Judging Freedom - Prof. Glenn Diesen : Is Russia Ready for Peace?

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

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Today is Wednesday, November 5th, 2025. Professor Glenn Deeson joins us now. Professor Deason, thank you very much for your time, much appreciated. I originally wanted to talk to you about, is Russia ready for peace? But before we get there, can you tell us about the disputes going on in the EU as we speak over this confiscation issue? I'm talking about the threats by the European powers to confiscate hundreds of billions that are of Russian state assets on deposits in European banks. My understanding is that the Prime Minister of Belgium is saying no, and the President of Hungary is saying no, and everybody else is saying, yeah, go ahead, take the money, give it to Zelensky. Well, the reason why this discussion is coming back on now is because Europeans, they can't afford to keep the war going.

As we know, the U.S. has been trying to hand over more and more of the responsibility to the Europeans, so the weapons from the U.S. have to be bought by the Europeans. And in addition, the EU is covering a lot of the finances of Ukraine. Again, their economy is in shambles. So Ukraine has become a big expense. And simply because Europeans can't afford this is why desperation has set in. It's also worth noting that they did not do this in the past three and a half years. And the U.S. has made it clear they do not want to join in on seizing Russian funds.

So you have to ask yourself why. And this is because it would be a disaster. It would make the Europeans prior in the international financial system. They would become rogue states. This means to steal the sovereign funds of Russia. Who would ever park their money in Europe again? Why wouldn't we do this against the Chinese? Why wouldn't we do this against anyone else?

So it would be a huge self-harm. And I think people often, when you make this point, The immediate pushback is, well, Russia invaded Ukraine, you know, they should pay for what they destroyed, but you can make this case for any war. Why aren't countries around the world seizing American assets or European assets for any of their wars and giving it to the other country, simply because the entire international financial system would collapse? And this is what they're now considering.

Well, I commend President Trump for not going along with us, but what are they actually considering seizing the funds and giving them to President Zelensky, freezing the funds and pledging them as security for a loan, which would come from other assets to President Zelensky, are there a variety of proposals on the table that Lagarde and von der Leyen and Starmur and Mertz and Macron are all in favor of? Yeah, so there's different proposals, but the leading one is that these funds would be used as collaterals for a loan. And the assumption would be that in any peaceful settlement, the Russians would accept that these assets would have to go to Ukraine in a reparation.

Now, this sounds strange because this suggests that Russia would effectively be the losing side, accepting to pay reparations. And given that the Russians are winning, this makes very little sense. So I think it's quite obvious that this money will never be returned. But again, the idea which they're promoting is the idea that the Russians will eventually give this money away. Oh, my goodness, I can't imagine the Russians would give the money away. How much money are we talking about? I think it's around 250 billion. It's unclear.

But it has to be pointed out that these efforts to legalize theft, they already taken and stole a lot of the interest on the Russian assets. But now they're talking about taking effectively the principle. So it is, it's already a very dangerous path they're going down. And you see other desperate efforts being coming to play here. For example, the Dutch, they recently seized a Chinese tech company. So this is not what you do when you are confident. I mean, if your economic plan going forward is to start to seize the assets of competing countries, you know, it's a very short-term gain.

So I think this would be more harm for the Europeans than it would be for the Russians because I think the Russians, they're not really expecting to get this money back. They assume that it's being stolen already. Is the Prime Minister of Belgium acting? out of a moral sense of duty or a political ideology when he opposes this. I read some of what he said, and it sounds to me like he's making a very valid moral argument, similar to what you just summarized. We can't be in the business of stealing the funds from other state countries.

That either leads to litigation, which will lose, or to war, which will lose. No, exactly. And I think this is the problem. If you look at the legal argument, if you look at the common sense that in economics 101, you need to have trust, then this makes no sense at all. I think the problem is that within Europe, all the arguments being made now are those of morals. And the narrative which they've all bought into is this idea that the Russians just become this expansionist state that just unprovoked, invaded Ukraine. And it's the most reasonable and just thing in the world that they should pay for what they broke. So once you lock yourself into this position, any opposition is framed as essentially taking Russia's side. But this is an issue about preserving the financial order. Because, well, the international order will continue. It's just other countries will have to do the financing and the banking.

No one's going to trust the Europeans ever again. This is my point as well. Even discussing this, the Europeans sitting down, discussing whether or not they should legalize the theft of assets of other countries. This is already incredibly harmful. You know, other great powers are watching this. Who wants to park their money in Europe? It's a, yeah, so European, it's very. devastating to watch one of our chatter is one of the people that writes to us

says moral sense of duty by a European politician that would be a first well there's a funny clip there's a journalist who asks I think someone at the EU Parliament I might be mistaken who they're asking but if we're seizing the Russian money to pay for to give to the Ukrainians should we seize Israeli assets and give to the Palestinians and more or less the feedback is no well that's not something we're looking at at the moment so but this is the whole point you need rules you can't just say something is you know unique to this case or unique to that because no one outside of Europe is buying this and indeed the Europeans many are also seeing some profound problems with

this but again I think blow all this moral posturing and rhetoric The reality behind the whole thing, the reason why they didn't do this in the past three and a half years is the pure desperation. We are looking at a collapse here and there's no money for weapons. There are no money for financing the Ukrainian government. The Europeans, they can't afford to finance Ukraine more out of their national budgets because our economies are going south as well. So the French others, they're already stacked up too much debt. They're going to be devalued. So there's a need now to acquire some new money.

That's why they're looking at the possibility of legalizing theft instead. Professor Dyson explained to us the logistics. This money must be in more than one bank and more than one country. Is this a decision of the EU or is it a decision of whoever is the head of state of the country in which the bank is located? So let me make this easier. Do we know how many countries and what they are, which countries they are, in which the Russian state assets are deposited? Yeah, well, I'm not sure how the exact distribution,

but obviously a lot of the money is concentrated more in some states, rather than other Belgium, for one, is holding a lot of this in the euro clear. But you do need, the EU can't pull down. they don't have the mandate they do need the consent of its member states if i'm not mistaken but they need unanimous consent in other words can the belgian prime minister and the hungarian president either one alone stop this that's a great question i should have looked into that oh all right well you know i'm sorry i didn't mean to put you i didn't mean to put you on the spot i'm just wondering is this a a hypothetical debate

or a debate with real consequences. I read some of the language used by the Belgian Prime Minister and was very impressed with it. Yeah, no. Well, he pushed back somewhat hard here because there is a lot at stake. As I mentioned, there's no recovery after this. So once you have done this,

the repercussions will come in. I mean, the reason I compared it also to the Dutch case, of stealing the funds of the Chinese is the assumption that you can just get away with it what we for example learned in that case is afterwards the Chinese start cutting off the supplies of the chips to the Europeans because they seized their company

and as a result the European automotive industry are now in deep trouble and yeah it's the idea that you can simply control the escalation here It's a delusion. Once you take these steps and begin to steal the assets of other countries, yeah, there will be massive repercussions.

And it has to be pointed out that much, I think 85% of the world's population do not reside in countries that have joined in on the anti-Russian sanctions because they don't see this simply as some imperialist country trying to conquer another. They see NATO as having provoked this. And for that reason, they do not see any legitimacy in this. And even if it wasn't unprovoked invasion, we've had many of those. The idea that you're now just going to steal the assets. I mean, this is really crazy.

We do this in World War II. I mean, this is not being done. Makes you wonder why the Russians put their assets in those banks. Is any of this money in Norway? Again, I'm uncertain. I think, well, there are some assets. I'm not sure how much, to be honest. All right, and again, to be clear, these are not the assets of Russian oligarchs or Russian businesses.

This is Russian state money, the treasury of the Russian Federation. Yeah, and that's what makes it so extreme. If you just seize illegally the funds of some private person, then that's one thing. But stealing the sovereign funds of another state, that's usually consider not usually. That is a massive no-no. That's something that's not being done because countries will always have some form of armed conflicts, but we're still able to make sure that the international financial system is intact,

which is why this has never been done before, this idea of just taking, stealing the money. I mean, it's exactly because the Europeans, they do know that this is quite an extremist thing to do, which is why they have to dress it up and try to make it, look legit so they're framing it now in the form of our it's collateral for a loan however given that the russians did not authorize their sovereign funds to be collateral for any loans then it's still theft but but it's a it's an effort to make it uh soften the theft a little bit and uh

yeah that that's more or less what the mainstream media recognizing as well it's how to make this whole thing seem legitimate which is why i refer to that legalizing theft right right um the the the why did the russians do this do we know why didn't they put the money in their own banks well they i don't think they force could have foreseen that they would actually steal the funds take the funds but uh but there is a huge efforts now to diversify away from Western banks altogether. This is something that's been going on since 2014, especially since the coup in Ukraine.

This is when the Russian essentially gave up on the dream they've had since Gorbachev's dream of a common European home. When they gave up on all of this, and they began to seek an alternative international economic infrastructure working with countries in the East, such as China. that is to set up their own financial systems with their own banks using their own currencies for trade but also for reserves and their own payment system not to rely on SWIFT. So they've been working on this, but it doesn't, you can't really do this overnight.

And you see that after 80 years of having this Western centric now, well, more than 80 years, financial system, it takes some time to break away. But this is one of the top priorities. This is why the thing that helps this most to convince the rest of the world to decouple from the Western financial system is start stealing sovereign funds of other countries. This is almost a promotion for Bricks and other institutions to set up alternatives. Is there a court with jurisdiction over this? Or would the Russian state have to hire Belgian lawyers to go into a Belgian court and sue the

Belgian government and bank to prevent the confiscation or transfer of the assets. Again, I'm not sure about the legal pathway. As a judge, I should be asking you this question, I guess. But I do think that they have to go through. This is not a trick question. I really don't know the answer. I do think they have to go through the European system because, well, this is how the international system works, although there are international agreements.

So I'm not, again, I want to be careful before I answer. Okay, understood. Understood. Let's, we have a clip of Prime Minister de Weaver making this argument that impressed me so much. Chris. I'm not specifically looking at Norway. Every country in the European Union and even in the coalition of the willing, if they want to help Ukraine by seizing Russian immobilized assets,

that's a measure that has never been taken in history before, not even during the Second World War, immobilized assets have always been immune, they've never been touched. If we want to do it, then we have to carry the risks altogether. They have to be mutualized, they have to be guaranteed, and everybody who holds immobilized assets has to move together. These are reasonable conditions. As Norwegian economists point at Norway have a special situation because they have their oil plant, so they would not risk their credit liability if they just made a backstop. Do you agree?

Sorry, I'm not going to comment on what Norway has to do. Norway is not the EU member. This is the EU Council, so today I'm going to focus on what the EU needs to do. But I think there's a broader debate in the Coalition of the Willing. If the Coalition of the Will is not willing to be the Coalition of the Bill for the War of Ukraine, it has no sense to carry on. Strong comments consistent with the ones that he made in the actual debate. He did use an interesting word, and then I'm going to change the subject, use the word guarantee,

meaning if we seize these assets, what? We have to put the equivalent in another fund and guarantee that that will be used to repay the Russians when the war is over. That's almost ridiculous. Yeah, I thought it was also interesting his point, that if we do this, everyone has to be in on this. And that's more or less a collective suicide, though. If everyone jumps off the cliff, it feels a little bit safer. But at the end of the day, all the Europeans will suffer greatly from this. And as I said, even during World War II, one didn't do this.

It didn't mean that one supported Hitler. It just meant that you recognize that this is just going to lead to a financial disaster more than anyone for the Europeans. Right, right. How bad are the manpower problems in the Ukrainian military right now? We're seeing stories not in the mainstream Western media and not in the Wall Street Journal of the New York Times of the Washington Post or the major broadcast networks here. But we're seeing stories in alternative media of young men just being seized, stolen, kidnapped out of bars and nightclubs and on streets and places of work. and with minimal training being put in a uniform and given a weapon and sent to the front lines. We're also seeing reports of massive amounts of desertion.

Our friend Colonel McGregor reports 20,000 desertions from the Ukrainian military a month. I mean, that's huge. What are you hearing and what do you know about this? No, those numbers sounds about right. well the manpower problem is one of the key problems for Ukraine now and also a problem that can't really be resolved that is they've been fighting a war of attrition for three and a half years also they've made some foolish choices well selensky made some foolish choices whenever they have a city which is going to fall they seem to have traded the manpower for time that is to send

more men into cauldrons where they've been slaughtered in order to buy a little bit more time so they won't lose the city so fast. But, of course, in war of attrition, this is quite disastrous. And now you have this huge manpower problem, which was building up. The Russians, as a strategy, then tried to make this even worse by opening more fronts in Kharkov, Sumi, and other areas to stretch out the Ukrainian forces even more. And this creates a panic situation now in Ukraine.

So they have to drag people off the streets, They have to send them to the front without much training. And a lot of these videos of the young men being sent there, it's quite heartbreaking to watch because they don't want to be there. They know they don't have the proper training and most likely will die. So as a result, you have very high desertion rates. You have more people surrendering. They're taking much higher losses,

given that these are not all well-trained professional soldiers. They don't all have the motivation for being there. And so for this reason, it unravels faster. So this is a temporary solution which doesn't, well, in the long run, makes things even worse because with this aggressive recruitment tactics, now causing a lot of social unrest

and happiness among the population as well. And again, also when you're in the trenches, if you're a professional soldier and you're sharing it with a lot of people who don't want to be there and who are dragged there, you know it doesn't create a very good camaraderie and also on the front lines if you do have some pockets where the russians can punch through because there's manpower problems they can encircle a large amount of troops they can cut the communication there's a lot that starts to go

wrong once you struggle with the manpower so this is critical and this is why the europeans would like a temporary ceasefire so you can fix the manpower Because if you can't fix this, then it's all over. If you don't have the army, you can't continue the war anymore. Professor Deeson, thank you very much, my dear friend. A busy morning here and a busy afternoon for you, and I appreciate you joining us. I hope to see you again next week. Thank you.

Of course. Great conversation. Coming up at 3 o'clock this afternoon, Phil Giraldi, do we have a bully in the White House? Well, you know how Phil is going to answer that. Justin Paltona for judging freedom. Thank you.