Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter: Next Steps for Israel & Ukraine

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, March 11th, 2024. Scott Ritter is with us. How close is the United States to war? How near to the end is Ukraine? How volatile are Israel, Lebanon, and Gaza? But first this. How do you really feel about your financial future right now, today? Stable or uncertain? Despite all the happy talk that the Fed and the banks want you to buy into, I believe that 2024 is going to be a very unstable year, politically and financially. That's one of the reasons I decided to buy physical gold and silver, and I suggest you should do the same and do it now. Why? Because throughout times of economic uncertainty,

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into Lear gold and silver IRAs. It's easy to do and it's tax and penalty free. Don't be caught off guard. Experts predict the markets may tank again. You'll be happy if you have protection in place. So call Lear at 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com and tell them your friend the judge sent you. Scott Ritter, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. I was in Europe last week. I had dinner with the Pope. It wasn't just me. It was 25 of us. McGovern is giving me credit for

the Pope's comment about negotiations in Ukraine, but he actually made that comment. It was taped before I met him. I had nothing to do with it. That's your story and you're sticking to it. I'm sticking to it. Exactly. Exactly. I don't know that the Pope has a moral suasion or influence anymore. The phrase white flag of courage was an odd one, but I think we know what he meant that the Ukrainians should see the handwriting on the wall. Before we get to that, I want your opinion on Victoria Nuland, the mastermind of the coup in 2014 and of this war. She's gone. She's at Columbia University now. Did she jump or was she pushed? Both. That's my opinion. I mean, so far, what's amazing about this story is that nobody's talking about it. It's normally when you have a resignation of this,

of this level. And this is a resignation. She, she quit. And it, in the timing of it is of course problematic because she's the architect of this policy. This is Victoria Nuland's war. This is Victoria Nuland's strategy. And for her to be asked to resign or to resign under pressure means that this strategy is no longer the preferred strategy of the United States. And I think that's what happened there. I think Victoria Nuland, you know, probably got ahead of herself, was trying to push this strategy too hard. If you recall, she went to Ukraine and promised that the money that was being held up in Congress would be released. And then based upon that promise, she entered into negotiations with the Ukrainians and with our French allies, our German allies, and others about policy issues that were predicated on this money being released. And of course, the money wasn't released. And now our allies were

ahead of their skis, so to speak. And I think the Biden administration is instead saying, no, we're not going to double down. We're actually looking for an off-ramp right now. We don't want Ukraine to be the number one issue in the upcoming election. We'd like to keep things focused on domestic policy. And so we're looking for an off-ramp while Victoria Nuland's looking for a war. No president wants to go to war, especially a major war like one with Russia, in the lead up to a contentious presidential election, especially against a war like one with Russia, in the lead up to a contentious presidential election, especially against the candidate, Donald Trump, whose response is, I'm the only guy in modern history that didn't get us involved in a major war. And I think Americans are tired of war, tired of foreign entanglements.

And I think Nuland was told to back off. And I think she didn't. There are rumors that she was making phone calls to the Pentagon that she wasn't authorized to make, you know, pursuing, pushing policy that hadn't been agreed on by her boss. And I think she was told she was shown the door. She's been given a nice sinecure. I mean, a professorship at Columbia is not a bad thing and it keeps her fingers in the pot. I'm sure she's going to be speaking at the Council of Foreign Relations and called upon before Congress

and writing papers and stuff, but she's not in the Biden administration and she's not going to be part of the team that crafts whatever exit strategy the Biden administration is willing and able to take. Do you think she has anything to do with the taped conversation that the Russians revealed of the German generals talking about shipping Taurus missiles to Ukraine, especially after Chancellor Scholz of Germany said, we're not going to do it? I think she has something to do with that policy. I actually think that the, you know, unless Victoria Nuland was the anonymous attendee in the conference that logged in and just sat there and no one paid attention to, I think that this is actually more likely a Russian hacker that then was controlled or volunteered this information to the Russian intelligence service. And then because no sources and methods were compromised, they turned it over to Margarita Simignon. But there's no doubt that Victoria Nuland was the one that was pushing the Germans to be very

aggressive on Taurus, telling them to go ahead and begin. Because remember, Pistorius, the defense minister, is telling his generals to lean forward, to prepare for this, even though Schultz said no. And I think Victoria Nuland was saying, don't worry, we got this. We'll get Schultz to bend. We'll take care of that. You just make sure that you're ready when the time's ready. And so they got ahead of it. And I think the Russians were aware of her conversation with the Germans.

And they knew that by leaking this information, they were going to put the Germans in an extraordinarily difficult position. And what do the Germans do now? Does Schultz get his way or does the German defense minister get his way? Do the Germans begin sending troops surreptitiously to Ukraine as the French and British and Americans have? Well, it's interesting. The leader of the CDU, which is an opposition party, I think it's the Christian Democratic Union, is out making very, very warlike speeches, talking about the absolute necessity for the tourists. And he's gunning for Schultz's seat. So now we're down to politics where Schultz is going to have to make a decision. Does he gain

more politically standing up and doing what he's doing to avoid a war? Is there enough, you know, will amongst the German people to stay out of a war? Or is he going to have to cave and be the guy that brought Taurus to Ukraine and thereby, you know, take away a major talking point from his political opposition? We're down to domestic German politics, and it's really up to what the will of the German people are. And I think right now they're pretty much evenly split on the issue. Alistair Crook argues that Western leadership or leadership in Western Europe is in a state of panic, that they don't know what to do. Do you agree with that? Controlled panic, but I would also say furious panic. And what I mean by that is,

let's keep in mind that France, Macron was a guy that before this invasion and even right after the invasion said, look, we don't want Europe to be caught in a, to become the battleground between the United States and Russia. We don't want to be, you know, the battleground between two superpowers. And we, we, Europe need to be looking for a new European security policy, a new framework, a new alliance that doesn't include the United States that puts Europe first. And Schultz was the guy who was saying, we don't mind receiving this Nord Stream oil. We understand it's a problem with the United States, but this cheap energy, this cheap gas, this cheap oil is making our economy the strongest in Europe. And we're not unhappy with that. We'd like to stay on this path. And yet today it's France and Germany that are leaning forward

together with Great Britain the most aggressively. And the reason why is Victoria Nuland. Victoria Nuland went in there and put the pressure on. Now, when she initially put the pressure on, she was doing the Biden administration's bidding. Remember the counteroffensive and the need after the counteroffensive to renew Ukraine's military capacity with these new longer range weapons. She was doing her job, but it's the Biden administration that made the determination, especially after Congress showed that it wasn't going to budge on funding, that they needed an off-ramp, that this, you know, to go away the way they're going right now, you know, talking big, but not having anything to back it up was just going to lead to absolute calamity in Ukraine. And so they backed off, Nuland was abandoned, released. And now you have Macron and

Schultz embarrassed. And it's Macron who's hugely embarrassed by this. He is humiliated by this. The United States has left him hanging. And that's why he's saying things designed to create the perception of a strong France, that France will go it alone. France will send troops. The bottom line is he can't. I mean, the troops that are available to him for immediate deployment are the French brigade, or at least the leading elements. It's actually a reinforced battalion in Romania, but that's a NATO designated force. And to de-link it from NATO would be horrifically complicated. And then to reestablish logistics inside Ukraine would be horrifically dangerous. And then what? The best

France could do is surge 12,000, 15,000 troops over a long period because they're not ready right now. And so it's just France, you know, flexing muscles, not able to act on it. But Macron's embarrassed. He's embarrassed and he's furious. And so he's doing things that could be construed as panic-like. But I think it's actually, you know, he is just sending a signal to the United States that, you know, what you've done is wrong. And he's putting the United States in an awkward position. But in the end, I think you'll see France will soften its position because as the French minister of defense said, we ain't got the troops. So it doesn't matter what the president says he wants. We can't do it. What will Joe Biden do if he is confronted with the likelihood of a humiliating defeat in Ukraine,

nukes or troops? Neither. I mean, the bottom line is, you know, we understand what's at stake here. Again, there's a lot of talk right now. You've got Lloyd Austin saying stupid things. You've got Joe Biden saying stupid. I mean, the State of the Union, you know, if they win, there is no doubt in my mind they will not stop. Yeah, he knows they're not going to go. He knows. I know he knows because I know the kind of intelligence he's receiving right now. So he knows that the Russians are making no move.

The Pentagon is saying there's no massive logistical buildup. A move into Poland, a move into the Baltics would require Russia to mobilize another million, million and a half men. There would be huge detectable logistics preparations for this. None of that's happening right now. So Biden knows what the truth is, but he's playing a political game right now. He's, you know, he's, he's trying to stir up the population and create a contrast between him., of course, the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, who is going to hit the campaign trail saying things like NATO is outdated, maybe America is better off not being a part of NATO. And so, you know, it's a lot of posturing going on right now. But Joe Biden will not send American troops to Ukraine, and America will never

use nukes unless Russia, if Russia doesn't attack NATO, America won't use nukes. Joe Biden actually said that in the State of the Union. Here's the cut number five, Sonia. Ukraine can stop Putin if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons that needs to defend itself. That is all. That is all Ukraine is asking. They're not asking for American soldiers. In fact, there are no American soldiers in war in Ukraine, and I'm determined to keep it that way. Strange mumble there. No American soldiers of war in Ukraine. The translation that the White House released says there are no American soldiers who are in Ukraine. Aren't there American troops in Ukraine just out of uniform? Certainly American intel is there and American contractors there and American soldiers of fortune are there. But are active duty troops, army, Marines on the ground in Ukraine? Yes, there's active duty troops on the ground in Ukraine, hundreds of them. They're not informal, conventional combat units. They might be in an advisory capacity.

They might be there for logistics purposes, for accounting purposes. There's teams of military people who are running around trying to keep track of these weapons, but there's definitely Americans on the ground. But here's the other thing I just think your audience needs to be reminded of. The 1948 legislation that transformed the military into this joint concept of military operations that created the CIA and created the National Security Council, there's important language in there about the and created the National Security Council. There's important language in there about the role of the National Security Council, which is, of course, a body that has no congressional oversight. And it talks about the fact that they can run a secret foreign

policy. They can do things that are covert in nature, non-reportable to the American people, non-reportable to Congress. They can lie, they can cheat, they can steal, that Americans can have diplomats saying one thing while the CIA is doing another thing altogether. And that's just the way it is. So when the president of the United States, and this is the disturbing thing about that, when the president of the United States is speaking to the American people in the State of the Union, just saying something, understand that it's likely that he's lying to the American people because we have secret foreign policy. And in Ukraine, we've never told the American public the truth. I mean, imagine what the

discussion would have been in 2021 when we're talking about Russian troop movement, if the American people knew that the CIA since 2014 had 12 bases along the Ukrainian border collecting intelligence for potential offensive strikes inside Russia. Imagine what the debate would be if we'd been informed of that. Instead, we're told, no, we're doing nothing. Those Russians are being aggressive. Those Russians, we haven't provoked the Russians. We do nothing but provoke them. And here's the other thing. The president may be able to lie to the American people. The Russians know darn well what's going on. They knew those 12 bases were there. They know what the American policy is, and that's why they act the way they do. It would be nice if we would just as a nation

decide that we don't want a CIA that carries out covert foreign policies, that for once the American government, who reports to us, by the way, we the people, of the people, by the people, for the people, that's what I heard Abraham Lincoln say, that we actually are in charge. But what is it? We're dupes. We are literally dupes who elect a government who is allowed by law to lie to us, to carry out covert policy, to deny it to Congress. It's all deniable. And they're doing it over and over again. American ambassadors who work in the embassies across this country are not the number one voice of the American people. It's the CIA station chief. The last president that tried to stop the CIA operations from overthrowing other countries had his brains blown out on November 22nd, 1963.

Yeah. Yeah, but if I were the president of the United States, I could handle this very easily. It'd be called night of the long knives. And, um, the, all the CIA people wake up one morning with us marshals at their door, their badges or credentials would be taken away. Any weapons they had to be taken away. Uh, they'd be placed under, um, uh, you know, a, some sort of home arrest until we investigate their role in this, the CIA would be shut down. U.S. Marshals would flood in there and shut the whole thing down, seize the documents, remove the people, and the CIA would cease to exist overnight. That's the way you do it. You don't sit there and mumble about it, talk about it, and let these idiots who have their little

covert things over there, you shut the whole thing down, night of the long knives, and it's done. And it needs to happen because I'm here to tell you right now, the CIA is running parallel government. They are running a parallel foreign policy, a parallel defense policy. We're being told one thing by the secretaries, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, who have to go before the U.S. Senate to be confirmed. And the CIA is doing something because they don't have to. They report to the National Security Advisor and the National Security Council, and there is no Senate confirmation process there.

The American people need to take control of their government, take control of their foreign policy, take control of their defense policy. Alistair Crook also argues that the White House has, quote, had enough of Bibi Netanyahu and the slaughter in Gaza. That's the image that they want to convey. Joe Biden's not going to stop sending anything to Israel, is he? No. I mean, if he had enough, then he'd pick up the phone and have the following conversation. Bibi, if you say another word, I'm hanging up the phone and I'm taking my embassy out, kicking your embassy out, and I'm arresting every Israeli agent here in the United States, and you'll never see another dollar from the United States of America again. Not only that, this time next week, I'm establishing a no fly zone over Gaza. And if your Air Force there challenges us, I shoot you all down, blow up your bases. I'm going to terminate you and I'm going to terminate your nation. So shut up and listen.

And now I'm going to tell you what you're going to do. And then you dictate the solution to them. We control Israel. We have the potential to control Israel. The problem is Israel owns us. Now, the thing about being owned by Israel, it's like, for instance, investing in Iranian oil fields or Russian oil fields. We can say we have a controlling interest in Russian oil fields, but if they decide to nationalize it, there's nothing we can do. They're going to take it over. So here we have Israel has bought out Congress, bought out everybody, owns everything. But we can change this overnight simply by making sure that Israeli agents of influence have to register on the Foreign Agent Registration Act. And that terminates Israel right there. That means any money that has

been received has to be reported and you can never receive it again. And if you're a politician, we could control Israel. We can take control of our government, but we don't because we've allowed pro-Israeli interests to buy Congress, buy the presidency, buy the media, buy every aspect of American governance. So they think they can control us, and we allow them to. Look at the election that's coming. Let's assume that it's Biden and Trump. I thought for a long time Biden wasn't going to run. The Democrats would approach him and talk him out of it now it appears he is going to run excuse me i also thought uh that trump might stumble in the primaries i was

wrong on both they're both uh likely to be the nominees of their party one's more pro-israel than the other one is more give bb whatever he wants than the other. It just depends on what day of the week it is. Money, money, money, money, and elections. I mean, when you have AIPAC bragging, they put $100 million on the table to buy Congress. And that's literally what they're saying. We have $100 million to invest in the upcoming congressional race. That means that Israel wants to buy the United States Congress. We now at least know the price of Congress, a hundred million dollars gets you a Congress. You know, Trump and Biden both know that if they, especially at this stage of the election, if they come out against Israel, the traditional sources of funding dry up. And I don't, please don't call me anti-Semitic and say that I'm saying anything, but bottom line is pro-Israeli money, Jewish money, American Jewish money plays a big role in American politics. And it's enough that if you're denied this money,

if it goes to the other side, then the other side gets a strategic advantage. Look, there's other money out there. We know that big pharma, defense, agriculture, there's lots of money that goes into election. And the Israeli money is just a fraction of it, but it's an important fraction that most politicians can't do without. And Biden, remember, when you're running for president, you're not just running for yourself, but you're the head of your party. And so the candidate's stance on Israel will dictate how much money flows to the people behind them, the senators and the representatives

that this president needs to govern effectively if they want to take control of Congress while they have control of the house. They need, they're afraid that if they don't have the Israeli money, that money goes to the other side, they get the advantage. So they're both just kissing up to Israel. How close is the United States to war, whether it's in the Middle East or in Ukraine? We, you know, we have the president saying all the right things about trying to avoid a conflict. And under normal conditions, I would say, okay, you know, I trust him on that. But what happens if is the problem. What happens if Israel and Hezbollah explode into a straight-up war and hezbollah starts getting the upper hand and the united states decides to

intervene on the on behalf of israel and then iran intervenes on behalf of hezbollah now we're at war with iran now we have a major war in the middle east that we're not going to win what happens if macron uh decides that you know even though that he's going to call Putin's bluff, that he's going to put four Rafael fighters at Ivano-Frankivsk airfield, back them up with Mamba air defense, and then put a brigade into Odessa to sit there at Odessa. And he's not going to attack the Russians. He's going to put the brigade in as a screening force, like a tripwire with air defense and aircraft covering it. And Putin says, why'd you do that? And he kills them all. And now France is screaming bloody murder. And the president who said that

NATO is a sacred obligation now has to do something. And we, next thing you know, we're at war with Russia and that's the end of the world. So we're in a situation where we may not want to go to war, but we've created policy conditions where we may be dragged into the war. And I'm really concerned about Ukraine right now because there seems to be an indifference on the part of the American people about what the consequences of war with Russia would be. I mean, you have people being dismissive of Russia's nuclear deterrence. They're just bluffing, they say. Russia doesn't bluff. They're not bluffing. And we are really at risk. If NATO wants to get involved, this thing will spiral out of control rapidly. And then the American people wake up the

next morning and it's over. I mean, there's nuclear explosions going off and you're wondering how the heck did this happen? Well, it's happening because you're not holding your government to account right now. You're not picking up the phone saying, I don't want to die in a nuclear holocaust. Let's stop this nonsense in Ukraine. Let's bring this under control. I, again, advise all Americans to call their congressmen that just asked the following question. Why isn't Tony Blinken talking to Ambassador Anatoly Antonov at the Russian embassy to jumpstart arms control? Why haven't they engaged with Major General Yevgeny Bobkin, the defense attache, to talk about military-on-military discussions, to create

confidence-building measures to keep the conflict low? Why aren't we talking to these important Russians? Why are we keeping them in the dark, silent, ignoring them? Right now is the time to talk. Right now is the time to hear what they have to say, to begin a dialogue that could lead us away from this path towards war. Because by not talking to them, we become ignorant about Russia and ignorance breeds fear. And then that fear breeds more ignorance and more harsh actions. And next thing you know, we're on an automatic path to a war that everybody claims they don't

want. It's sort of like August or the summer of 1914 all over again. If you go back and look at June, July 1914, everybody in Europe said they don't want a major war. They don't want it. The diplomacy will stop. Don't worry about mobilization. Next thing you know, it's August. We're at war.

And that's it, world war. That's where we are today. We're literally like in July 1914 right now where everybody's saying we don't want a war, but they're not doing anything to stop a war. It just took one powder keg to set it off. Let me take you back to Israel and Gaza and the Biden administration. How absurd and even counterproductive, maybe even catastrophic, was it for the Biden administration to invite Benny Gantz and then feign surprise when he sounded, he came across like Netanyahu with a nicer personality. But he basically said the same thing in terms of how the IDF would be slaughtering Gazans if he became the prime minister. I should be surprised. I mean, again, it's the job of American diplomats and the American military,

the attachés, to meet these people, have continuous contact with these people, and then write reporting back to their superiors about these people and where they stand on these issues. And then this reporting is used to create briefing papers that should be put in front of the president and say, if Benny Gantz comes, this is what we anticipate him to say. But I think right now that we're tolerating the situation where the Israelis stop talking to us and deny us that flow of information. You know, the ambassador to Israel, the CIA station chief, the heads of American military missions should be pounding on the door, demanding access to talk. And American support should be

conditional upon this kind of dialogue because you can't have a situation where an American president doesn't know what's going to be said to him by somebody coming in. Presidents don't engage in guesswork. They don't have surprise meetings. When a president meets with somebody, the agenda has already been laid out. They are simply putting the finishing touches on it. So the fact that Gantz came in and surprised the president shows you how unprepared the Biden administration is on this issue. And how they really accomplished nothing other than irritating Netanyahu, whom they fear because he controls them, as you and all of our other guests who are knowledgeable of this have pointed

out. But why do you think the New York Times last week ran a piece about Biden and his courage in confronting what they thought was a serious nuclear threat from the Russians in 2022? I mean, this is almost a joke. It's the dumbest article in the history of dumb articles. First of all, if you read the article, it admits down the road that there's no evidence of a Russian nuclear threat, that the U.S. government has no evidence that evidence of a Russian nuclear threat, that the U.S. government has no evidence that there's a Russian nuclear threat, that we monitor Russia's nuclear capabilities and there's nothing, no indication, no senior people talking, no military people talking, nothing. What it comes from is the chattering class. Judge, what would happen

if we went around to all the podcasts that are out there in the United States and we picked the most firebrand ones? People are saying, America should nuke Russia. Nuke Russia first. And we took all that and then we put that together and said, there are voices in America that are encouraging a preemptive nuclear strike against Russia. And then we presented it to the president as intelligence. That's what happened here. Basically, you have, again, I come back to the fact that we're not talking to ambassadors. We're not talking to defense attachés. We're not talking to diplomats. We have total broke, we have no connectivity with the Russians. As a result, analysts like me, who should be assessing reports coming in from all the contacts that are having, are instead grasping at straws.

And we have people in the White House saying, what's going on? What's going on? And so we watch, you know, the radical Russian talk shows, and they have very radical Russian talk shows, where former, you know, military people, former diplomats, things of that nature get on there. We need to nuke NATO now, preemptive strike, take them out, hit America. It's all garbage. It means nothing. It's just stupid people saying stupid things on TV, just like we do here in America. But instead, the intelligence analyst is taking the transcript of that and pulling these statements, pulling them together and saying, there's a pattern here. We have a pattern of Russians acting crazy on Russian TV. So what? There's a pattern of Americans acting crazy on American TV too. That doesn't make it

intelligence. It makes it entertainment, which is what's going on in Russia as well. It's not, these people aren't policymakers. They have no influence on policy. They're just basically, they're Russian channels trying to get viewership and they bring in people who say radical things, just like we do here in the United States. When do you think the war in Ukraine will end? Let's look this way. The battle of Adyivka was of extreme importance and a lot of people were trying to downplay it. But the fact is it was the last defensible position of the Ukrainians in the Donbass region. By breaking through at Adyavka, there's no prepared defense line to stop the Russians.

So the Russians are advancing inexorably. And so what has happened is General Sertsy, the new commander, he's taken the last of the Ukrainian reserves, including the brigade that had the Abrams tanks, and he's throwing them in to try and stop the Russians. So they're launching these counterattacks to try and stop the Russians. And it slowed the Russians down. They take pause, but the Russians are destroying these brigades. There's nothing left. This is why Macron is talking about what he's doing, because what Macron is saying is if we put French troops in, not in combat, but in a screening position, Odessa, we can free up the Ukrainian troops that are in that screening position so they can go to the front line and maybe stabilize this thing. But the bottom line is the Ukrainians

have run out of troops. They don't have prepared defenses. And the Russians ain't running out of anything. And it's just going to be this slow, inexorable, grinding operation. And by, again, I'll just rely on Apti Al-Adhanov. He's the Chechen general who commanded the Second Army Corps in Lugansk, who just graduated from the Russian General Staff Academy, where he parted his knowledge about the war to other Russian generals so they can take it to the battlefield. He gave an interview recently where he said that he expects dramatic changes in the battlefield situation by May. And by saying that, I think he's anticipating the collapse of the Ukrainian forces and a precipitous withdrawal

to the Dnieper River. And he thinks that it'll all be over by September. That's Apte Aladonov, not Scott Ritter, but I respect the man. I've met him. I've talked to him. And Apte's not the kind of guy to be throwing out that kind of nonsense. He doesn't ever get ahead of himself. So when he's saying this, it has to be taken seriously. Even if Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, caves, as he probably will, they all do, and the war party in the House, which is 90% of both parties, votes in favor of this $61 billion going over there. What good is it going to do them if they don't have the manpower? Well, let's just take Johnson or Nuland at face value. The vast majority of that money doesn't go to Ukraine.

It goes to American defense industry, who is then building stuff to replenish stocks here. So the majority of that money has no impact. I think only $14 billion of it actually goes to Ukraine. And most of that, the cash can be used for Ukraine to pay people and all that stuff. That helps morale at home. But in terms of equipment and everything, it still has to go through a procurement chain. And this is why the Pentagon is saying that they don't expect any counteroffensive to be able to happen of Ukraine until, you know,

late 2024, 2025, because it's going to take that much time for stuff to flow in. But now you asked the magic question. Okay. Let's just say it flows in. Who's going to man it there's no one they have no one that's getting trained they have a couple thousand guys getting trained in europe right now but that's going to have minimal impact they don't have the ability to generate the 90 120 150 200 000 men they're going to need to do a counter offensive let alone the 100 000 they're going to need just to put together a defense. Their best bet is to withdraw to the Dnieper River.

That allows them to thin out their troops there and then concentrate troops in the north and the south to try and prevent the Russians from making big gains there. But, you know, I think you're going to see them lose Kharkov very soon. And I think you're going to see the Russians knocking on the door of Odessa sometime this summer. Scott, it's a pleasure, my man. You're a bundle of energy and of knowledge and passion and deeply appreciated by me. Missed you for the week that I was in the Vatican and deeply appreciated by the viewers of this show and by your colleagues who appear on this show as well. All talk to me about you thank

you my man thank you so much for joining us right thanks for having me of course we'll see you again soon scott ritter at his uh at his best at his uh passionate best colonel uh mcgregor tomorrow uh matt ho karen uh kwiatkowski and zachary Yost, a new academic and journalist guest for us with some wonderful insights on the unintended consequences of good intentions. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm