Judging Freedom - Ray McGovern : How the Russians View Ukraine.

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

Ray McGovern : How the Russians View Ukraine.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Today is Monday, November 3, 2025. My dear friend Ray McGovern will be here with us. in just a moment. How do the Russians view the war in Ukraine? How do they view threats from the United States? But first this. History tells us every market eventually falls. Currencies collapse. And look at where we are now. 37 trillion in national debt. Stocks at record highs defying gravity. So what happens next? Groceries, gas, housing, everything's going up. And this dollar it buys less every day when the system breaks your stocks won't save you and your dollars won't either but one thing will gold I've set it on my show

for years gold survives collapse central bankers know this and billionaires know it that's why they're buying more is it too late to buy or is it just the right time call my friends at Lear Capital to find out ask questions get the free information. There's no pressure, and that's why I buy my gold and silver from Lear. And right now, you can get up to $20,000 in bonus medals with a qualified purchase. Call 800, 511, 4620, or go to Learjudgeonap.com today. Great McGovern, welcome here, my dear friend. Thank you for accommodating my schedule, as always. From your understanding of the Russian public, and of course you have the advantage of knowing the language as well as the culture and the history, is the special military operation popular in Russia, unlike, say, the Vietnam War, which was immensely unpopular in the United States?

Well, it was, especially due to the fact that the Russian citizens as well as ethnic Russians, were being killed willy-nilly in the Donbass. You know, people like John Meersheimer, I asked him at a public forum, we all agree that the Russian attack on Ukraine was not unprovoked, but did they have any choice? I mean, had they run out of options? Meersheimer, without blinking, and I said, no, Putin did everything, including the Minskak courts,

trying to make it so that he would not have to invade Ukraine, and in the end, he had no choice. The shelling of Ukrainian Russian stock people in the Dunbass went up geometrically, starting on the 14th of February. This is O-C-E diagrams show that. It went up from about 500 to 14-100, 14,000, actually, shellings. And these are Ukrainian army shellings with our 155-millimeter howitzer ammunition into Ukrainian villages killing Ukrainians or Russian-speaking Ukrainian. This is really unforgivable.

How does Zelensky's people even justify this? The government killing its own people because they are culturally Russian and Russian speakers, but they're as Ukrainian as the government is? It's a schizophrenic thing, Judge. Ukraine has always been very divided between the Russian, the Slavic-leaning people in the east and the Western leaning people in the West. Now, the Western leaning people around Levovof and other places in Western Ukraine collaborated with the Nazis.

I mean, they were happy to do in their Slavic enemies. So the place is completely divided, and the U.S. took advantage of that in February of 2014, when there was a relatively pro-Russian president, of Ukraine, Yanukovych, and he was overthrown. He was overthrown on the Maiden. And one thing that has come out from Lavrov and from Putin is that Obama called Putin.

He was in Sochi at the Olympics. And he said, look, don't worry about it. We got this all taken care of. The Germans and the French are overseeing a peaceful transition. Lukovych is going to go away for a while. He'll come back and we'll have delayed elections. Don't worry about it.

At the same time, Biden called Yanukovych. No problem. Next day, a bloody overthrow of what was left in Kiev. Yanukovych had to flee. So, you know, if these people seem to think they were diddled, if they don't think that, I don't know what diddled means. Can you view what the... the Ukrainians were and are attempting to do in the Dunbuss as a form of ethnic cleansing.

They want to get rid of the ethnic Russians, even though they were born in Ukraine and are Ukrainian citizens? George, after the coup in February of 2014, the coup regime decided to go after all those people who would not submit to the coup. Those included the Crimeans. You know that a month later, the Crimeans voted by 90% to rejoin Russia. It also pertained to the people in the Dunbass. And John Brennan shows up in Kiev, not very well known, although it has been publicized. And, of course, he says, look, we're going to support you as long as you need our support. We will give you intelligence cooperation up to Gazoo, and we'll have militaries.

Just wait, and they played that out from 2014 until 2022. We know the story. And again, I would just refer to Mircham, who predicted 11 years ago that if NATO kept trying to get Ukraine into NATO, this would eventually destroy Ukraine. And, of course, we were leading them down the primrose path, as John also said, he deserves great credit while having predicted precisely, sadly. John, John is, John's a great man. Zelensky himself, wasn't he born as a Russian speaker? And didn't Zelensky himself speak Russian into his adult years?

Yeah, he was a native Russian speaker. He had to learn a better Ukrainian when he came into. Look, he was put in there by oligarchs. Those oligarchs were in very close contact with all men in Kiev and in Washington. He was an actor. He was a comedian, for God's sake. Well, it's not funny anymore. They put him in his position.

And all of a sudden, he decided, well, maybe I am able to be the president of Ukraine. and also worthy of note is that his freedom of action is tightly circumscribed by the pro-Nazis or the pseudo-Nazis that actually have dominant influence now in Kiev. And that's what the Russians are going to hang around to clean up. They've already done a pretty good clean-up to the Ukrainian army. Once the army falls, it won't be long before the pro-Nazis in Kiev, We'll see the light and move to their villas in the southern Italy. Wow.

Well, Putin, of course, has known of the dangers to Russia since 1999 when the Czech Republic and Hungary and Poland all together all in one day joined NATO. Yeah, and of course, this was against all the promises that had been made as early as George H.W. Bush, for God's sake. Now, he sent Jim's Baker to Moscow in February. It was February 1st, February 1, 1990, for God's sake. I had just retired six weeks earlier saying, McGovern, Russia has fallen apart. George H.W. Bush can be dependent on to seek peace from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Way to go, right?

you can retire now. And I did in January. Now, what happened? Well, Baker made a promise. It's recorded in all kinds of diplomatic notes. He said, look, if you Russians accept a reunited Germany, and I can just say, Gadabachov and Chibhnazzi, oh, reunited, oh, that'll be swell. What's the quote for this quid? Well, we will promise not to move NATO one inch to the east. Well, there goes that promise. NATO doubled in size within 10, 15 years. And now we have continued attempts to get Ukraine into NATO against with Meersheimer, cannon, even Kissinger warned this would be the death now for U.S. Russian relations.

And if you don't care about that, that's one thing. That sells a lot of weapons. You do care about that and you care about international security and don't want to be nuked to death in the end of civilization, then this is really important. What's interesting, Judge, is that when it became clear to Putin, that he couldn't get any Western statesman to listen, you know, not any of the presidents, not even Obama. He said, look, okay, we understand, you won't listen. And so we're not going to build a ABM system or, you know, go down that path.

They don't work, frankly. We're going to do other offensive systems that will do a runaround here so that whatever sophisticated ABM systems you create, we can move around. And that's why you got, what, Burewiesnich, that's why you got Poseidon, that's why you got Ariashnik, and they have come online now. Christine said this in 2016, and in 2018, he advertised it in his show and tell during his State of the Union address, March 1st, 2018, look it up. Those systems now that he showed videos of are now online, and if you will, this strategic

balance has been re-rebalanced in a way. but not in the way that the U.S. expected. And these things are brand new. The interesting thing is that this should come as some revelation to Trump. This was on the record. People should have told them, hey, this is what's going on. If you can work out a deal before we blow each other, the smithereens.

Where do you think there is more fear? The Western fear of the Arashniks? Reschnics or the Russian fear of American tomahawks? Or am I mixing apples and oranges here? Well, the Tomahawks are dead. Just two weeks ago, Trump said, look, we're not going to give any tomahawks to Ukraine. They take a long time to get trained on them. We're not going to shoot these things. They have to be shot. Shot is what the word you. They have to be shot by Americans. We're not going to do it, so forget about it. Now, what's interesting, Judge, as you know, Pete Hexeth recently, three days ago, said,

well, we have no problem. We have no problem with giving these kinds of missiles, Tomahawk, to Ukraine. The notion that we don't have enough of them, that's wrong, we got enough of them. So what the hell is going on? Here's the defense secretary taking the opposite position from the president. This shows it's a lot of internecine struggle going on in Washington. And in this case, I hope that Trump is able to prevail. Here is President Trump over the weekend on Air Force One saying no Tomahawks.

Cut number two. Will your administration provide Ukraine with long enraged tomahawk pistols? Is that something that you're not considering that? No, not really. It could happen. I could change, but at this moment, I'm not. Right? He's being fair and honest. It could happen. I could change my mind. But at this moment, the answer is no, and I'm not considering it. Tell your secretary of defense. Wait a minute. He doesn't have a secretary of defense. He has a secretary of war.

Whatever Pete is calling himself this week. Tell him. Well, Judge just points up that as the Russians have taken to saying, Trump is not his own man. He doesn't have complete freedom of action. They're being still very sympathetic to him. They say he's under all kinds of severe pressure, not only from the Europeans, those coalition of the brain dead, but also within Washington. So we understand that we're willing to wait, Soto Voce. We've got this thing one in Ukraine. They're going to finally have to come to their senses.

We can wait. We're in no rush. We're still open to a summit. Let them decide when they're ready to talk. Before the president went to the Far East last week, did the CIA sit down with him and tell him how vital the rare earth minerals are that China has and how we can't get them? from anywhere else on the planet? Yeah, I don't know, Judge, but if it's Secretary of Commerce or Secretary of Treasury, some of these highfalutin guys didn't know that.

I mean, my God, that's symptomatic of their lack of knowledge of the real world. These are rare earth minerals, they're real world things. And as Alistair just said earlier this morning, the Chinese have a stranglehold on them. And without them, we can't do all kinds of things we want to do, including in the military sector. So whether or not the CIA or the National Intelligence Director briefed Trump on this, I mean, if he hadn't been told this by all these people that put it in tariffs and all this other crazy stuff, well, that's a mark of how uniformity is. And that can be really dangerous when it's a big surprise to him that the

Buraviesnik sails around the South Pole and that the Poseidon is ready to be mounted on submarines now, four of them, to cause tidal waves and worse on any shore. First pick will be UK and the second pick will be the U.S. I'm not saying the Russians are actually going to do that, but they had that capability. That's an incredible second strike capability. Trump needs to be informed that. Here's a little anecdote. I was talking to Ted Postal early this morning. And he said, you know, it's not a surprise to me that the presidents and the secretaries of defense are not well informed. The matter of fact, when I pointed out to the defense department that the Russian early warning system was grossly deficient, and they wrote all kinds of

papers, I met Bill Perry, Secretary of Defense under Clinton, and I said, Bill, You know about this, don't you? And he said, well, about what? And I showed him the slide that he said, the first time I saw it, the acting Secretary of Defense. So what happens is the National Security Advisor can be a bottleneck and can prevent anyone, including the Secretary of Defense. And Bill Perry was a good guy, all right, from knowing which end is really up. That's really dangerous. I'm going to run a clip for you, and I apologize ahead of time.

It's the senior senator from South Carolina, in my view, absolutely at his worst and most irritating and inaccurate. However, at the very end, he says something tantalizing. We have run out of bombs without saying it now because we've given them all to Ukraine. So this is long, tortuous, Lindsay Graham at his worst, but listen to what he says at the end. Chris, cut number eight. Speaking of Donald Trump, he said, hey, so he's a great president, if you don't believe me, just ask him. What happened with being him was we found Common Ground, I've come to like him, and he likes him, and that changed our entire relationship.

But he did the Golan Heights thing. Remember Ron? He said, I called him up for you at I'm in Wabi, we're on the Golan Heights. He said, I didn't know where you're in New York. No, that's another Golan Heights. We're over there. He recognized the Golan Heights by tweet because he understood, you can't give it back to Syria because they'll use it to kill you.

He recognized Jerusalem as capital of Israel. Why? Because if you got a problem with that, take it up with God. He's the guy that did it, not Trump. So I just want to say, I feel good about the Republican Party. I feel good about where we're going as a nation. We're killing all the right people and we're cutting your taxes. Trump is my favorite president.

We've run out of bombs. We didn't run out of bombs in World War II. Killing all the right people running out of bombs. What the hell is he taught? And laughing about it as if he were doing stand-up. and I guess the audience appreciated it. What the hell is he talking about? Judge, I try not to use abusive language.

Right, right. But when he talks about the Golan Heights, for example, that was seized and occupied by Israel, together with the rest of the occupied territories in 1967. That was in June. In November, there was a unanimous. U.N. Security Council resolution requiring Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. Unanimous, the U.S. voted for it, okay?

Ninety-seven. Now, in his wisdom, Trump decided to give Golan to the Israelis. Well, who the hell does he think is? This is international law you're talking about. And if you're talking about occupied territories, you know, it's not a matter of Israel having a right to exist. It's a matter of occupied people having the right to resort to all means necessary, including violence under international law against the occupier. and the occupier has no recourse under international law to move against or to genocide those people who are occupied. So here is a guy from South Carolina.

You know, people out there in Palisand, they don't look much like us. And, you know, he reminds me of his predecessors, General Westmoreland, who thought that the gooks were all second-rate people of people like. Jimmy Burns, who is the Secretary of State of the Truman, and who was the only one that said, Mr. Truman, you go ahead, you go ahead and use those bombs in Nagasaki and Russia, because those people, they don't deserve to live because they attacked us and so forth. Now, all those people were from South Carolina. I don't know. Maybe it's in the water there in South Carolina, but please don't show me any more videos of Lindsay Graham.

I try to be a more peaceful person. And a lot of the chatters, the folks that write to us during the show, are saying the same thing. It is, it is repellent, but this is a person who gets to whisper in the president's here every time they share a golf cart together, which they apparently do once a week. And this is very, this is very dangerous. But I was interested, I don't know if you know the answer to this. I was interested in what he said at the end, we're running out of bombs. Is the implication that American military gear is low because we have given so much of it under Donald Trump 1, under Joe Biden, and under Donald Trump 2, to Ukraine? That's very clear, Judge.

And prominent administration officials have as much as admitted that. You know, the basic shell for artillery is a 1.55 millimeter shell, okay? I trained with those. Actually, today, November 3rd is the day I entered into active duty as an Army infantry officer at Fort Benning at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. And we were training on 155 millimeter shells, and there weren't any there. They were all in Key West. That's how close we came in Cuba.

That same shell is being used today, except there aren't any of them. The Czech said, well, we'll buy some. We'll buy. And they couldn't find any to buy except the price was jacked them so high that they couldn't buy. So, yeah, it's true. They're out of ammunition, and the tomahawks are not going to be given to them. And if the Germans try to shoot these, what do they call them, the, oh, yeah, Taurus missiles, I mean, I fear for the Germans. Germans, because the Russians can very well, very easily retaliate in ways that the Germans

will not forget. And after all, if the Germans haven't learned lessons from history about how strongly the Russians feel about infringement on their borders and their land, well, they've learned nothing, and maybe that's the case with the Chancellor mounts. As if things could not get worse, the peace president. said yesterday on Air Force One, we are about to invade

Nigeria. Cut number one. They're on Nigeria. Just wanted to ask you do you envisage U.S. boots on the ground? It could be. I mean, a lot of things are envisage a lot of things. They're killing record

numbers of Christians in Nigeria. And they have other countries, very bad also. You know that. That part of the world, very bad. and they're killing the Christians, and killing them in very large numbers. I'm not going to allow that to happen. Now, he gets that from Pete Hexa.

I guess he does. There are 5,000 Marines off the coast of Venezuela. I wonder how many are headed for Nigeria. And I wonder when Congress will get involved. We still have a Congress, Ray McGovern. Well, Judge, you've written eloquently about. the dissipation of the separation of powers. These three branches of government that I learned about 75 years ago, for God's sake, they no longer existed in reality. The executive has taken all the

power with welcome giving up by the Congress. Now, if the Congress can't pass some sort of legislation, requiring the president to obey the Article I provision where only Congress has the right to declare war. As you know, Judge, Jefferson, Madison, they were really intent on making it clear that emperors or presidents could never declare war. It was had to be the people, the House of Representatives of the people of the United States of America that would vote to declare war. And that's been abused up and down by Democratic as well as Republican administrations.

But the scandal is that we no longer have any winter soldiers in Congress except for a precious view. And none of them have the guts to stand up to an imperial president and say, that's enough. We're going to reassert the right that our predecessors have sort of squandered. We're going to insist before we give you any money for Venezuela. in Nigeria to protect those Christians, okay? We're going to assist that you come to us and get permission. Now, that's what's necessary. It's all very clear in the Constitution.

And, well, will Congress do that? Probably not. So who is it up to? It's up to us. There never has been any other. We have to get out there. We have to make sure that our congresspeople and the others realize that they can't have impunity. We're just deferring to the imperial presidency.

So eloquent, Ray. Thank you, my dear friend. So meaningful and eloquent. I'm sorry I aggravated you with Lindsay Graham, but it brought out the best in you, Professor McGovern. Thank you so much. All the best. We'll look forward to seeing you with Larry at the end of the week. Thanks, Judge. Sure. Have a great week, Ray. And the aforementioned Larry is, of course, Larry Johnson at 1130 this morning. At 1 this afternoon, Professor Francisco Rod Rodriguez from Venezuela. He is from Venezuela. He'll be coming to us from Denver, where he now teaches at at 2 o'clock, our friend Kyle Anzalone commenting on the good professor. What's going to happen in Venezuela? How soon before the U.S. invades? Does anybody believe the president when he says he has no plans to invade? We'll talk about it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.