Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter - Is the Biden Team Delusional about Ukraine War_

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, June 2nd, 2023. It's a few minutes after one o'clock in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Here is the segment you all have been waiting for and many of us, many of you have been asking for while our dear friend Scott Ritter has been traveling in Russia where he has lots to discuss with us. Scott, what a pleasure. Welcome home. Welcome back to your other home, Judging Freedom, if I can be so bold. Well, thank you very much. Thank you for welcoming me in this fashion. Sure. A lot of things have happened since last we spoke. The most recent seems relatively harmless, but I'm sure there's a story behind it.

And that is the explosion of drones in a residential neighborhood not far from Russian President Putin's official residence. My inquiry of your thoughts are, did this come from inside Russia? Did this come from Ukraine? If it came from Ukraine, did American intel know about it? If American intel knew about it, did the U.S. consent to it? Did the United States government consent to a serious or threatening attack on the home of the Russian president? My belief is that the U.S. government did not consent to this attack. The British government may have, however. The British are far more nefarious in terms of the scope and scale of their support to the Ukrainian intelligence services. It's widely believed with good reason that the British intelligence was behind the terrorist attack on the Kerch Bridge, the

bomb that collapsed a span, that they were behind, you know, various attacks on Russian shipping, and that they have played a role in facilitating Ukrainian drone attacks against Russian targets, including targets in Moscow. If you remember, on May 3rd, there was a drone attack that actually hit the Kremlin dome. On May 9th, most Americans don't know this, but I do because I was in Moscow on May 9th. There was a dozen Ukrainian drone attacks against Moscow on that date, all of which were shot down, but the Ukrainians were making a concerted effort to target Moscow, to create panic amongst the Russian population. And this current round of attacks appears to be doing just that. Are they trying to hit Putin's residence?

I mean, that's like saying that the Iraqis were trying to hit the Israeli prime minister's house when they fired a Scud missile during the Gulf War. These things are so inaccurate that they're lucky to hit Moscow. I don't think if they hit Putin's residence, I think they would have said, wow, what a lucky shot. But I think the purpose of this isn't to assassinate a Russian president, but rather to sow fear and terror amongst the Russian population. And I think the purpose of this isn't to assassinate a Russian president, but rather to sow fear and terror amongst the Russian population. Does this stuff succeed in sowing fear and terror amongst the Russian population or is life normal in Russia today? You just spent about a month in Russia. You know more about the normality or absence of it, of life in Russia,

probably than anyone in the United States today. What's your take on it? My take is that Russia as a nation has come to grips with the reality that they are in an existential conflict between themselves and the collective West. This is a conflict that goes beyond Ukraine and it deals with Russian survival as a nation. The Russian people are fundamentally united behind the government of Vladimir Putin, not because they all support him. That's not necessarily the case, but they love Russia and they're fighting for Russia. And Putin is their leader right now. He has an unprecedented level of support for this conflict, 85% plus. And these drone attacks aren't going to do anything. This is a people who just celebrated

Victory Day on May 9th, a day when 27 million of their grandparents are looking down on them. This is something they firmly believe. This isn't Russian propaganda. I know in America we're going, this is a Putin propaganda exercise, a military parade. It's real. It's real. It resonates. These people understand where they came from.

They understand who's holding them to account, and that's their relatives. And they're not going to let a couple of drones fired by Ukraine change their opinion. The Russian people are united fundamentally in support of this conflict. You traveled all over the country. How is the Russian economy today? Our friends, Alistair Crook, Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, are of the view that the Biden-instigated European-followed sanctions have failed dismally. In fact, they've had the opposite effect. They've allowed Russia, you tell me if you agree, to demonstrate that it can have a prosperous economy to hell with the West. Yeah, let's be blunt here. The Russian economy is stronger today than it has ever been. Wow. I'll just say that one more time. The Russian economy

today is stronger today now than it has ever been. That means it's stronger than it was pre-sanctions why because they have fundamentally divorced themselves from the West the West was an anchor that was dragging down on the Russian economy encouraging the flow of capital outside of Russia uh discouraging investments in Russia so basically this this nation with a tremendous amount of mineral resources and wealth was losing its wealth to the West. Because of sanctions now, this wealth still exists. Two things. One, there's a big world out there besides the United States and Europe. It's called China, India, Pakistan, Iran, everybody else. And they're all doing business in Russia today. The Chinese are in there big time. They're investing billions

of dollars. But more importantly, from a Russian perspective, all this money that was fleeing during sanctions is in Russia now being reinvested in it. I met with city planners who have said, we don't know how to spend all the money. We don't know how to spend all the money. There is construction taking place everywhere in Russia, new building construction, infrastructure. You know, Joe Biden's big infrastructure plan. I'm going to build America, make it better again. It's alive and it's well and it's living inside Russia today. And here's the irony. The Russians actually joke about this. Thank you, Joe Biden. And they mean it. Thank you. Because of you, we have all this. You know how Biden blames Putin? This is Putin's tax.

Putin's this, Putin's that. The Russians are like, thanks, Joe, because they know. Because of these policies, their economy is stronger now than it's ever been. This is a remarkable insight. And as you walked around Moscow or small towns, and I know you were all over Russia, which of course is enormous in size, were you able to visit shops, purchase what you want, use an ATM machine, buy gasoline for the car, go to a restaurant, go to McDonald's, whatever you wanted to do? The one thing I wasn't able to do was use a Western credit card because, of course, Russia has been cut off from that.

But Russia is, by and large, a digital monetized economy. Cash is not king in Russia. Many businesses discourage the use of cash. They are running around in with, uh, credit cards, their own internal Russian credit cards, the mirror car and equivalents of that. Um, and they can do everything. They pay everything for this. They got rental cars on the side of the road. They call it car sharing. Uh, you can be walking and get a phone call that says, Hey, mom wants you over for dinner right now. But you're like, Oh, how do I get there? I'm in the middle of nowhere. You walk up to one of these share cars, and with your phone, you open it up, you go in, you pay for it, and you can drive it straight to your mom's house, park it, and you're done. This is everywhere in Russia.

They have little scooters you can rent. We have it in New York City with bicycles, but not with cars. With cars. This is a remarkable picture that you're able to paint firsthand, Scott. And they have everything. I just want to let you know, they have everything. There's not an empty shelf in the shop, no matter where I went in Russia. And believe me, I was in the big cities and I was in the not sobig cities. I was in the middle of nowhere. No matter where I went, they had it all, literally everything. What is your view of the state of the military conflagration now that Bakhmut has fallen? Well, nothing's changed in terms of my assessment. I believe that Russia has accrued all of the advantages. I believe there's a lot of heavy fighting left, that there's some fight left in Ukrainian military,

but they can't win. All of the things we talked about prior to my trip, the shortage of artillery ammunition, the adequacy of air defense is coming out to play as we speak. The Ukrainian military is incapable of launching a sustained successful military offensive. And they're incapable right now because of the supremacy of Russia's military arms, these glide bombs they have, the missiles that can hit anywhere with impunity, of gathering the forces necessary to resist Russia. This is Russian advantage. I still believe that Russia will be in a position to terminate this conflict come the end of summer, early fall. Is General Zelushny, either the present or the former commander of Ukrainian military, dead or incapacitated? We don't know. My guess is that he is not dead, but that he has been severely injured because of a Russian strike against a Ukrainian command post in the vicinity

of Kherson. I believe also that many senior Ukrainian intelligence officers who were closely coordinating with Great Britain, the United States and NATO are likewise dead because of a strike by Russia against these decision-making centers. It's basically retaliation for the lunacy of Ukraine sending these drones against Moscow. Have you any intel or rational conclusion on your own of whether NATO officers, perhaps Americans among them, were injured or killed recently in a Russian attack on a bunker outside Kiev, after which planes were seen flying to Wiesbaden, Germany, where, you know, the U.S. has a major medical center. I've seen those reports, and I believe that there have been some casualties,

if not fatal, at least in terms of serious wounds amongst NATO personnel. Whether these are American personnel, I don't know. But we know that, and we've talked about this before, that there are American boots on the ground, people who are advising from a logistic standpoint, from an intelligence standpoint, operational planning standpoint. And if they were in a bunker doing that work with the Ukrainian counterparts and that bunker was struck, there's a good chance they were casualties. Let's go back to your finger on the pulse of the Russian people. Are you able to draw from that an opinion of what they think of American hatred for President Putin and all things Russian?

The Russian people, to be honest, are at least the ones I talked to. And I talked to many. It's a big nation, 150 plus million. So I was able to interact with several hundred, maybe a few thousand. So draw your conclusions as you see fit. But they were from a wide spectrum of Russian society, rich, middle class, poor, vehemently pro-Putin supporters, people who weren't so pro-Putin supporters, and there's a lot of them, are not anti-Russian, they're pro-Russian. But as they say, we have questions. We have a lot of questions. But one of the biggest questions they have is, what is the source of the American angst, of the American anger?

They don't understand it. They would understand if they had done something to offend America, if they had done. But the only thing that they can come up with that they've done that offends America is survive. And from a Russian perspective, they're not willing to sacrifice their survival to appease America. You know, Russia is not trying to defeat us. And I hope everybody understands that it is not a central objective of Russia to defeat either the United States or NATO. They just want to survive. And a key element of their survival is to ensure that Ukraine does not become part of NATO and does not become a full-time cancer that sucks away Russian national vitality. Russia is going to win this war. It's of existential importance to them.

Here is a tape of one of the cheerleaders for Russian hatred, Secretary of State Blinken. I'll be anxious to hear your thoughts on it. This is just about 24 hours old. As I've made clear by virtually every measure, President Putin's invasion of Ukraine has been a strategic failure. Yet, while Putin has failed to achieve his aims, he hasn't given up on them. He's convinced that he can simply outlast Ukraine and its supporters, sending more and more Russians to their deaths, inflicting more and more suffering on Ukraine's civilians. He thinks that even if he loses the short game, he can still win the long game. Putin is wrong about this, too. The United States, together with our allies and partners, is firmly committed to supporting Ukraine's defense today, tomorrow, for as long as it takes. To what end, Tony?

I'm always amazed when people of Secretary Blinken's stature and alleged intelligence make statements such as, Putin believes, Putin thinks. Really, Tony, you know this? I mean, because did Putin get on the phone call and say, hey, Tony, I believe this, I think this, because I'm somebody who follows Putin, and I follow his statements, I follow what he says, what he writes, nothing that Putin has ever articulated comes close to mirroring what Blinken is saying. Blinken is making things up out of whole cloth. He says that Russia, by no measurement can we say Russia has achieved its strategic objectives. One of the key strategic objectives of this conflict conflict, remember war is an extension of politics by other means, so people have to look beyond the battlefield, is to bring an end to American hegemony and to bring alive, to breathe

life into a multipolar global reality. Well, I don't know, Tony, take a look at BRICS, the expansion of BRICS, the economic group that is challenging has surpassed the G7 in terms of global relevance. Take a look at Russia's diplomatic standing around the world. Everywhere except in the West, Russia ranks higher than the United States. Russian currency before the sanctions could not be used to purchase transactions globally. Russian currency today is part of a basket of currencies being used to challenge the petrodollar. Russia is defeating the United States strategically from a geopolitical and economic standpoint. And we've already talked about the battlefield where the Russian military

is not only defeating the NATO-trained Ukrainian military, but in doing so, sapping the strength of NATO, which has basically bankrupted itself by providing tens of billions of dollars worth of military equipment in a failed cause. Here's a documentary put together by the Wall Street Journal about the field of battle. It basically, we cut it down, it's long, it's about a minute and 10 seconds, basically showing what the Wall Street Journal has discovered are part of the Russian defensive lines along the border of where the Russian troops have moved east in anticipation of, it won't be spring now, but of some sort of an offensive. I'll be anxious to hear your thoughts on this, Scott.

While Kiev has been training its troops to use Western weapons, Russia has been building some of the most extensive defensive lines seen anywhere in the world in decades. The first layer of defense shown in many satellite images is the anti-tank ditch. The obstacle is meant to be too wide for a tank to cross, restricting an enemy's ability to manoeuvre and funnel their forces into areas that make them more vulnerable to attack. Next are rows of concrete blocks called Dragon's Teeth. They form a barrier that makes it difficult for heavy vehicles to pass through. And the third line is a trench.

This is the most common type of defensive work and the easiest to construct. Russian forces dug many trenches along roads, junctions and bridges, and even on the beaches of Crimea. Most of them were built in a zigzag or angular pattern. Some military experts say these defence systems don't necessarily pose a major threat to the Ukrainians. They say whether the fortifications are effective would depend on the number of Russian troops defending them. And if Ukraine attacks defensive lines that aren't

sufficiently protected, the Ukrainians will be able to bypass the obstacles with Western Challenger and Leopard battle tanks. Makes sense to you or Wall Street Journal propaganda? I'm confused. They're going to bypass the obstacles with all 14 of the Challenger 2 tanks they received from the British? I mean, this is absurdity in the extreme. Look, anybody knows that history shows that a well-planned offense, you know, properly equipped, et cetera, can overcome just about any defense there is. The Russian defenses are designed to channelize and designed to complicate any potential Ukrainian

action. But these trenches that they've shown are not the end all when it comes to defense. What's key is the personnel that are in the trenches, but more importantly, the firepower behind it. The whole idea here is to channelize and delay any Ukrainian offensive operation to put it into a kill zone that will then see hell come down from above and slaughter them. But these defenses were put together in the fall of 2022 when Russia had suffered those defeats in the Partikul of Kersan. So these were sort of rapid defenses. Russia's gone well beyond that today right now they have intelligence and surveillance capability that's picking up the massing of ukrainian forces uh dozens of

kilometers behind the lines and destroying them before they even get close to the front lines these guided bombs that the russians are able to drop with in unity uh the drones the the cruise missiles these are destroying uk Ukraine's offensive capabilities before they get anywhere near the front lines. So these Russian defenses aren't even playing a factor in what's going on right now. What you're seeing here is typical Wall Street Journal. With all due respect to the guy who wrote it, he doesn't know anything about the military. He doesn't know anything about Russian defensive doctrine. He doesn't know anything at all. He's simply parroting words spoon-fed to him by people who have a bias, an anti-Russian bias. That's it.

One of the most terrific anti-Russian biases we've heard in recent days, I'm not sure if you were back in the U.S. or if you were still in Russia when this occurred, was South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham meeting in Kiev with President Zelensky saying lots of dead Russians, best money we ever spent. I would think that this is lunacy. This is just not normal for someone in the American government to say something like this in a public way to the leader of another country. uh he he's been promoting conflict for some time but remember back when um there was the russian bounty remember that russian bounty where the russians were supposedly paying the taliban to kill american soldiers and how outraged lindsey graham was how outraged he was over this well it was all a lie and lindsey graham knew it was a lie while he was being outraged but now lindsey graham this you know the this personification of moral clarity, apparently, according to him, you cannot pay to kill American soldiers, is bragging how Americans are paying to kill Russian soldiers. This man is a soulless human being. He is not a representative of the

country I took an oath upon to defend. He's a murderous slug who deserves his place on the pantheon of war criminals up there with anybody, any bad name you want to put up there. It is not an American value to buy the deaths of anybody. You know, Lindsey, if you are that kind of man, then man up. Rather than let the Ukrainians do the fighting for you. If you want to kill Russians, Lindsay, why don't you go to Congress and get a declaration of war so American boys and girls can cross the border and do it themselves? That's what real men do. That's what real men do, Lindsay, but you're not a real man.

You're a mouse. You're a little pipsqueak of a human being who's letting other people do the fighting for you, and then your mouth goes crazy. Lindsey Graham is a disgrace to the United States. He's a disgrace to the United States Senate. He's a disgrace to the men and women in the armed services of the United States. Nobody should tolerate this kind of language.

He should have been reprimanded by the U.S. Congress, but the fact that the Senate remained silent, the fact that the President remained silent, the fact that General Miley remained silent, the fact that anybody in uniform remained silent, tells you the depths to which this nation has fallen. This is the same guy. I don't want to raise your blood pressure anymore. And you know this. You remember this at the outset of the war.

He publicly asked the president to bring about the murder, the assassination of President Putin. The opposite of Lindsey Graham, the opposite of Antony Blinken is Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, who recently gave a very, very thoughtful very nuanced very articulate response to a question put put to him by a british uh television uh reporter take a listen you you made a great deal about 19 i'm through the 1956 and fighting for freedom you have a neighbor who is invaded by russia the very country you know you grew up with pictures of tanks going into Budapest. You know, why are you opposing the European aid? No, no, it's emotionally, it's tragic.

So all of our heart is with the Ukrainians. We understand how much they suffer. But I'm speaking here as a politician who should save lives. The most important thing for the international political communities is to save lives. Especially when you are convinced, as I do, that there is no chance to win this war. So therefore, what we should do far more energy invest into, to convince everybody that the only solution is ceasefire. And then after the ceasefire, peace talks should start.

And then we put back to your point, yeah? But do you really think there is no chance of Ukraine winning? That's my point. Surely they stand very little chance of winning without the aid which you are currently blocking. My position is that looking at the reality, looking at the figures, looking at the surroundings, looking at the fact that NATO is not ready to send troops, it's obvious that there is no victory for poor Ukrainians on the battlefield. I thought it was nuanced, articulate, moral and right on the mark. What do you think?

No, it is. The problem is that in the West it's of course going to be lambasted because we have put Mr. Orban into a corner. He's a pro-Putin, fascist, undemocratic leader, et cetera, et cetera. But let's just remove everything except what he said. You cannot find fault with any word he uttered. Everything was fact-based and everything was grounded in the kind of moral compass one would hope leaders would have. Lindsey Graham would do well to listen to Mr. Orban and then reflect long and hard on the shameful words he has uttered. Mr. Orban, I think, is starting to represent a groundswell of reality that's taking over Europe. Ukraine cannot win this war. And I think people are starting to recognize that the more they fuel this conflict, just the greater the suffering will be. What will it take for the Biden administration, the Tony Blinkins, the Lloyd Austins, the Jake Sullivans to recognize that Ukraine can't win this war and to construct an acceptable, moral and quick exit ramp?

Well, I think we have to understand that Jake Sullivan, Tony Blinken, and Lloyd Austin are political puppets. They're tools. Unfortunately, they're not giving sound advice to the president. Their job is to take the president's political position and turn it into policy. And so they will sit there and cheerlead. And we saw those Tony Blinken. I mean, the man is so separated from reality when he stands up there. It's almost like it's a parody. It's almost like he was doing a comedy routine with the words he was saying because they're so far removed from fact based truth. But that's where Lloyd Austin is.

That's where Blinken is. That's where Sullivan is. What this is going to take is Joe Biden being confronted with a reality that is so harsh in its construct that he has no choice but to back away. And that reality is about to hit sometime by the end of summer, early fall. It will become evident that the Ukrainian armed forces are no longer capable of resistance. And at that point in time, Biden will have to make a political decision that America needs to rapidly look for an off-ramp from this conflict or else face the politically damaging specter of Russia rolling through Ukraine and making Joe Biden and America and NATO look as impotent as they really are. Scott Ritter, what a pleasure. That month you spent in Russia was just fabulous. And you've come back with so much of your usual articulate analysis for which the fans and viewers of Judging Freedom, not the least of which is I, are deeply and profoundly grateful. We'll see you again soon my dear friend

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