Judging Freedom - Prof. Gilbert Doctorow: Does Putin Trust Trump?

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, January 30th, 2025. Professor Gilbert Doctorow joins us now. My dear friend, always a pleasure. Welcome back to the show. Thank you for letting me pick your brain every week. Professor Doctorow, from the perspective of the Kremlin, is the war in Ukraine effectively over? Practically speaking, yes. And I'd say that even reading the mainstream newspapers like the Financial Times and the New York Times, you can come to the similar conclusion, which amazes me that Mr. Trump is said to be influenced influenced in his rather ignorant and offensive remarks regarding Russia by disinformation coming from the CIA. I wonder why he doesn't just pick up a newspaper from time to time.

I understand that the Financial Times may not be in his class, but surely the New York Times is. After all, they have stooped to giving most of their readers gourmet news and restaurant reviews. So why isn't Trump picking them up? Well, what was the Kremlin's reaction to some of the absurd statements that he made? And we don't know if he made the shooting from the hip. He has a reputation for that, or if he was given intentionally false information. For example, when he said the Russians have lost a million troops, Putin is destroying Russia. What is the Kremlin reaction to statements as absurd and irrational as those?

Well, they don't take it personally. God! You know, that's the one hand. The other point is, well, there are two other points. One is that they think this could be part of his normal approach to negotiations, to deal-making, to put out a lot of bluster and to say things that are outrageous and to put his talking partners off balance. They may consider this to be just a game that he's playing. But I think the more serious interpretation within the Kremlin circles

is that it really doesn't make much difference who is the president. That the basic American foreign policy course is set by the deep state and the occupants of the Oval Office can only do little bits here and there but not really change the course of history which is being determined by the Deep State. Do we know if the Joe Biden pipeline to Kiev, through its various permutations, through Poland, through Romania, through Great Britain, etc., is still flowing? Well, even last night or this morning, the Russian experts were saying that they are aware of what many in your audience

are also aware of, that the United States has been shipping 90 slightly used air defense systems, Patriots, from Israel to Ukraine. So if that part is operating, then it can be assumed that other parts of the pipeline of American and Western arms to Ukraine continue to be open. Is there any geopolitical significance to this shipment that it's coming from Israel? I mean, are they prying it loose from Israel? Do the Israelis not want this? Is it second-rate material? I know you're not a

military person, but perhaps you can enlighten us on this. Well, I know that some military experts have said, perhaps it was on your program, perhaps it was on one or another of the widely watched programs of experts, military experts, talking about current events, they have said that these really are second quality and shopworn and Israel was simply disposing of what no longer has a use for. From the perspective of the Russians, that really isn't an issue. From the perspective of the Russians, whether it's first quality, second quality, whatever, it's useless because they are actively destroying patriots of first quality on the ground in Ukraine. Are the Ukrainians still firing American and British missiles into territorial Russia?

This is not being reported. And if it's not reported, I can assume it's not happening. The Ukrainians are very busy doing what they do much more effectively, though with less public relations value, that is firing their own attack drones against refineries and other critical infrastructure in Russia. And I say it has less PR value because these are cheap. These are simple

and they do not meet the standard of serious Western assistance that Mr. Zelensky demands for internal political consumption. So, the peculiar thing is that the most effective armaments against Russia in the Ukrainian arsenal are the cheap and simple ones that are working and doing a lot of destruction in Russia, whereas the attackers have had almost negligible destructive value because they're quite easily shot down by the Russians. We yesterday interviewed Patrick Lancaster, you may have seen the interview, the intrepid and courageous American independent journalist who goes right to the belly of the beast.

And he came to us from Kursk. I was shocked to learn that the battles are still going on in Kursk. There is nothing in the West about it. I have neglected to ask you about it. You're our eyes and ears. And according to Patrick, the noose is continuing to be tightened, but the Ukrainian troops are still there inside Russia, and they are killing Russian civilians. He saw that with his own eyes. Yeah, this has been featured on Russian news. And this morning on a program that I don't usually watch, something called Mashi, which is our boys,

there was a military intelligence expert who spoke and addressed just this question. The noose is around the neck, which gets thinner and then gets thicker because perversely the Ukrainian forces at the instructions or at the insistence of their president or ex-president Zelensky are continuing to throw the best trained, best prepared, best equipped military units in their armed forces into Kursk. That is to say that each time that we see the numbers of Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk being shot to hell and reduced significantly, the Ukrainian armed forces are dispatching replacements so that, according to this expert, the latest figures show that there are 30,000 Ukrainian troops presently in Kursk. That is an important consideration. It's not as though they just are being wiped out and exterminated. Here they're being exterminated and being replaced by others who are going to be exterminated. The issue has not gone away. As to the atrocities being committed against civilians,

this was also addressed on this morning's program, and I assume that your panelist from yesterday was not aware because he wouldn't be watching a program on Russian state television this morning. That is to say that the Russians are accusing the Brits of inciting the Ukrainian troops to commit atrocities in the hope and expectation that this will have a big political uproar in Russia and put pressure on Putin and destabilize the government as all kinds of terrorism do. And Russian state television has been interviewing soldiers who have shown, of course with restrictions on the video so that you don't see faces of mangled and tortured people, you just see

vaguely the bodies of civilians, grandmas and so on, who've been tied up, who've been tortured in their basements before they were shot in the head or elsewhere. So these atrocities are being shown on television, and they're preparing for something which has to be mentioned also. That is their own Nuremberg trial at the end of this, when they intend to capture and put on trial in Moscow, as many of those who are perpetrating these atrocities as they can. Wow. Is MI6 behind? If the Russian allegations are true and the British are fomenting this, that must mean MI6. They named precisely MI6. Wow. Wow. Could you imagine MI6 and Ukrainian military officers on trial in Moscow a year from now? Oh, very definitely. If Mr. Putin

succeeds in what he is now carrying out, implementing rather successfully, then there will be enough captured foreign advisors. And they definitely have been building a case. They have their investigators out after each atrocity to describe in a manner that is suitable for presentation in court what they have seen. Here's President Putin. This is a great interview. He's in the back seat of an automobile. You may have seen this two days ago. It's a long interview. There are many segments, but Chris cut a very nice one. And this is President Putin's view about negotiating with President Zelensky. Cut number 13, Chris. negotiate with anyone but he is illegitimate so he cannot sign anything if he wants to take part in the talks he can designate and appoint people for holding these talks it is a matter of signing these documents and their final versions so as to guarantee security for both ukraine and russia in the long run so everything must be

perfect in this regard but according to the ukrainian constitution the president of ukraine even during martial law a president of uk cannot bring term or stay in power after his term runs out. Only the national parliament can give the president this possibility. from Vladimir Putin talking about negotiation without getting into the technical niceties, and maybe I'm diminishing the significance of this because it's more than a technical nicety, but without getting into whether or not President Zelensky participates in the negotiation, how significant is it that Vladimir Putin is preparing for negotiations. And maybe this takes us back to my first question to you a little while ago, which was, in the Kremlin's mind, is this war over?

Well, the interview itself is very important. You'll notice that the reporter who was asking the questions, the same Pavel Zarubin, whom I have called Putin's shadow because he's always traveling with the president and taking where possible what look like spontaneous remarks and interviews are actually been well prepared and should be taken to be official Russian government positions. So everything that you heard is the official position. And that is to say that Mr. Putin is ready to agree to the start of negotiations

on the understanding that they cannot be signed by the present illegitimate ruler in Kiev, but they can be taken, prepared for signature by whoever is designated, finally, as a legitimate president. Note that this is is unlikely to be the constitutionally envisaged head of the parliament, of the Rada, because the Rada itself is technically illegitimate. It has also not had an election which was scheduled. Therefore, what Russia wants, aside from satisfying the nominal way, the demand of Donald Trump, that they enter into negotiations, what exactly Russia sees as the timetable for someone signing this document is not clear. But it would not be the military. That was also ruled out in discussion among these very well-advised Kremlin insiders. I mean, would the parliament, the legislature of Ukraine deputize some human being other than President Zelensky to possess presidential powers

and participate in the negotiations? It seems to me that's what President Putin was driving at in that backseat conversation we just witnessed. Their designation of someone is not foreseen by the Constitution. The acting president or the president of Ukraine can only be elected, but the Constitution of Ukraine provides for the acting powers of president to be exercised by the president of the parliament. I see. Switching gears slightly, you have reminded me and you've reminded everybody that reads your materials that next week is the 80th anniversary of Yalta. That's the conference in February of 1945 between Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt as they were convinced that the

World War II was coming to an end. Does President Putin have in mind, in your view, Professor Doktorov, another Yalta, this one with Donald Trump, a big picture negotiation for long-term peaceful relationships between Russia and Europe and Russia and the United States? I think that Vladimir Putin had this in mind from before December 2021, when he and his team presented their demands to revise the security architecture in Europe to the United States in one version and to NATO in a second version. I think he clearly was referring to what happened in Yalta, and there's more to it. It is not just what you just mentioned. The Yalta Agreement, aside from finessing, from putting finishing touches on preparations for creation of the United Nations, it also addressed security in the Far East. That is to say, it corresponds to what has been a topical subject among international affairs experts for the last six months or more,

that the end of the war in Ukraine should take in not just security in the peninsula at the western end of Eurasia called Europe, but also the eastern part of the Pacific part of Eurasia and deal with China and all of the security problems around China. So I would go on to say that in Mr. Putin's thinking, he probably has also a big three. There were a big three in the Alta, a big three now being Xi himself and Donald Trump. Fascinating, fascinating observations. This, of course, would presume that the conflagration in Ukraine was over. This is not the negotiation to end the problems in Ukraine. This is a vaster, grander scheme, which might play right into Donald Trump's personal and political aspirations? Very definitely. In the person of Mr. Trump,

the Russians have someone who understands spheres of influence, who understands, shall we say, real estate, and how it is divided up and distributed. This is a man who is speaking the same realpolitik language as they are. And if anyone had any doubts, you look at what he said in the first days of entering into the Oval Office

about his plans for taking over for reasons of state necessity, Greenland, and taking over the Panama Canal. This is the kind of big boys stuff that the Russians can relate to, not because they're dictators, but because they understand how the world works, how it always did work, and how it always will work, where, like it or not, might makes right, and they would like to align right with might in a positive way.

Does Putin trust Trump? He doesn't have to. Of course they don't trust the Americans. But as Reagan said, trust and check. And in that sense, it's a very limited type of trust in which they could enter into negotiations. But surely any agreements that they reach will be enforceable by Russian force of arms. And they will not be dependent on anybody's say-so or word of trust or good handshake. Those days are absolutely out of discussion. What's your view as to whether this grand Yalta 2.0 can come to pass and be successful? Or am I asking you effectively to protect the future? It would be very, very good, Judge, if after your meeting with Lavrov, you were invited into the

Oval Office to share what you learned and to put this kind of advice to Mr. Trump, because if he stops and thinks about it, this should be exactly what he could use both to introduce us to this golden age of peace that he was talking about in accepting the oath of office, taking the oath of office, but to put behind us all the wreckage in Ukraine that the Biden administration wreaked. Wow. Fascinating stuff, Professor Doctoroff. Absolutely, utterly fascinating. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for being our eyes and ears in Moscow. You know you can come back to us whenever there's breaking news, but we all look forward to these weekly sessions together, and I hope they'll continue. I hope we can see you next week. Well, very kind of you.

Thank you. Thank you, Professor. Have a fine day. And coming up later today at one o'clock here, Aaron Maté at two o'clock, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at three o'clock, the always worth waiting for Professor John Mearsheimer, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.