statement that if this happens, we will consider the United States and Europe to be at war with us and we will react accordingly. And the Speaker of the Russian Duma said, for those who don't understand, for those who didn't get it the first time, what the European Parliament is calling for leads to a world war using nuclear weapons. Do you think, and from your sources, or I should say it differently, do the Russians believe that Joe Biden finally came

to his senses, or was there an intermediary like maybe the Pentagon and the Secretary of Defense? Yes, the Pentagon as intermediaries, no question, because at least some generals, even if they don't have war experience at all, they know what that means. And Putin's interview was a masterpiece of restraint, in fact. It was a less than one minute interview in the street, in St. Petersburg, with the main square in the back and the Hermitage in the back. And he went straight to the point. He said, well, if you want to do this, it's very simple. The rules of the game will change. The nature of the conflict will change, and we will react accordingly. And obviously, NATO and the U.S. will be at war with

Russia. Here is President Putin. It's 45 seconds long. It's exactly as you described it. Cut number five. It is not about allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia with these weapons or not. It is about making a decision about whether NATO countries are directly involved

in the military conflict or not. If the decision is made, it will mean nothing less than the direct participation of NATO countries, the United States, and European countries in the war in Ukraine. This is their direct participation, and this, of course, significantly changes the very essence, the very nature of the conflict. This will mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are fighting Russia. And if this is so, bearing in mind the change in the very essence of this conflict, we will

make appropriate decisions based on the threats that will be created for us. Do you think that the Americans finally have come to the conclusion that Vladimir Putin means what he says? Apparently, yes, Judge, but not the Brits, by the way, because Russophobia among the British establishment and the ruling class in Britain is something atavic, and it comes from almost 200 years, even before the beginning of the Great Gain in the 19th century.

But there are realists in the Pentagon. And I wouldn't say there are realists in the Biden combo. Of course, Biden, no decisions at all. We know he's a zombie. The problem is the combo. And the combo is a congregation of neocons, ziocons, and lunatics, for that matter. And they think that they can provoke Russia virtually every week, week after week. And I don't know, Putin will never.

He's always threatening with red lines, and he doesn't do nothing. They don't understand the fundamental. Do you think Prime Minister's armor on his own will allow these storm shadow missiles to be fired as far as they can into Russia? Because my understanding, and you probably know this better than I do, is that even the British missiles would require the use of American satellites in order to guide... That's the most important part, Judge, because without the American satellite maze, NATO cannot do anything. So even if the Brits unilaterally, assuming that they have these storm shadows in Britain, which is not a given at all,

those that were in Kiev and other parts of Ukraine, apparently they're all gone. So they will have to come from somewhere, from Britain or from Poland and Romania, let's put it this way. That's not a given at all. And still, the NATO maze is controlled by the American maze. And the most important thing is reconnaissance, reconnaissance flights, or the satellite maze, and all that is American, it's not European. European, as we know, technologically are a wonder, but a negative wonder. Does NATO recognize that it is inferior militarily and from an intelligence perspective to Russia?

They will never admit it in public. But the fear, these guys in all this aggressive posturing, especially when we had Stoltenberg virtually spouting out something virtually every day. Now he's going to go to another job. Yes, they recognize that they are inferior and they recognize that they are dependent on the US for everything. But the most, the craziest part of the whole thing is that let's consider that we were possibly a few minutes away from the start of World War III last week. Yes, that was the case if we had this final green light from Washington, not from NATO in Brussels. The war that NATO really wants is not now.

They want a war in 2030. And this is in NATO's internal documents and in this project, NATO 2030. They believe, this is what they believe, that then they will be re-weaponized with enough troops among all the vassals to try a sort of remix of Operation Barbarossa in 1941, using basically the Brits, the Poles, the Germans, the Scandinavians, and the Baltic Chihuahuas. This is what they actually believed. What is the perception of the war in the Kremlin, and what is the perception of the war on the streets, in the shops, in the homes in Moscow? Exactly, and especially among businessmen, for instance, people who are in

corporate leaders, people who are in tech finance, people who are preparing the BRICS summit one month from now. It's a mix of... They are fed up with the whole thing, of course. They want the war to end. And at the same time, they understand that the Kremlin has its own timeline for the war. And they're not going to change their strategy. It's a war of attrition. They have gains, actual gains, in the battlefield and now also in Kursk. It's very slow.

For instance, for the past week, nothing happened on the front, basically. And obviously, this is, from a business point of view, it's a very complex and very multilayered approach. There are people here who are making a lot of money out of this war, part of the Russian industrial military complex. At the same time, there is a purge inside the Ministry of Defense conducted by Belousov, the new Minister of Defense, and he's fighting factions inside the Ministry of Defense. So this alters more or less what happens on the ground. Of course, it alters a lot what happens on the ground in several instances. You have, for instance, every week or so there's a general that is, okay, this guy is mega corrupt.

And obviously this didn't happen during the Shoigu era before Mosul. And Putin has to maneuver problems with the Ministry of Finance before the BRICS summit. How are we going to proceed with de-dollarization? Organizing the BRICS summit, dealing with the oligarchs, because there are a lot of oligarchs with double passports, interests on the other side, interests still in Europe, and at the same time, some of them refusing to invest as much as they could in the Russian economy. So Putin has to pick up the phone and say, well, show me the money. And on top of it, Judge, the fact that he's observing all these blows coming from the West and NATO because he doesn't want Armageddon tomorrow.

Are there hawks in the Kremlin who are pressuring President Putin to end the war quickly and with more aggression? And I don't know if such a thing exists. President Putin to end the war quickly and with more aggression? And I don't know if such a thing exists. Are there doves in the Kremlin who are pressuring him to do something else? I would say that in the Security Council there are no doves. Okay, no surprise. Definitely. Starting with Medvedev, which is, for all practical purposes, the number two in the government.

Well, his rhetoric is about as aggressive as anything we've ever heard. Because he's the one who, he's free to go unplugged, as I put it, usually. He can say what the other ones are very restrained. But now, even the Ministry of Foreign Relations, this is incredible. We are listing, for instance, a few days ago, Ryabkov, number two in the foreign ministry. He's the main Sherpa, Russian Sherpa coordinating the BRICS. Ryabkov said, look, if they go with this authorization to launch long-range missiles against the Russian Federation, our response is going to be his words, very nasty. This guy is a model of his ultra-container.

And they lost their patience already. All right, back to the Kremlin. President Putin is perceived in the West. Well, I'm not talking about the neocons in that crowd. They hate him. But those of us who are trying to be objective perceive President Putin as a model of patience, being patient and methodical. Are there people in the Kremlin to his right who are pushing him to end this in a week, decapitate Kiev, whatever? The security agencies, Judge, especially people in the FSB, very, very powerful and very close to Botnikov, the head of the FSB. And also foreign intelligence, Naryshkin, the SVR, foreign intelligence, virtually every week they're discovering terrorist plots against Russia from all over. The latest one that they

discovered last week is from Syria and it makes total sense. They found out that Budanov, the Ukrainian James Bond, let's put it this way, is in direct contact with the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which comes from Jabhat al-Nusra, which many of you in our roundness will remember that this is basically Al-Qaeda in Syria. Right. So they are in direct contact and they made a deal. He sent 75 drones, Ukrainian drones, to these jihadis in Idlib. He sent, I think, more than 200 Ukrainian instructors. And in return, he said, look, I want a lot of fighters from you guys to fight against the Russians around Ukraine and near the borders of the Russian Federation. So this was discovered by...

Have they arrived? Sorry? Have they arrived? Have the jihadist fighters arrived? Are they in Ukrainian uniforms? Not yet. Not yet. The deal is that first the Ukrainians are going to train the jihadists on how to use drones.

And then after they finish the course, there will be a direct line for them to go to Ukraine and near the Russian borders. Is Russia prepared to fight the United States? We're not there yet, Judge. We're not there yet. This is the long war. By the way, quoting Pentagon terminology, right? The war that we're just talking about a few minutes ago, the war that NATO wants in 2030, Russia is preparing for this war.

Russia is preparing for a remix of Operation Barbarossa, the Americans would be obviously involved because NATO cannot pull that off. Even if they have six years to re-militarize, to have even 3% of GDP invested in weapons, you name it. They don't have enough troops. They don't have the know-how. And obviously, they will be bogged down if they try an operation in Barbarossa against Russia. After the disaster in Kursk, what options remain? Well, after the disaster in Kursk and the refusal by President Biden to allow the long-term missiles, at least for now, what options remain for Ukraine besides recruiting and training jihadists

who may never see the battlefield because who knows how much longer the Ukraine government will last. Well, it's what I defined as the war of terror, which is a mirror image of what Israel is doing against Gaza and now against Lebanon this week. It's pure terrorism. Absolutely. Because most of these attacks, the Ukrainian attacks,

are, of course, they are attacking refineries. They continue to attack Crimea practically on a daily basis with waves of drones. They continue to attack Belgorod. But let's say it's a sort of half and half. Military installations, infrastructure installations, the Russian Federation, but also apartment buildings in Donbass or in Belgorod, or even in Kursk. So it's a of what we can define as the one war. There is one war going on, subdivided in different levels, especially between Gaza and Novorossiya.

It's basically the U.S. absolutely desperate to do anything to fight the end of the hegemony of being an economic power. So this is the overarching theme. And we can decline these themes in different parts of the world. For instance, they have successes in South America. Laura Richardson, the head of the South Com, she went to South America and basically she said that you have to fight Russia and China because we, the Germanic power, want to. Want to. And want you to do it. Tell me about Intel. How does the FSB and the SVR, the Russian domestic and foreign Intel, compare to the Ukrainian Intel, compared to CIA, compared to MI6?

Well, they are very well infiltrated in practically all levels of power and decision power in Ukraine. In Europe, it's more complicated, not as much. For instance, they don't have the network that the MI6 has all across the West, and the MI6 subordinates, let's put it this way, or associates around, for instance, Central Asia or the Caucasus. But if you think in terms of how strong is MI6 from Russia to Central Asia and South Asia, the Russians have better intelligence in all these latitudes. The problem is, let's say that MI6 is very creative. There is an MI6 connection to what happened with the pagers in Hezbollah. And we had this information from a very, very good Russian intelligence source, in fact. So what the Israelis were doing, MI6 was following, and they had their own agenda as well,

which is internal MI6 thing, a sort of revenge against Richard Moore, the head of the MI6. So the Russians know these kinds of things which are ultra secret. And then one or two guys, they tell a few journalists and analysts, look, this is what happened. But this is extremely privileged intel information that the SVR, I think they put this on public domain selectively once in a while to show that their reach is huge. What is happening soon with BRICS and what has happened recently with Pan-Eurasian security? Well, with BRICS, Judge, it's only one month. It starts on October 22nd.

Where? In Kazan. This is the big, big thing for the global majority and the global south this year. Everything that has been happening this year in Russia is leading towards the apotheosis, let's put it this way, will be the BRICS summit in Kazan one month from now. So they're going to have to have very, very serious decisions and far-reaching decisions, seducing the global south and the global majority to the BRICS project, accommodating the new members, as Lavrov is saying all the time.

There is this enormous list, according to Putin himself, 34 countries that officially already demanded to be part of BRICS is the real thing in terms of an emerging multipolar organization that can consolidate the path towards what we can call multipolarity. But I prefer Chas Freeman's definition, multinodal world. Okay, so joining this multinodal world, what is the benefit? It's not military. It must be economic. Yes, geoeconomic. For instance, last night I had a fantastic dinner with three very important players. I'm going to use this for a column, probably for the beginning of the week.

One guy is the head of a Russian international development organization, the other one is a finance tech wizard, and the other one is part of the BRICS business council. So we were there for hours and they were explaining to me the internal problems within BRICS to come up with a unifying project of path towards multipolarity that they will present in Kazan one month from now, and that can be easily sold to the other BRICS and to the global majority as a whole. And then one of them gave me a fantastic idea.

He remembered the famous Kissinger quip, if I want to call Europe, who do I call? And that's exactly the problem with BRICS. If you want to talk to BRICS, who do you call? It should be Russia, China, because they are the top BRICS in every level. And because they have a Russian strategic partnership. What are you going to do? You're going to call Putin and Xi and ask, tell us and ask tell us about bricks no it doesn't work like this so they uh and lavrov for instance he said

something earlier this this year which is very important we don't want this to become a rigid organization with a secretariat all that but they need it they need they need to be more formal because for the moment is something similar to a club. It's not enough because if they want to change the world really, which is the agenda of BRICS, from unipolarity to multipolarity, they need to be more integrated and more formal in the way they Are you talking about a common currency? Are you talking about the absence of tariffs and free trade? What are you talking about? One of the things that they should present in the summit is a very serious alternative payment system that can be implemented from now on.

The problem is there are different recipes for that. The Russian Ministry of Finance, for instance, they are betting on the BRICS bridge. I have been trying for 10 days, George, to get a simple definition of what is the BRICS bridge. Well, it would probably be something that would put SWIFT out of business or at least reduce it to the G7? Yes, but this is in the long run. In the short run, they have to convince companies especially, not necessarily government, but big companies, and then Russian, Chinese, Iranian, Egyptian, Emirati, Saudis to start using this payment system.

This is already an enormous challenge. And then governments are going to say, oh, this is working for big companies. Let's do it. But this is a long process. It's something that I always discuss with Professor Michael Hudson. Last subject, Pan-Eurasian security. The word security must involve military or law enforcement, or am I misreading this? No, you're not misreading it. And this is exactly what Putin said in June, that we can use the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

as the main framework to start our own pan-Eurasia mutual security arrangements. It's more or less, it's directly connected with what Putin proposed to the Americans at the end of 2021, I'm sure everyone remembers, indivisibility of security. Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the post-Soviet space. And now Putin will say, obviously, nobody from Europe is going to join.

It's open to Europeans as well. If they want to join, no problem. We start here across Eurasia with all the big players. And this is something that will also be discussed among BRICS, because it involves the BRICS in the Eurasia area. And now... Will Turkey be able to stay in NATO if it joins BRICS? And will Hungary consider joining BRICS? Well, Orban would love to be part of BRICS. And this week I heard that Vucic in Serbia should also consider it. And there are a lot of people pressuring Vucic

to apply for BRICS as well before the summit. Erdogan we're going to know in the next few weeks. I'm going to Istanbul in two weeks and then I'll learn on the spot what is Erdogan, we're going to know in the next few weeks. I'm going to Istanbul in two weeks and then I'll learn on the spot what is Erdogan's real game from my Istanbul contacts, you know, if this is real. Apparently it is. You're one of a kind. A, to stay up till midnight. B, to be able to speak with such knowledge and authority on such a breadth of issues. Thank you very much, my dear friend. I hope we can visit with you again in the next week or so. Thank you so much, Judge.'s a wealth of materials there. If you're interested, you'll see every column I've ever written, which is a lot. There's a lot of other very helpful materials there as well.

Help us spread our message by liking and subscribing. 440,000 subscribers today. Half a million by Christmas. Have a great weekend. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.