Judging Freedom - Putin's forces raid Prigozhin's mansion | Ukraine Latest | w/ Col. Douglas Macgregor

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

Putin's forces raid Prigozhin's mansion | Ukraine Latest | w/ Col. Douglas Macgregor#ukraine #russia #franceSee 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, July 6th, 2023. It's about 1.45 in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now for his regular weekly appearance on Judging Freedom. Colonel McGregor, always a pleasure. Thank you very much on behalf of my audience and me for giving us your time. So what is your view, maybe the collective view of your friends and colleagues in the defense and intelligence communities of what the heck Yevgeny Prokhozhin did. President Lukashenko announced he's no longer in Belarus and will show in a few minutes a montage of what the FSB says are leaked materials that they found when they raided his house,

including an enormous cache of weapons. Was the march toward Moscow a real coup, or was it some sort of a PR stunt? I think it's probably a little bit of both, but I don't think that he was genuinely expecting to overthrow Putin. I still think his principal targets were Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, and Shoigu, the minister of defense. That's really what he was after. And if there was anything else in his mind, well, then he's certifiable, which some people think is the case anyway.

When you say he was after them, Colonel, you mean to do them physical harm or to challenge their dominance in office? I think trying to challenge their dominance, hoping that if he made enough noise and threatening gestures, he could induce President Putin to replace them. That was his, you know, fondest hope, but at least force a change in the conduct of operations. That's very clearly the case. He and he's not alone is a very strident advocate for doubling down on the war. Nobody hears or utters a peep about the Ukrainian spring offensive anymore. I think right now the situation is as follows. I think Putin privately has thought through carefully the wisdom of replacing some generals. I think we will see continued shakeups in the high command. Having said that, I also think he is now at a strategic inflection point. Russia is in the driver's seat. They hold a strategic initiative. He has to decide what he's going to do. Will he sit until after the 10 July meeting in Vilnius, waiting to see what comes of that meeting, if there's any

possible chance of an end to this war through means other than military? Or does he simply say enough's enough and advance on multiple axes into the rest of eastern Ukraine and then ultimately down to Odessa? I mean, he can do it. He has an inexhaustible supply of forces. And again, I think he's been holding back largely because he doesn't know what NATO will do, and he does not want to provoke NATO intervention. But he may discover after 10 July that that's probably going to happen anyway. 10 July is all of NATO, plus, I guess, Sweden, not yet in, and Ukraine, right? They'll all be in Vilnius. Yes. And remember, the Poles and the Lithuanians have already talked about intervention,

going in in some sort of joint matter, whether it's a joint brigade or a larger force, into some part of western Ukraine. And they say they're going to go in quite apart from NATO. In other words, they're not necessarily going in as sponsored by the NATO alliance. I don't know what any of it means. I think they're lunatics. I think it's stupid and crazy. And I'm sure the Russians feel the same way.

But if you're sitting in Moscow, you say, well, perhaps I should wait for this to happen before I unleash the offensive. We may have talked about this about a year ago. Is the Polish army seriously to be reckoned with in terms of size and skill and lethality? Well, first of all, the Poles are excellent soldiers. Very good. So are the Lithuanians. So man for man, they're some of

the best troops in the world. Let there be no doubt about that. Secondly, they don't have the lethality that they would like to have because they don't have the vast arsenals of equipment and technology that they would need to take on the Russians. They've had to depend very heavily on us for that sort of thing. And I don't know how much ammunition they have for the weapon systems that they own. So moving without adequate preparation is very dangerous. And I think that is what they would be doing. Getting back to Prigozhin, is he long for the world? Is he likely to be prosecuted?

Was there a deal that he would be in exile in Belarus, and yet he appears now to be back in St. Petersburg? You know, your guess is as good as mine. The important thing is that President Putin has come out on top in this whole business. When Prigozhin did what he did, regardless of what his motives were, it turned out that he had no support from anybody who counts. And right now, President Putin is riding higher in the popular polls than he ever has. So from that standpoint, that's what counts most. Okay. Here is Yevgeny Prigozhin speaking on his own, not YouTube, but one of the Russian channels with English translation. This is just a day ago from St. Petersburg.

Today, more than ever, we need your support. Thank you for that. I want you to understand that our march of justice was aimed at fighting traitors and mobilizing our society. And I think we have achieved a lot of it. In the near future, I am sure that you will see our next victories at the front. Thanks, guys. Guys, doesn't look like he's under house arrest to me. No, he's talking about future victories, which I think is very clear and very inevitable. You know, this is the man that wanted to stop the military leadership of the Ministry of Defense from dismantling the Wagner Group.

Remember, Wagner was only supposed to be employed beyond the borders of Russia. And they're much like the French Foreign Legion. The French Foreign Legion is always external to metropolitan France unless there is a major war, then the French Legion can be brought back to French soil. Similar situation with Wagner. And a lot of people have been uncomfortable with the fact that Wagner, that was supposed to be overseas, ended up fighting inside Ukraine. However, they fought very well.

They did not fight alone. They had lots of support and assistance from the Russian military. But obviously, Mr. Progozhin was unhappy with the relationship that he had with the senior leadership. And that keeps coming up. And I think when he talks about we achieved a lot, he may think that he's achieved something in that department. So the FSB, the Russian federal security folks, have taken a page from their counterparts

in the U.S., the FBI. As you know, the FBI are the best leakers in the world of damaging evidence about someone they are investigating or contemplating prosecuting, or that the DOJ is actually prosecuting. Here's a montage of photos, videos, and still leaked by the FSB. I mean, that is Progozhin in a series of disguises. He looks better there than he does in real life. It's a framed photo showing severed heads of exiled private military leader Progozhin's enemies,

a huge cache of weapons, including assault rifles and ammunition, found by the FSB on Wagner's property, a closet with different wigs and disguises, gold bars and Russian military uniforms, currency worth 10 billion Russian rubles. Do you think this stuff is real? First of all, I agree with you. He probably ought to find out whoever the makeup artist was for the FSP and hire that person permanently because he looks a lot better there

than he does in person. You know, who knows? I mean, sure, it's eminently plausible that the cash and the weapons could have been found on site, no doubt about it. The uniforms and medals, that seems bizarre, but maybe they're trying to cast him as an opera buffoon. I don't know. I mean, clearly this was not done to help Rogozhin, so let's leave it at that. Okay. Let's get over to Ukraine, and I want to start with a statement that President Zelensky made over our 4th of July holiday, warning that the Russian troops have placed

resembling explosives on the roof of several power units in the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, perhaps to simulate an attack on the plant. Perhaps they have some other scenario. But in any case, the world sees, can't but see, that the only source of danger to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is Russia and no one else. The only source of danger to the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant is Russia and no one else. Do you think he's setting the stage for a false flag, perhaps timed for NATO in Vilnius? Well, as we've said for a long time, if the Ukrainians accuse the Russians of doing it,

that's something they're either doing themselves or plan to do. I think it's eminently possible. He is in such a desperate state right now, along with what remains of the Ukrainian military, that he's capable of almost anything. So I would not write it off as impossible. Obviously, the Russians have not done any of the things that he said and we've had uh inspectors from the International Atomic Agency go in there look at everything and report you know in great detail so we know the Russians have not done the things that he's accusing them of more important the Russians have tried desperately to protect it in the past from the Ukrainians who've shelled it and so forth. No one in their right mind wants to radiate the soil in Ukraine,

some of the richest soil in the world. Why would you do such a thing? But the man's desperate. It's over for Zelensky. He knows that. He's got to come up with some desperate move in his mind, or he fears being abandoned finally by the West. Would his crazy neocon American masters possibly consent to an attack on the nuclear plant and disregard the catastrophic consequences to human life that could come from that? Well, you know, I'm inclined to say that they're more sober-minded than that in Washington. But any Las Vegas gambler would tell you that when you're losing, the biggest mistake you can make is to keep investing or increasing your bet. In other words, why increase your bet when you're on a losing streak? Ukraine is losing. It's been losing for a long time. It's at the end.

So what are we doing? We're promising more sophisticated weapons with greater range that present greater danger to the Russians. This is sheer insanity because all it will result in, ultimately, is a decision that results in the destruction of the Ukrainian regime and whatever remains of its armed forces and state. Because the Russian looks at this and says, you know, there's no one in the White House. In other words, the lights may be on in the White House, but there's no one with any common sense at home. So we've got to go finish this thing. Colonel, earlier today, you and I talked off air or communicated off air about an NBC News report that Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov met with some former American officials, what have you, of the Council on Foreign Relations to lay the groundwork for peace negotiations.

Is this orthodox? Is this legitimate? Is this believable that Lavrov would have met with ex-U.S. officials? Well, supposedly Foreign Minister Lavrov has denied this entire affair. Now, having said that, if you look at these individuals, Haas, Kupkin, and Graham, all three of these individuals are indistinguishable in fundamental terms from Tony Blinken, Victoria Newland, or Sullivan, or any number of people on the NSC staff. In other words, why would he bother meeting with them? Why would he believe that anything they promised would be any more true or reliable

than what he hears from the Biden administration? It doesn't make any sense. Remember, just a short time afterwards, he did meet with Burns, or I guess he didn't, but Burns met with some representative from the Russian side in- Burns, that's the head of the CIA. Right, in Istanbul in May, I guess he didn't, but Burns met with some representative from the Russian side. Burns, that's the head of the CIA. Right, in Istanbul in May, I guess. That was pointless, apparently, because, again, we're not in the listening mode.

We've switched off the phone in that sense. We're there bloviating, but we don't listen to anything that the Russians had to say with the inevitable result that nothing changes. So, again, right now, if you're Russian, you know that you hold a winning hand. The question is, when do they pull the trigger and end this thing completely? And the only thing that's preventing that right now, in my judgment, is the predisposition on the part of President Putin and his senior leaders to wait and see what we do at this bilious conference and see if, in fact, the Poles and Lithuanians do something truly stupid and enter Western Ukraine. Now, again, at that point,

it may be clear to the Russians that nothing's going to change, and they might as well just go ahead and end this thing, in which case they will. But the notion that there's any life left in Ukraine is absurd. who was talking about the Russians buzzing, I guess it was an unmanned aerial platform somewhere over Syria that ostensibly had something to do with ISIS. I don't know. But apparently they were upset. This is this General Carrillo who's now at CENTCOM with the fact that the Russians flew into airspace where they had previously agreed not to go, and they overflew all of our positions there. And this individual characterized this behavior as evidence for President Putin's weakness. I mean, it's just the theater of the absurd. In reality, President Putin is taking the opportunity,

not just on a personal level, but with his armed forces, to point out, first of all, we're winning. We're in the driver's seat. Secondly, I in Moscow can escalate horizontally. You want more trouble than you've already got in Mexico? Stand by. We can help you. You want more trouble in the Middle East than you've ever seen? We're in a position to make that happen.

You don't like what's going on in Northeast Asia? Stand by for bad news from North Korea. We don't seem to understand that he's not isolated at all. And then you have the rest of the world that all wants to join at some point this new Eurasian currency that will be pegged to gold, some 90 nations total around the world. You begin to understand that we're not holding anything like a winning hand. We are holding a losing hand right now. Colonel, what do you think the reaction will be or the response will be in the United States of America domestically when Ukraine is crushed by Russia?

Well, it may ultimately collapse before Russia gets a chance to crush it. I mean, it's that bad inside Ukraine. More and more desertions every day, larger numbers of units, more people leaving the country, press gangs running out of control, trying to drag in anybody they can find. The population is angry, disgusted, fed up. They didn't want what Zelensky delivered. And now the country is largely destroyed. So Ukraine may collapse on its own at this point. But I don't... You're asking a very important question.

The problem is most Americans aren't paying much attention to this. Unfortunately, you're right. But Doug McGregor is. And what do you think? I think I know what you're going to say, and it's not a happy answer. But what do you think will be the reaction here, either politically, economically, in terms of civil liberties, when the war is over and Russia has triumphed? Yes. We know what happened in the aftermath of Vietnam.

None of it was good, Judge. The nation went into a state of unofficial mourning. There was a tremendous backlash. People were angry. And ultimately, we ended that war on a very sour note because the Congress deprived us of sending any more aid or assistance in any form to South Vietnam, making its final destruction inevitable. This time around, I think it will be worse.

It will be a manifestation of how terribly weak we really are in comparison with our supposed competitors and the rest of the world. You don't want, listen, if you're a major power, you don't want to be on the losing side in a war. I mean, that's why the intelligent thing to do early on, once it became clear that this had no chance of success, was to cut our losses, stop reinforcing failure, and come to some sort of arrangement, however imperfect it was, you know, by our standards. That would have been the rational thing, in which case we could have all gotten on with our lives.

That's not going to happen now. So this will be one, I think, of many factors, economic, financial, social. We've got serious problems here at home, as we've discussed before. The border is wide open. Millions have poured in. We know that large, large numbers of young men are coming into the country, and people are beginning to wonder, who are these young men, and what are they going to do? They're certainly not going to be employed at high levels inside the United States. Are these the foot soldiers of the left for future violence aimed at America?

I mean, nobody knows, and people are beginning to wonder. All of this is bad news, and that's why I continue to question how much longer this administration can continue. I just don't know. Do you think that we will have presidential elections in 2024? You know, I think the normal cycle stands an excellent chance of being altered or disrupted. We have a very weak government. We are not strong. We don't know about Mr. Biden and the true state of his health and well-being. And if he were to step down, which is eminently possible, I don't think the country would accept the vice president as his successor. And I think she might well resign. Then there are all sorts of possibilities. I don't have an easy answer. But the left has taken a very dangerous road in my judgment.

And anything is possible. We no longer live in the old world. We are on the frontiers of something fundamentally different in the history of our country. Colonel, when you told us how weak President Macron and his government are. Now, this supposedly was the result of the police killing a 17-year-old at a traffic stop. Now it seems to be uncontrollable, although we don't know that it's uncontrollable because the military hasn't been called out. President Macron seems to think this thing will die out on his own. Is it more likely than not that his government will die out on its own? You know, those of us that watched the Antifa violence in 2020 saw how well orchestrated it was and how quickly it ended when its essential goals appeared to have been accomplished. I think the left, the globalist left, has a hand in what's happening inside France.

That's not to say they created the problem. I mean, obviously, this is something that has been metastasizing for decades. You know, it's back to the old adage, it's one thing to have a small percentage of your population consist of people who are fundamentally different from the mainstream, whose culture, way of life, thinking values are not the same. But when it begins to approach a third or more of the population, things have a bad habit of turning

violent. And that's what's happening in France. But having said that, for all of this to spring up across the country almost simultaneously suggests that this is hardly spontaneous. They were looking for some sort of catalyst. And, you know, this young man who was killed was driving illegally. He was 17. He wasn't old enough to have a driver's license. He was driving in a Mercedes Benz, a flashy car, and he was driving at excessive speed. He was stopped. And when they tried to pull him out of the car, he sped off.

And under French law, the police are obligated. They're not just given the authority. They're obligated to stop the reckless driver. And that includes shooting them because they've had plenty of cases where reckless drivers, either intentionally for racial reasons or social reasons or whatever they may have, have killed people in that country. Right. This is a terrible excuse for violence, but it has sprung up so well, so suddenly and so damaging. Macron is doing nothing about it. And Macron seems to privately sympathize with it, trying to find every conceivable reason to justify it. So you're asking me what should happen or what

will happen. Well, I don't know what will happen, but I would think that the military leadership, along with the leadership of the national police, should have had enough by now. And I think the French population is the real question. Will the French population stand behind the military and the police if they remove Macron, which is what really ought to happen, and form some interim government until you can hold the elections for something new? Will they be allowed to restore order using the force that's required? I don't know. I don't know if the French are ready for that.

I think they may be, but I'm not on the ground over there and I can't evaluate. I want your take on one more subject, Colonel, before we finish. And I appreciate all the time you've given us. Taking into account Putin ascendant, NATO weak, France burning apart, Biden mumbling, stumbling, bumbling, even when he tries to give a speech. What is the role and the hand of China observing all of this? China knows something that we should remember, and that is that something Medinich said many years ago, the Austrian foreign minister, when Paris sneezes, Europe gets a cold. I think the Chinese are very concerned that what we're seeing in Paris and across France will spread to other European states. Certainly Great Britain is not immune to this. The Chinese are not happy with the instability. Remember, the Chinese are all about money and expanding their financial power and influence.

Instability is something that destroys the opportunity for financial development. So they're not happy about this. On the other hand, they're very much aligned with Russia in trying to develop this new basket of currencies that's pegged to gold. They may also view what's happening in Europe as essentially a good thing because Europeans, instead of sticking with the United States, its financial system, which at this point doesn't look terribly favorable to them, they may decide they too want to hitch their future, if you will, to the Russo-Chinese-Indian basket of currency. So, you know, the Chinese are backing the Russians to the hilt. That's not going to change because the Chinese, frankly, view us as on their trail as well. In other words, if they let Russia go under, their assumption is we're going to try and find a way to make war against them. Well, Russia is not going to go under. That's obvious. We're weak. That's good news for the Chinese who think they can weather this. They may be able to. But I don't think the Chinese are behind anything,

per se. I think the globalists may have pushed too far and brought this thing to a boil in France, and now it's spilling over, and it will not end well for them. John Marko O' Conor McGregor, a terrific conversation. I'm off to Italy for a couple of weeks, so we won't see each other unless, of course, there's major breaking news, in which case I'll pop up on my iPad with Lake Como in the background. Well, I'd much rather fly to Lake Como for the interview, so see what you can do about that. Thank you for your time, Colonel. All the best. Right.

Same to you. More as we get it. And an interview with RFK Jr. will be posted by your humble correspondent, will be posted by the end of the week. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!