Judging Freedom - Ray McGovern : Will Putin Attack Poland?

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, July 8, 2024. Ray McGovern joins us now. Ray, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you, as always. You're welcome. joins us now. Ray, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you, as always. You have written a very interesting piece at antiwar.com and elsewhere, Will Putin Attack Poland? So I ask you, will Putin attack Poland? No, that's a simple answer. The question here, Judge, is really big. You remember the weapons of mass destruction deceit, right, before the war on Iraq. In those days, we were fighting an uphill fight, to include Scott Ritter, who knew chapter and verse about the destruction of weapons of mass destruction, but we couldn't get in the media, and the war started,

and you know the results. Now, this time, it's not our word against the administration, or our word with Saddam Hussein denying it against the media. This time, it's the Ukrainians themselves that are saying, look, Putin did stop. He stopped in March and April of 2022. The way it went down was that Putin sent his forces into Ukraine and said, look, we're ready to talk. We can talk about this. And he sent a lot of forces up to Kiev in a threatening way. And the Ukrainians, oh, maybe we should take them up on this talk.

Four days after the invasion, namely on February 28th, 2022, a fellow named David Arachmania, real close friend of Zelensky, was appointed to start negotiations with the Russians in Belarus. Long story short, he finished those negotiations in Turkey with the help of Erdogan, okay? And they came to an agreement. Very simple. No Ukraine in NATO, okay?

Security guarantees for Ukraine other than NATO. A ceasefire. And they put off really thorny issues like Crimea and the other things until later. Let me just stop you here, Ray, to make sure we're on the same page. This is the agreement, is it not, that President Putin, in an interview with my friend and former colleague Tucker Carlson, held his fingers like this apart, showing it was about an inch and a half thick. And it was initialed by the chief Ukrainian and chief Russian negotiator. Am I right?

That's correct. And he displayed this. He sort of waved it in front of a group of African presidents and prime ministers a year ago. OK, so it's real. The initials are on there. And Arachmania, in an interview in the Kyiv Post, said, look, what happened was Boris Johnson came in on the 9th of April and said, don't sign anything, okay? We're with you. We're going to support you for as long as it takes. Don't sign anything, okay? We're with you. We're going to support you for as long as it takes. Don't sign anything with those terrible Russians.

And that put the kibosh on the whole deal. So the point is simply that the Ukrainian negotiators, the head negotiator, Arachmania, has said to the Kiev Post, and earlier we had it in the Ukrainska Pravda, that this is precisely what happened. Problem is, Americans don't know this, okay? They don't know it, even though it's on the record, it's admitted by the Ukrainian themselves. So the question about will Putin stop in Ukraine? Well, he already did, okay? And what happened? We nixed the deal. And what happened after that? 400, 500 flower of Ukrainian youth dead.

500,000. Unnecessarily. What is the background of Johnson's, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson's intervention? Who put him up to it, and what exactly did he say? You have some very interesting things in this piece, Ray. What exactly did he say to Zelensky when he suddenly showed up unannounced in Kiev? Well, it's not Ray McGovern here. It's Arachmania, the chief negotiator, saying, Johnson said, don't sign anything. Fight on. We will support you.

So it was very clear, you know, what happened here. And the notion that, well, Putin himself, not only in other interviews, but in that major speech on June 14th, elucidated how exactly it went down. And, you know, one could say, well, that's just Putin blowing smoke. But it's also the chief Ukrainian negotiator. So will Putin stop at Ukraine? Well, he already did when he scared the bejesus out of the Ukrainians. They were willing to deal. They were countermanded.

And it was NATO that said, yes, don't do that, okay? And we'll handle it. And now we'll come down to the new summit that's happening starting tomorrow where the negotiators or the heads of state of the NATO countries will have to decide how they handle this Ukraine thing.

Will they still hold out this prospect that Ukraine will be part of NATO? Arachmania said that this is all they cared about. I have some, yeah. Neutrality was the biggest thing. That's a direct quote, okay? That was a key point. But while negotiations continued in Istanbul, former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson unexpectedly arrived in Kiev on April 9 and said that Ukraine shouldn't sign anything with them at all, end quote. Let's just fight, end quote.

Well, you know, that was April 9th. Okay, my God, we have pictures. This is 2022. That's right. Yeah, so it's just what, six weeks, seven weeks after the beginning of the fracas. So Putin had made his point. He had scared the hell out of the Ukrainians. Sensibly, they said, okay, we can have a ceasefire.

All we have to do is abjure or just forswear any intention to join NATO. We'll have these other security guarantees. We'll have a ceasefire and things can return to normal. And they didn't. Now, you asked who sent Buddy Johnson. It wasn't his wife or his mother. It was, of course, the U.S. administration. Johnson never goes to the bathroom without asking the White House first. What did the head of President Zelensky's political party say about Russian flexibility? Well, this is, Arachmania is at least the head of the faction in parliament. I'm not sure anything recent has been said about Russian flexibility, but it's on the table. very simple. You know, we want you to withdraw your troops from, that is, Ukrainian troops from the four provinces that we have mostly seized, and then we can talk about a ceasefire, and then we can talk about the rest of it. Now, over the weekend, we had Orbán, Viktor Orbán from Hungary

in Kiev and in Moscow saying, well, how about a ceasefire first? How about a ceasefire? And the Ukrainians said, no deal. And of course, Putin said, no deal. Now, the interesting thing is that Orban has started a process. He said, look, I'm head of part of the EU now for six months. I'm going to take advantage of that. I'm going to create contacts.

And here I can be a bridge. I can be an interlocutor. I can be, I can facilitate these talks. And that's big, okay? Now, when a correspondent asked Orban at the end of this meeting with Putin, well, how about, what did Zelensky say about this immediate ceasefire thing to get things going? And Orban, master diplomat, turns to Putin and says,

well, Mr. President, I told Mr. President that. And so the correspondent said, well, Mr. President, can you comment on how the Ukrainians reacted? And Putin says, no. Now, Alex Derrick Crook told us that Brussels went berserk at Orban's trip to Kiev in Mexico, saying he didn't have a mandate. He didn't have a mandate. He's just the chairman of the committee.

Yeah. He's the president of the council. He's not the chairman of a committee and he doesn't need a mandate. And he's doing something that nobody else will do. Diplomacy, talking to people nose to nose, face to face, and they condemn him for it. That's exactly right. And that shows, you know, what's going on with the NATO summit here. Orban will be in Washington tomorrow, if he's not there already today. And the other people who are kind of real sour on Ukraine, the head of Slovenia, France now, who's going to, will Macron feel empowered to say anything worthwhile? So it's going to be very interesting. Here we are. It was 2008 when NATO decided Ukraine and Georgia shall become members of NATO, 2008.

Now we're 2024. Are we still going to try to do that when the chief Ukrainian negotiator said, look, the only things the Russians wanted from this is to scare us into forswearing any idea of joining NATO? Are they still going to haul out NATO? I don't know whether Biden's really in control, but if Blinken and Sullivan are in control, they're still going to try to badger all these people. It'll be a really interesting illustration

of whether they pay obeisance to the Americans just the way they always used to, or whether they're willing to stand up and say, well, this thing is going real sour. Putin is about to advance all the way to Kiev and the Dnieper. Let's see if we can. How about, here's an idea. Why don't we talk? And Orban has put himself in a position to facilitate, to be an interlocutor. Chris, cut number 10, in which President Orban says there can be no peace without talking, without diplomacy. We see images of destruction and suffering,

and this war has started to have an effect on our economy and competitiveness. As I have told Mr. President, Europe needs peace. Over the last two and a half years, we have realized that without diplomacy, without channels of communication, we won't be able to achieve peace. Well, he's right. Tony Blinken doesn't want to talk to Lavrov. Joe Biden doesn't want to talk to Putin. But Viktor Orban, as I've called him, the adult in the room, he'll be the only adult in the room in Washington this week. By the way, is Zelensky coming to Washington this week?

I don't know. I haven't kept up on that. Is it G7 or NATO? I think it's NATO in Washington this week, isn't it? Yeah, it starts tomorrow. It's three days. NATO, it's the 75th anniversary of the establishment of NATO. And when you look at how it was established and the reasons in the beginning, you know, It's the 75th anniversary of the establishment of NATO.

And when you look at how it was established and the reasons in the beginning, you know, it was overtly the Secretary General of NATO at the time, Lord Afshin or something. He said, look, the idea is to keep the Russians out of Europe, keep the Americans in Europe and keep the Germans down. Okay. Well, as we know, the deal was the Germans would be kept down until they were reunited with the promise not to move NATO any one inch east. And that was when there were 15 of them. Now there are 32, and all of them but one are to the east of what was then East Germany. Wow. We're going to take a break for a commercial announcement. When we come back, I'm going to ask Ray McGovern, Joe Biden keeps claiming that Putin's going to invade Poland. Where is he getting it from? But first, you all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital,

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Tell them the judge sent you. Welcome back. Ray, before I ask you where you believe Joe Biden is getting the idea from that Putin is going to invade Poland and then the Baltics. He keeps saying it over and over. Let's listen to General Stoltenberg over the weekend. This is really ridiculous. The easy way to end the war is to lose the war. Cut number 12.

Does it affect NATO in any way to have Orban doing his own thing? is to lose the war. Ah, cut number 12. Does it affect NATO in any way to have Orban doing his own thing? No, because the reality is that we are able to make decisions on how we are going to step up our support to Ukraine because we all want peace. The thing is that the easiest way

to end the war is to lose the war. But that's not peace. That's occupation. So, therefore, we need a lasting, just peace. And the only way to get there is to convince President Putin that he will not win on the battlefield. He has to sit down and accept a solution where Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent nation in Europe. And the only way to convince Putin that he will not win on the battlefield is to provide military support to Ukraine. So a negotiated solution that is lasting for Ukraine requires military support to Ukraine. He lives in another world, Ray.

In the same world as Joe Biden. Yeah, he's delusional, okay? In that same speech, I copied a different portion here. Quote, today we have 500,000 troops on high readiness, combat-ready battle groups in the eastern part of the alliance for the first time. Bollocks! BS! What 500,000 troops do they have? Where are they from? Whose troops are they? Well, that's the question. Now, I don't speak extemporaneously about this. I ask people like Scott Ritter and Colonel McGregor, come on, right? You ask us a serious question. These guys are not

high readiness. They don't even have the equipment to move forward. So this guy is delusional. And what I would point out, because it directly has to do with NATO membership for Ukraine, is that on September 7th of last year, Stoltenberg was speaking to the EU parliament. And what he said was this. Putin gave us an agreement. He said, no Ukraine in NATO, and we will not invade Ukraine. And we said, no. And so he invaded Ukraine. And guess what? He got enlarged Ukraine because Sweden and Finland got in there. Ha, ha, ha. So here's Stoltenberg saying that the deal was no Ukraine in NATO or, the Russians would say, said, will invade Ukraine.

And he's really happy about the fact that this worked out the way it did, despite the fact that we have a country that's destroyed now and the flower of its youth also destroyed. So that's Stoltenberg, okay? So the question is, what's going to happen this week when Stoltenberg gives his final farewell? He won't be Secretary General any longer. What will he do? Well, we know what Biden thinks is possible. What he told Stephanopoulos is, look, you know, I got to, he didn't do the George W. Bush thing like this is a really hard job. This is really hard. No, he said, look, I have this terrible responsibility. I'm not only, I'm not only running a political campaign, I'm running the world. And you may think that's hyperbole, but it's not. Madeleine Albright was right. We are the indispensable

country in the world. That's Joe Biden. It's delusional. Where does Joe Biden get the idea that Putin will invade Poland? Well, I'm glad you asked that because exactly one month before the invasion, Fiona Hill, who passes as one of the Russian experts because she studied under arch-russophobe Richard Pipes at Harvard, she wrote an article, a guest essay for the New York Times on the 24th of January 2022, titled, Putin Has the U.S. Right Where He Wants It. This text, quote, this time Putin's aim is bigger than just closing NATO's open door to Ukraine and taking more territory, he wants to evict the United States from Europe. And as he might put it, quote, goodbye, America, don't let the door hit you

on the way out, period, end quote. New York Times, exactly a month before the invasion. So this is the kind of advice that Russian experts are giving the president. Now, Putin has denied, of course, that he has any designs on Poland or the Baltics, but it's not, we're going to have to take his word for it, God's sake. As I tried to say before, he didn't stop. He stopped under a compromise proposal with the Ukrainians and the US and the UK put the kibosh on it. And that's really important people to know because, you know, Russia is different from Iraq, okay? And being misled on Russia and its aims by the likes of Fiona Hill gets us into trouble deep, as we used to say in the comic books. Does anybody take seriously the idea that Putin wants to invade Poland? I mean, do even the EU people who want war with Russia

really think that that's what Putin wants? Or do they understand it's just a hyperbolic propaganda intended to scare people into supporting the misguided support of Ukraine? Long question. I apologize. You see where I'm going. No, yeah. I think it's both, really. Now, we have people who profiteer on all this, okay? Our industrial complex, we always have to keep that in mind there. And the Poles, you know, they are a little neuralgic about Russia. So one can understand that they do fear. But the proof is in the pudding, Judge. Why is it that NATO, why is it that the United States have no basic 155 millimeter howitzer or artillery shells? It's because there was no Russian threat.

No Russian threat. Yeah. When did the Russian threat happen? When we overthrew the government in Ukraine. And the Russians really thought they'd really support the Russian-speaking people who were being bombed daily in the Donbass. And of course, you know what happened to Crimea. So that's when it all started. And that's when Putin became demonized. And that's when they started making up these ideas about Putin won't stop in Ukraine. That's a bald-faced lie. Americans need to know that. They need to know that he already stopped. And that's the proof in the pudding. And that's attested to by the chief Ukrainian negotiator, who is like this with Zelensky, head of his party faction in the Rada.

So no outlier, Achermania. After President Putin's presser with President Orban, the Hungarian foreign minister was pressed with a lot of questions by reporters. Cut number seven. Very strong words from Brussels. Appeasement, you're accused of. Okay. So once again, we are a sovereign country. And without dialogue, without discussion, without channels of communication to be kept open, there will be no solution.

Last two and a half years have made this very clear. He's right. Without dialogue, nothing can be accomplished. And the last two and a half years have made this very clear. Here's President Orban himself on campaigning for peace. Cut number eight. What makes this meeting special is the fact that it is held at times of war, in a time when Europe desperately needs peace. For Europe, peace is the most important.

Our main task for the next six months of our chairmanship we see campaigning for peace. He also said European bureaucrats want war with Russia. The EU bureaucrats want war with Russia. I think he's probably right. You quoted Stoltenberg already somehow claiming their 500,000 troops are ready to go. Well, it's important to note that it's not just Telegraph in London that's accusing Orban of appeasement. It's Ursula von der Leyen,

lying again. She's in a position of great responsibility in the EU and it was she that said this is appeasement. So what Orban has started, if it has any legs at all, can be supported by the head of Slovenia, maybe the French now, maybe who knows who else, if they have the guts to stand up to the United States this week as they have never stood up to the United States before. You know, Judge,

I just heard something as we were starting, and that was that a hospital in Kiev, a children's hospital, has been bombed with several casualties, up around 20 or so. I just want to go on record as saying I smell a rat. The bombing took place during the daytime. Only your Ukrainian officials are talking about it right now. Reuters is careful to note. I smell a rat. This comes at a very convenient time right before tomorrow's NATO summit. What is the rat that you smell? A false flag?

Yeah. What could be more convenient for the Ukrainians to have 19 or 29, I forget what it was at first glance. And, you know, all the Reuters, all cameras are right there looking at people trying to rescue people in this hospital. You know, I hate to say this, but I don't put it past them. They need some deus ex machina. Maybe they've chosen this at the expense of a whole bunch of little children.

Wow. Sad story, but very insightful, Ray. Thank you, my dear friend. No matter what we talk about, it's a pleasure to be able to pick your brain. Thank you so much. I'll be away the next two weeks, but I think we're going to be able to squeeze in a roundtable with Larry Johnson before this week is out. Thank you so much, Ray. Most welcome. Take care. Thank you.

The force said Larry Johnson at 11 o'clock this morning and at two this afternoon, Kyle Anzalone from antiwar.com. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Altyazı M.K.