Judging Freedom - Ray McGovern: Kiev’s Suicidal Russian Invasion

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

Ray McGovern: Kiev’s Suicidal Russian InvasionSee 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 Monday, August 26, 2024. Ray McGovern will be here with us on just a moment on just what was the logic behind the Ukrainian and NATO invasion of Russia, and when and how will it end? But first this. A divisive presidential election is upon us, and the winner is gold.

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What it is, is an invasion of Russia. But whether or not it becomes a big deal depends on one person and one person only, and that is Vladimir Putin. How will he react? Now, on the ground, one can say with great confidence that it makes no military sense. The Ukrainians have put their best trained, best equipped troops into this, and they all are about to be slaughtered in the next couple of weeks. The notion that they thought they could seize and hold a goodly portion of Kursk Oblast was crazy. They could not do that, and they're not going to do it, and they're going to lose their best troops. Where did some of those best troops come from? They came from the line in eastern Ukraine, in the Donbass, which is now porous as never before, giving the Russians a carte blanche to move forward. So

it makes no military sense. So what kind of political sense might it make? Well, today we have this morning, just headlines just in, I haven't read the articles, but a massive Russian attack using all kinds of missiles on the power grid and other places in Ukraine, and you have simultaneously or just after that, Zelensky, if you're, oh God, now you've got to come forward. Now you NATO people have to come forward with what we need, okay? It's not going to be enough to persuade the US or NATO to come in even quicker or even faster, even if they could. Another premise here is that it is a given that the U.S. knew about what was going to happen. But one has to distinguish between Blinken and Sullivan and the rest of the U.S. establishment. Blinken and Sullivan are

running this ship, okay? And they certainly knew, together with the British, what was afoot. So what was the general objective? In my view, the best guess, and it's still a guess, is that they were hoping to provoke Putin into the kind of war interpreted as a casus belli and to do something really, really more violent than he has done before, which would give the U.S. and NATO, well, NATO is the U.S., okay? So it would give the U.S. the pretext or the reason to respond in a very, very more violent way. And, you know, risk a war with Russia over Ukraine. Why? Because they have to do that before Ukraine falls apart

before the election in November. Well, will Ukraine fall apart? Well, it was falling apart anyway. This hastens their falling apart. Would the Ukrainians be so cynical as to sacrifice their best troops in this endeavor? Yes, they would. There's precedent for that. Think about Bakhmut back just a year ago. So that's my guess. I've had some good counsel from some British friends and from other Soviet and Russian specialists. And I've watched John Mearsheimer puzzle through what sense it makes militarily.

And the answer is no military sense, some bizarre political sense. But the Russians are not rising to the occasion. And as I said in the beginning, Putin is the person regulating what happens now between now and the election. Our friend and colleague Alistair Crook has been arguing for a long time, but recently in a piece he published and just a few hours ago on this program, that in modern warfare, propaganda has become an end in itself. Might propaganda have been a goal here?

Look what we can do. We went into the soft underbelly of the great Russia. Yeah. You know, I think John Mearsheimer answered this really well over the weekend. He was asked, isn't Putin embarrassed by this? And John reacted the same way Larry did on Friday. Yeah, in the mainstream media of the West, but I mean, hello, what does that matter? You know, what's going to be embarrassing is when all those troops, their crackerjack troops, are decimated as they are being as we speak. So, yeah, public relations is big.

I remember one comment two weeks ago by a fellow named Lieutenant Colonel Nagel, one of Petraeus' disciples who teaches now in some military institute, he said, you know, we've changed the narrative, but what happens over the medium and longer term, we don't know. is that the Russians are going to retaliate in a measured way so that they're not going to rise to the bait. And they're going to deal, as they did last night, early this morning, with a continuing effort at attrition, not only troop attrition, but also energy sites and infrastructure that they hesitated to hit before this year. Is there a chatter in the intelligence community about this, which would reveal to you as a professional that MI6 and CIA were in this up to their eyeballs? Unfortunately, Judge, I don't have those kind of contacts anymore. It's the logic of the whole thing. And I've asked people like Jeffrey Roberts, professor of Russian and Soviet studies, what do you think? And he said, there's no way. I said, well, how about just the British knew about this? He said, come on, Ray. He said, there's no way that certain U.S. high officials

knew about this and condoned it and supported it. So what does that mean? Well, it means to me that they're trying to provoke the Russians into the kind of action where we in turn will be impelled to react and maybe save the day before the election here in November. I think that's quixotic, but that's the best logic I can put to it. Will, let me just dive a little deeper on this. You have told us, Larry has told, Johnson has told us, that MI6 and CIA really have a leash on, I forget what it's called, SBK, whatever the Ukrainian intelligence is. I mean, just rationally, would Ukrainian intel and Ukrainian military have wandered off on their own and attacked Russia without talking to their masters?

Good question. I've been asking that question all weekend, the answer is no. In other words, the US knew beforehand. Now, when you say US, you have to distinguish between these crazies who have a personal stake in who wins in November, these crazies who are hellbent and determined to get Putin to do something so explosive that the US and NATO will have to get in even deeper and prolong the agony until after November. Those are Blinken and Sullivan. And it's very clear to me

that those two are still running U.S. policy. Yeah, Biden is not very much in the game. Do you think that Jake Sullivan and Secretary Blinken want war with Russia before November? War with Russia? No. I mean, they also are relatively sane. OK, what they want is something short of war with Russia. What they want is a kind of an open fracas with Russia. What they want is maybe a direct targeting of Russian places within Russia. Let's say they give them these standoff missiles where they can fly up in the air over Ukrainian airspace and still hit well deep into Russia proper. And they'd like to see that. They'd like to escalate.

They'd like the Russians to reciprocate by escalating further. What's really going to happen is the Russians are going to escalate in the Donbass, move east. They can go to, I've been saying this for months now, they can go to the Dnieper River right now with very thin troops preventing them. They could probably do it in a couple of weeks, and that's well before the election. So in Pucci's mind, I think he holds the high cards. I can do this. I can do that.

But I'm not going to be provoked in a way that you can justify getting involved in a violent spat, not a war, but a violent, some exchange with undeniably U.S. weaponry and U.S. people against the Russian forces. That's my take. Hmm. Do you think that President Putin would attack the location where American weaponry is stored, maintained, and prepared for use, which would be Romania or Poland. Okay. In Ukraine, of course, he's already doing that. And Romania and Poland, I think he would not rise to that bait just yet. Those depots have been there forever, like for

two plus years. What would provoke more forward activity on his part would be to see these F-16s, for example, which are said to have been sent and arrived in Ukraine ukraine armed or armed with the kind of thing that the russians can't really be sure are not nuclear weapons under their wings they're nuclear capable okay putin has specifically personally openly warned against that okay also these joint standoff missiles that have great 300 plus mile range. If he sees those being put on the F-16. Now, when and if he sees that, they're going to either, they'll take off into the air and they'll be shot down by Russian aircraft or Russian air defense. The question is, and you raised it very properly, whether they would be shot down before they take off.

When they're seen on airfields in Romania or Poland, NATO countries, if they're seen there, what will the Russians do? My guess right now, and it's only a guess, is they would wait until they get up into the air, and then they'd shoot them down. How good is Russian intel? It's quite good. It's better than it was back in the day. And, again, it's inconceivable that they had no idea what was going on, what was coming in course. Right now, that's my follow-up question.

If this was a NATO strike, and you and Larry and the others are convinced it was, think of the number of people that would have had to have coordinated. Wouldn't Russian intel have picked up the communications attendant upon all that coordination, including Americans? Yes. the communications attendant upon all that coordination, including Americans. Yes, and the people close to Putin have already, Patrushev, who's his main guy for intelligence and National Security Council, so forth. He has said, look, there's no doubt that the Americans are behind this.

Americans knew about this. We have the information on that. Now, he also said after that terrible attack on that Focus concert way back when, earlier this year, Patrushev also said, we see the American hand behind that, behind the Ukrainians. And everyone thought, after all, there were a couple of hundred people killed in that. Everyone thought, well, Putin's going to have to rise to the bait now. Well, all he did was start hitting energy, hitting sites in Ukraine that he hadn't hit before. It's a clever sort of tragedy because when you have the high cards, you know, you keep them and you don't give them away right away. So I think that Putin is so careful and so perspicacious and so intent on waiting until November, which he has explicitly said six weeks ago, nothing's going to happen before November.

That just makes good sense, particularly since the Russians have the upper hand, and they will not be provoked into doing the kinds of things that Blinken, Sullivan, the Brits, and some other hotheads like the Lithuanians or the Latvians or the Estonians or the Poles. You know, the Poles drink rusophobia from their mother's breasts, for God's sake. So Pucci knows all this, and he's a cool, collected guy. Believe me, I think he's not going to rise to the beat. Switching gears, is the IDF worn out, drained, exhausted, or prepared to invade Lebanon or something in between?

The first, it's exhausted. It's humiliated by its inability to conquer Hamas. And now it's got the axis of resistance, Iran, all those terrorists in Iraq and Syria who don't like U.S. troops sitting there. He's got Hezbollah up on top. So he's got real problems. The only salvation for Netanyahu is to mousetrap the U.S. into full open military support to bail them out. And, you know, I don't know if Blinken and Sullivan, I was going to say Biden, but I don't know if Blinken and Sullivan are so dumb as to get the U.S. involved militarily in that. And I don't know whether the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Brown,

and the others who know which end is up would, I don't know if they could be persuaded to do that because that's happened before. We've had a bloody nose. Reagan was sensible enough to pull our troops out. I mean, what are they going to do? Get involved in a war in the Middle East with the situation in Ukraine and the Chinese raising hell in the South China Sea? I mean, even these dunderheads should be smart enough to say, well, from a military point of view, let's keep our forces focused and not on three or even two fronts. Is there any doubt in your mind that the United States would support Israel militarily were the onslaught from Hezbollah be too much for the Israelis to resist

or were an attack from Iran be too much for it to resist and that the U.S. military response would be with both feet, so to speak? A month ago, Judge, I would have said, no, there's no chance that the U.S. would not come in with both feet. Right now, I don't know. The Iranians are being very cautious, right? That's big. Nobody expected that. Why are they being cautious?

Well, Blinken and Sullivan, for what else they are, Blinken is traveling all around trying to persuade people to have a ceasefire, allow resupply, stop the deliberate starvation and medical emergencies, including polio. I think he's really trying to get that done. Now, if Netanyahu gives him the sign, as usual, then the Iranians are going to retaliate. And then only then will the U.S. military be asked by Billiken and Sullivan, well, okay, here it goes. You guys, you got all those ships there, and they got all these bad intentions. We've got to rescue the Israelis. Whether General Brown and those generals would meekly obey people like Blinken, Sullivan, and even that cipher, Austin, who's

the Secretary of Defense, I don't know. If they're smart, they would say, well, this JCS has resisted this kind of thing before. They could do it again, particularly when it means really, really danger of getting involved in a three or two front war. If we send aircraft carriers there, how many human beings are you talking about on the aircraft carrier? There are 5,000 about approximately on each one. Wow. And there are two in the area, Cel time, well, general area of Persian Gulf. So, you know, they're sitting ducks, for God's sake, Judge, and people know that. I mean, the Houthis could wreak havoc. They don't have to sink it. All they have to do is ruin the deck, and they're not capable of much. So these are antiquated, obsolete weapons, and the Houthis have shown that. So maybe that, too, is in the

calculus of General Brown and the other Joint Chiefs and say, my God, you know, okay, we'll put the aircraft carriers in there just like you want, Lincoln and Sullivan, but we'll keep them about 100 miles offshore because then we'll have a reasonable chance of intercepting these missiles before the Houthi ragtag army downs our ships, downs our aircraft carrier, or at least messes up its flight deck. Here's a montage that Chris put together of U.S. propaganda toward Iran, which we've called, by a word you'll hear repeated many times, don't. Mr. President, to Iran in this moment. Don't.

I have one word, don't. To any actor, state or non-state, trying to take advantage of this crisis to attack Israel, don't. We have just one word, don't. We have just one word. Don't. Does that mean anything to the Axis of Resistance, or are they laughing at it like we are? Well, you know, it's so orchestrated here. You know, there are several examples of this kind of thing.

Last but not least is the Secretary of Defense, and he's memorized that one word, don't. Okay, so that was the word for the day. Well, what the hell is behind that when they say don't? The Iranians will react, okay? This time, they're not going to give fair warning and send the slower missiles and cruise missiles first. They're going to hit, I think, Israeli military bases, and perhaps even the axis of resistance will hit U.S. sitting duck troops still in Iraq and Syria for whatever reason, okay? So I think that's likely in the cards. So people who say don't, well, that just reflects the fact that they still believe that saying don't from Washington means anything. Like they are the exceptionally indispensable country in the world.

And I believe that they have believed, well, Biden really believes it. He said it in his most recent speech at the convention. You know, it's really bizarre, but when they believe that, the question is whether they can instruct the Joint Chiefs to endanger themselves into a two or three-front war. I don't know if General Brown and those guys are up to saying, look, this could result in even a nuclear exchange, and the Israelis are quite capable of using the Samson option, which is a nuclear weapon. So we don't want to encourage him. We ought to know when to fold our cards in the Middle East.

And we ought to do that. We just ought to tell Netanyahu, no, we're not going to do it this time. You're on your own. You're on your own. Ray McGovern, a pleasure, my dear friend. We'll look forward to seeing you with Larry Johnson, the youngster, on the Intelligence Community Roundtable at the end of the week. All my best. Thanks, Judge.

Of course. And the aforementioned Larry Johnson will be here at 11 o'clock Eastern and at 2 o'clock this afternoon Eastern. Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.