Judging Freedom - Prof. Glenn Diesen : Is Peace in Ukraine even Possible Now?

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

Prof. Glenn Diesen : Is Peace in Ukraine even Possible Now?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? the government? What if Jefferson was right? What if that government is best, which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now?

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Wednesday, February 4th, 2006. Professor Glenn Deeson joins us now. Professor, as always a pleasure. This morning, our colleague Gilbert Doctoro reports that in Abu Dhabi, the negotiations, the trilateral negotiations, United States, Russia, and Ukraine, people interacting with the negotiators when they leave the hotel where the negotiations are going on, report the Russians as happy and the Ukrainians as sad. Does that sound realistic to you? Well, it does make sense because the two sides are very far apart.

Of course, there are three sides here. The United States keep pointing out. It's not merely a mediator. But if these two sides, that is Ukraine and Russia, should be brought closer together, it has to be done through immense pressure. And the reality is that there's not much pressure that can be used against Russia. Four years ago, they would have been. But now, of course, as we have reached almost the end of this war and the Russians are holding,

well, let's say all the cards, it's very difficult to pressure them. So the stark reality is if Trump really wants for the Ukrainians and Russians to come, together. Most pressure has to be put on on the Ukrainians. When you say we're reaching the end of the war and Russia holds all the cards, of course I agree with you, do the Ukrainians, in your view, in their private intellectually honest moments, recognize, I don't know how you could know about their private intellectually honest moments. Well, do you think the Ukrainians recognize that? Well, I do.

I think there's obviously a massive focus on media management. I know often the statements coming out of Kiev will make it sound like they're perhaps irrational. They don't understand what's happening around them. But again, I think media management on the narrative control is a key part of this war. So it's important to signal to especially its Western allies that it can still win. They're still fighting because as long as they're saying this, then the weapons can come. and they can still stay in the fight, they have more to negotiate with. As soon as they admit the horrific situation the way it is, then that reality begins to, well, create itself.

And again, this is the same reason why the Western powers have been lying about the casualties in Ukraine. It's why they've been lying about the effect of sanctions. They've been lying about all the progress on the front lines. the casualty ratios. So it's putting a positive spin on it. But if you see some statements coming, for example, from the former head of Ukrainian intelligence as Budanov and others, from time to time, they do explain that the situation is quite dire.

They usually have to retract these statements fairly quick, given that it doesn't go down well with the public that is official communication. But overall, I think they know where this is going, which is why there's a need to put an end to this. But this war has many dimensions to it. Like I said, not only do they have to keep a brave face for the US and the Europeans, but within they have a public, which has a good reason to be disgruntled. Do you have a split between the political class and the military?

You have the right wing who has always functional. as a sort of veto power on whatever is decided politically. So there's a lot of considerations to take into place, which is why often you need people like Zelensky to speak in this big language and not making any compromises. Just one last comment was the former advisor of Zelensky, Arstowicz, he made once a comment about why this was dangerous, because Selensky had been said then for more than three years that we're winning, we're winning.

and suddenly, as thing goes really poorly, they have to now accept, recognize the massive losses and why they need to make a settlement. And he compared to a big tanker, once you've been pretending or giving, selling the narrative that you're winning for so many years, it's very hard to suddenly try to make the public prepared for difficult compromises. But the fact that they are talking about compromises are being difficult, it shows that they're preparing the public for, yeah, I would call it a humiliating defeat. Where is Ukraine getting its weapons from now?

I assume still from the United States and the Europeans. You still see weapons being shipped over the past two weeks alone. I've seen some, well, I don't double check always all the information, but you do get a lot of these images and the report. of flight delivering a lot of weapons, then the United States dropping off in Poland and then being shipped on into Ukraine. But as well, the Europeans are also either producing their own or buying American weapons. Either way, the weapons are still coming, but by far not in the necessary quantities. So this is why they're having both a problem now with manpower as well as military equipment.

And who's paying for these weapons? Is the US paying or are the Europeans paying US arms manufacturers? Well, the official deal because Trump said we're not anymore supporting this war because that was Biden's fault. The idea is that the US only sells weapons. But from what I understand is the US still sends its own weapons as well as provide some financing. So it's still Trump's war. I think much like I said on the Ukrainian side, There's a lot of narrative control on all sides, the Russian, European, but also the Americans. So I think a lot of the weapons and money going through is not necessarily through the Europeans alone. Got it.

The chief negotiator for the Ukrainians, is this their head of security? Or is this a person from the bandarist mentality? the crew that once said supposedly to President Zelensky, if you cave to Putin, you'll be hanging from a tree outside your office? Yeah, I think, well, the one who said that was Dimitri Jaros, is the leader of the right sector. And, well, as I said before, you also have other right-wing leaders like Biletsky, and who once stated that the mission for Ukraine. was to fight the Jews and fight for the survival of the white race. So a lot of the common neo-Nazi talk.

Anyways, they threatened the life of Zelensky in 2019 because he had run on the platform of establishing peace with Donbass and Russia. So they more or less threatened him. Either you reverse this or will hang you from a tree in Kiev. And not only did he reverse, but all of these people are now in top positions in his military and so it's yeah he had to cave to these forces which all right so he cave to them now he's got a cave to reality and they have to cave to reality is that not the case isn't it very obvious you said it a few minutes ago the war is nearly over and russia has all the

cards yeah well you would think so but it's very hard for the nationalists to accept this because again this has been a very from from their perspective of a very very long conflict and not just the past 12 years but they see essentially their whole history as being one of breaking out from from russia's shadow so i think there's a lot of concerns about yes well giving up now but um it's no i i i think they know what's happening but uh but uh But it's a very painful and humiliating peace which stands before them. So it's going to be very difficult to accept. But that being said, any horrible deal today will be much, much worse tomorrow.

Right, right, right. What is the Kremlin's attitude about peace? By which I mean, would the Kremlin stop short of its goals in order, to get Ukraine to give up its arms and the United States to rescind the sanctions? Or would there be a horrific backlash amongst the Russian people of President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov were to do that? Well, I think also on the Russian side, you have rational objectives, but then you also have to account for, I wouldn't call it irrational, but human nature.

That is, on the rational aspect, it's what is recognized is NATO's incursion into Ukraine is considered to be an existential threat. This is what the war has been about. This is why they want to have reassurances that there won't be any NATO membership or, you know, de facto membership that is giving, you know, base rights or something along the Black Sea Coast means getting Western intelligence agencies out of Ukraine. So this is at the core. And they don't really think that this can maybe ever be achieved, which is why the territorial concessions are seen as the ultimate guarantee to push back. This is why they also would like to see regime change, that if there's someone friendly in Kiev, at least, then it would be more likely to expel the Western intelligence agencies, which established themselves there after the coup in 2014. That being said, this will be considered to be rational goals, which if they can't get it through diplomacy, then they'll get it through common. conquest. But in addition to this, you can argue that throughout the military command to leaders

down to the regular soldiers, there's probably many who have the sentiment that a lot of blood has been invested here. And when they're this close to victory, that it would be foolish to not get back, not just the historical lands of Russia, which includes Odessa as a Russian city, historically a Russian city but but also yeah also to assure that this kind of regions like Odessa won't fall in the hands of the Europeans Americans or you know NATO all together in the future so I think yeah for for a variety of reasons there would be a pushback against a bad peace at this point in time yeah how many Russian troops have been

killed, it's more than a hundred thousand, is it not? It may be a few hundred thousand. Yeah, I think a few hundred thousand already. Again, I don't have a few hundred thousand mothers and grandmothers and wives and girlfriends. That's enough to cause a star in President Putin's life, no? No, exactly. And when wars are over, when all the battle-hardened men who have experienced horse on the front line come home, it's usually not without trouble either. So this is not just a problem for Ukraine. This will also be a problem for Russia.

But again, as we said, we have hundreds of thousands of deaths. It's then going to be very difficult to explain to the public. Well, what we got were some reassurances from the government in Kiev, which we don't trust. And the NATO, which continues to call for our destruction. Yeah, they have given us some reassurances like they've done in the past that they won't expand anymore. It's going to be very hard to sell this as a. victory. So I think they want very firm guarantees, which means not just written guarantees on no NATO expansion, but they want the territories to make sure that this is not within their control.

And ideally, regime change as well in Kiev to really make sure that this is a victory. In short, I think they want capitulation. And this is the problem that capitulation, if not on the battlefield, then in diplomacy. And this is probably why the demands are so high, which is probably why the Ukrainian negotiators are not looking very happy at the moment. Do you suspect that more than just Ukraine is being discussed? I mean, for example, might the Russians be offering President Trump some sort of an off-ramp with respect to Iran in order to get him to pull back on his often-stated plans to attack Iran? It could be. I think the primary objective, the principal objective of Russia is the European security architecture.

Because, sorry, I'll get to Iran, but the way this war is seen is the reason why we have a war in Ukraine is a symptom of a collapsing pan-European security architecture that we never established a mutually acceptable security architecture in Europe after the Cold War. Instead, the recipe for stability was just to gradually move NATO to the east and shift. NATO military infrastructure closer and closer at the Russian borders. So this was the main problem. For this reason, they would like to see a wider agreement so we don't play out a similar crisis because there's many possible flashpoints.

There could be efforts for regime-changing Belarus. We can have NATO trying to position itself in Moldova, Georgia. There's a lot of crises that could come. And we already seen some indications of this, what the Russians want. A few months ago, Keith Kellogg, of all people. He was giving an interview

and he was making the point that in a peace agreement, it might be necessary to also accept that NATO won't expand to Georgia or Moldova. So for me, this was a bit of source of optimism because it suggested that the White House recognizes that this is not simply war about Ukraine. This is a broken Europe. So we have to find a way of not basing security on expanding military blocks

but instead finding some recipe for indivisible security. You're telling me that I should believe the unbelievable, and that is that General Kellogg was recognizing reality for a change. Yeah, well, that's why I was a bit surprised to hear it from him. He's, you know, he said some horrible statements over the past few years. He's also by the one back in 2023 wrote that, something along the lines that using Ukraine to weaken Russia as a strategic rival, allowing us to focus on China. This was the somewhere of the acme of professionalism.

And I tweeted out his comments and that the and then he replied to me saying, well, this is something he learned it from Sun Tzu or something, which is I think he misread it, but but sorry, and it's going over to Iran, it might be something, Something could happen. I mean, I haven't seen any indications of it, but much like the way Russia took Obama's chestnuts out of the fire with Syria, that is after he had pledged to attack, something similar could happen now, of course, with Iran,

because I think Trump locked himself in. I think he wanted to sail his big armada up to Iran's borders and essentially make a little deal, like we'll bomb you a little bit throughout the day or two, three days. Just a few precision strikes, you can hit something, symbolic and then we'll call it a day essentially a bloody nose attack just as long as you don't retaliate then there won't be a bigger attack Iran essentially sees this as being extremely dangerous to make this into to allow its deterrence to be weakened in this way it would be like

iran suggesting just to bomb Washington a little bit so it's not going to happen so they made it very clear any attack and they emphasized this the foreign minister even wrote a tweet with you know any in capital letters saying if you attack in any way you will get full retaliation from us. That means striking any countries which assist you, all the U.S. military bases and assets in the region, you're going to hit Israel no matter if they participate in the attack or not. So essentially they will set the region on fire.

And this is problematic for Trump because I think he wants, you know, low-hanging fruit. He wants another Venezuela, like a one-day operation, sail home and claim victory. Do the... Does the Kremlin believe that Trump is a worthy negotiating partner? Because in 36 hours, the new START treaty expires. The Kremlin has offered to extend it for a year.

They haven't even gotten a response. They haven't gotten a yes, no, or a maybe. Is Trump waiting until the last minute, or does he want to foment a nuclear arms race? Well, I don't think they take him very serious as a partner, simply because it keeps switching back and forth. We've seen this with the Ukraine war as well. One day he's putting pressure on Zelensky. The next day he's angry with Putin. You know, you know he's going to go back and forth. And you can set up a formula in Alaska, which both sides agree upon. And then later on, he tries to go back and change their foundations.

Now, I think it's the same with the nuclear weapons because a few months ago he's making the point. He was saying US, Russia, China, we should all come together in a trilateral agreement to denuclearize. And now, of course, he doesn't even want to renew the new START treaty. And of course, when it comes with this great ideas like the what's called the Golden Dome, he doesn't seem to care that it disrupts the possibility of arms control. So I am, no, I think they seem as impulsive, a bit reckless. and his negotiation tactic. It's not possible to do what you usually do in this kind of dealmaking,

that you lay the foundations, you slowly build upon it. Instead, he keeps pulling out the bottom pieces all the time and want to essentially renegotiate. And this is the same problem he had with the Iranians. He tears up the JCPOA and then he wants another deal. But there's no reason to trust him after this because he can just rip up the deal any day and try to go for something else. So I was wrong when I said the new start expires tomorrow.

It expires at the end of the day today. Now it's 120 in the afternoon here in the east coast of the United States. So in 10 and a half hours, unless Trump accepts Putin's offer, that treaty has expired. Let me ask you. I'm sorry. I also thought it was February 5th, so I must have making a mistake as well. Yeah, yeah. This is a little off the wall, and it's not what you and I normally discuss, but it's Jeffrey Epstein because this creep from the grave has intruded himself into Norway.

Is the son of Norway's crown princess on trial for rape, and was he accused of committing another rape while he was out on bail waiting for the trial to start? Well, there are some, I'm not familiar with all of his crimes. I don't follow Norwegian media very thoroughly for variety of reasons. But, no, well, there has been a lot of problems with his criminal behavior, rape being one of them and also some problems with drugs. And yes, that's, well, I think that picture says a thousand words. But of course, his mother has. has been, who's the Crown Princess, has been having a very long relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

And the main criticism is that there's been just a lot of correspondence going back and forth. She visited there, I think, not just in New York, but also on the island. Even after it became known that he was a sexual offender, she still kept up the contact. And again, it's causing some stir in Norway, given that, well, the whole revelation reveals essentially that you have all this powerful networks of political elites who are, I guess, united by contempt for democracy, a preference of just, yeah, dispower relations and, of course, perversion. So I think there's, yeah, people want to see some blood. However, you know, we have other politicians who have done much worse things, but I think she's easier to sacrifice. When her husband becomes the king, does she become the queen?

And what becomes of this boy? Not a boy is a young man. Well, from what I understand, he's not the son of the prince. He came before. So I don't think I'm not quite sure I'm not following the royal lineage very well But but but the idea is that he should well she's supposed to be queen But we have now newspaper articles suggesting that this is perhaps she's not suited to be queen anymore Given you know given the

The inappropriate behavior now again there's I can understand this criticism very well I mean the monarchy doesn't have any power anymore it's more of a conservative purpose. It's more of a cultural issue or a national symbol. That's essentially their job. So if they can't even do this part, right, that is to present the country in a proper unifying way, then it's not a good day for the monarchy.

And so many are now arguing that perhaps she shouldn't be queen. Wow. All right. I'm sorry to have to bring this up. We normally are on a higher plane of the issues that we're discussing. But there's an interest in all this. This Epstein stuff is captivating the United States. I mean, the former president, Bill Clinton and his wife, former First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State are about to be interrogated under oath about their involvement, if any, with Epstein. And now the former president, Bill Clinton, who didn't want to testify, says he not only now wants to testify, wants the interrogation of being public. So this stuff just keeps going on and on and on on on on this side of the Atlantic. Professor Deeson, thank you very much. Thanks for letting me take you across the board,

including to this tawdry stuff involving this kid and his mother with Epstein. I appreciate your patience and your analysis as always. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you. Thank you, Professor. All the best. Coming up at 2 o'clock today, Colonel Douglas McGregor, and at 3 o'clock, the great Phil Giraldi.

Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.