Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter - Putin Ukraine Biden Update

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

Scott Ritter - frmr U.S. Marine CIA intelligence officer#Ukraine #Putin #BidenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi there everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, April 26, 2022. It's a little after one o'clock in the afternoon on the east coast of the United States. My guest today is the person who's produced the largest audience on judging freedom, perhaps because he's one of the most intellectually honest analysts of the state of our military affairs in the world today. Scott Ritter is former United States Marine Corps, former UN weapons inspector, and known for his brutal honesty and ability to analyze what's going on with respect to the U.S. military. Scott, it's a pleasure to have you back. Welcome back to Judging Freedom. Thanks for having me. A couple of weeks ago when you were here,

you were bold enough to say that one of the goals of the United States military was a degraded or weakened Russia. The establishment laughed at you for saying that. Phil Giraldi, former CIA who shares the same view of the military's involvement in Ukraine, said the same thing and he was laughed at. However, just two days ago when he left Poland or when he was, when he left Kiev and was in Poland, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said, we want to see Russia weakened. What happened in the past two weeks that the government is now admitting this? Well, there's a couple of things. One, the Russians are closer to achieving victory than they were when we last spoke. There's a reality on the ground that's inescapable.

It's just basic military math. When you have a thousand artillery pieces on one side and a hundred artillery pieces on the other side, the thousand is going to win every single time. And that's what's happening. The Russians are overwhelming Ukrainian defenders. Even, you know, those well-trained, well-equipped, well-led units don't stand a chance. The Russians are going very slow, very deliberately by the book, and they're just grinding the Ukrainians down. And I think everybody who looks at this realizes that this is in case. Let's look at what the U.S. is doing. When we first started, we were just sending in javelin stingers and some light anti-tank weapons because I don't think anybody expected the Ukrainians to last this long. Had any of the Ukrainians to last this long.

Had they expected the Ukrainians to last this long, they would have front loaded this with artillery, with tanks, armored vehicles, all the things they're bringing in now. But none of the stuff they're bringing in now is going to make it to the front intact. I mean, more pieces might make it, but, you know, 100 tanks, no. 72 artillery pieces, no. So the goal right now isn't a ukrainian victory the goal is to bleed russia because there's part two to austin's statement they they want to make russia weaker so they can't do this again so they can't repeat a ukrainian victory i mean i know blinken is talking about you know ukraine's already suffered

a strategic defeat that's just hot air i mean russia suffered a strategic defeat russia's won this thing it's game over um i think the goal of the u.s right now is to inflict enough of a cost on russia that they for instance wouldn't be able to do the same thing against finland later this summer when fin joined NATO, or if Russia is successful in linking up with the Transnistria region in Moldova to move on into Moldova, although Russia has no intent of doing this. I think that's the goal, is to weaken Russia so they can't replicate the victory that they're achieving on the ground in Ukraine as we speak. Are we, I guess what you're saying, Scott, is we're prolonging the inevitable. And by the introduction of military hardware, whether it's new, used, or old,

we'll get to that in a minute, we're prolonging the inevitable and thus allowing more Ukraine soldiers and even sadder, Ukraine civilians to die. And that if we hadn't been supplying the military hardware, the Russians would have marched in and there would have been far fewer deaths. Is that a fair summary of your argument? Absolutely. Look, what's happening right now in Ukraine is murder, plain and simple. It's murder. It's no longer a standup fight. Look, war is hell and war is about death. I call war organized murder. When you have two teams going at it, you know, they're going to land punches and combat punches mean dead people, wounded people. And a lot of the times it means dead civilians, wounded civilians, because they're stuck in the middle, but it's a fight. I call it organized murder because both sides are going at

it with lethal capability. What's happening right now is very one-sided. And there's no way what the United States is doing can bring the Ukrainians up so that it's back to being close to a fair fight. This is a one-sided match. It's murder, pure and simple. Every Ukrainian soldier we're training to use an American artillery piece will die in combat. That's a guaranteed outcome. There's no military math that can change this. Same thing with every Ukrainian soldier training to drive a Polish tank or an East German armored fighting vehicle. They are going to die. That's it. Has Lloyd Austin, in your view, the Secretary of Defense, come to that conclusion as well? I mean, he's a retired four-star general, so he's got a lot of experience. And if he has, has he told that to the president? Well, I would imagine that Lloyd Austin is a man of integrity. I don't think he'd get to where he was if he wasn't. And I believe that Lloyd Austin provides the president of the United States with the soundest advice he can.

So I believe the president has been briefed on the inevitable outcome of this conflict and that the goal right now is to drag this out in hopes of further weakening Russia. But, you know, there's people saying it's a throwaway statement, but it's true. Apparently America is willing to fight to the last dead Ukrainian because no American troops are going to die on the ground there. It's going to be Ukrainians that die. And if we truly cared for the Ukrainian people as we claim to, we'd be picking up the phone right now and demanding that Zelensky end this conflict. Because the only outcome that's going to happen by extending this is more dead ukrainians all right so a friend of mine recently sent me uh a statement by the ceo of raytheon huge arms manufacturer maybe the biggest uh in the world

uh in which he basically said and i didn't this, they're not manufacturing equipment for Ukraine. The American equipment is coming from DOD stockpiles in Europe, mainly in Poland, or NATO stockpiles. And the quality of the equipment that we're sending is not the best. And much of it is being destroyed. I'm paraphrasing this CEO, Scott, much of it is being destroyed before it's ever even used. And he sort of said this with a little bit of glee, because if that equipment is destroyed, then the government's got to order more, and they're going to order it from Raytheon. Is this likely true that he said this? Is the equipment old and shabby? And is the American military industrial complex rejoicing that American equipment is being destroyed so that they can manufacture more of it?

Well, I can't speak to the military industrial complex. I'll take the CEO at his word. He apparently is happy about this because this will require the U.S. Congress to allocate more U.S. taxpayer dollars to buy more Javelin, Javelin C models. I think there's even an advanced version coming out beyond that. The models that are being provided to the Ukrainians understand, you know, we say we want to help the Ukrainians. We're sending them the oldest equipment we have. Now, these are old A and B model Javelins, FGM-148s. They've been upgraded. What's a Javelin, Scott?

Let me interrupt you. What is a Javelin for lay people to understand? The Javelin was the weapon of choice that we started sending back a couple years ago when we started sending lethal aid. It's a man-portable anti-tank weapon, usually fired by a crew of two. One man can fire it. It's a very effective system when new. It can guide in. It can destroy tanks.

But the weapons we're sending them are old weapons. The electronics that operate the ailerons that guide the missile don't work right, which means when they fire the missile, it's missing the target. The high explosive warhead, oftentimes because it's old, is malfunctioning. It's not exploding with full power or not exploding at all, which means the missile is just bouncing off the tanks. This is why there's anecdotal stories of Russian tanks taking six and seven javelin hits and keep on going. Frankly speaking, when we send this weaponry to the Ukrainian soldiers, we're committing them to die. They get up.

They're very brave soldiers. It takes a lot of courage to stand there and fire one of these missiles, knowing you're going to receive incoming back, but you do it on the belief that you're going to take out this tank. You're not. You're firing. The Russians are killing you you and your missile's not doing its job. And it's just simple suicide. And again, you hit on another point. The vast

majority of these missiles that are being shipped aren't making it. They're being blown up en route. Or when they do make it, they go to a warehouse. You know, right now the Russians are laughing because they have, you know, over a thousand of these missiles in their possession. They've captured them. They're distributing them. They make videos where they say, hey, thank you for this weapon. We'll be sending it back to you very soon. So this is just a tragic joke of an operation done for purely political purposes. And again, all it's doing is murdering Ukrainian soldiers.

It's not killing the Russians that Austin thinks it is. If you had been a fly on the wall on Sunday when Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with President Zelensky at some secret and secure place in Kiev, and they had looked at you and said, Scott, what should we do? What would you have told them? Now, Joe Biden's not there. You're talking to his senior diplomat and his senior military guy and to the president of Ukraine and nobody else. Well, I would tell the president of Ukraine that Russia just announced that they're extending this operation to seize all of southern Ukraine up to Odessa and connecting with

Transnistria, that you're about to lose all access to the sea. Right now, it's not a reality. Right now, perhaps if you surrendered and you ended this war and you guaranteed the neutrality of NATO and you guaranteed that you would denazify, that maybe Russia would be willing to stop this war, only taking Crimea, only taking the Donbass, maybe keeping Mariupol. But you would still get the majority of your country intact and you would save the lives of tens of thousands of your soldiers and tens of thousands of your civilians. To continue this war is guaranteed defeat. And you're going to guarantee yourself the loss of territorial integrity and the loss of thousands of your citizens. If you're a good Ukrainian leader, you care about your people,

pick up the phone, call Putin, end this right now. Why is it that we don't hear this argument? We don't hear it from American politicians. We don't hear it on the news media. Maybe my former colleague, Tucker Carlson, veers into it. Why does there seem to be this monolithic view that the Ukrainians can win, that they're fighting for their homeland, that they're far more devoted than the Russian conscripts, that they're David who will overcome Goliath. Why don't I hear the realistic Scott Ritter analysis from anyone besides Scott Ritter and our friend and colleague, Phil Giraldi, who shares our views? Well, you know, we're dealing with perception, not reality right now. And the Biden administration has shown that it's willing to lie to maintain perception. We saw that with Afghanistan when Joe Biden picked up the phone call from Ashraf Ghani in July.

And Ghani was panicked with 20,000 Taliban coming across the border. He said, you got to keep supporting me. You got to keep the airstrikes in. And Biden said, no, no, no. You need to get back on TV and tell your people everything's going to be OK, even if it's not true. That's a direct quote. Biden's not about the truth he's about perception he's about shaping perception and um that's why we're not getting the truth because to

acknowledge uh russia's true capability means people will start to question why are we expanding nato eastward how much money is this going to cost us to to confront the russians oh you know is there a danger of nuclear conflict? These are all valid questions that come out if you view things realistically. Biden's about shaping perception, trying to mold public opinion in advance of a political election where he runs the risk of losing Congress to the Republicans. Is there a danger of nuclear weaponry, as Foreign Minister Lavrov, the Russian, I almost said Soviet, the Russian foreign minister said just over the weekend? There's always a danger when you have two nuclear armed powers facing off with each other. You mean Russia and Ukraine or Russia and the U.S.?

Russia and NATO. This is very much a NATO fight. NATO is at war with Russia right now. Lloyd Austin made it clear. When you say that the goal of your policy is to kill Russians, you're at war with Russia. And Russia knows this. So Russia is continuing to remind NATO and the United States that while you may want to kill a couple of us here and there don't think about putting your troops on ukrainian soil that this will lead to a direct conflict between our two sides and now the potential of nuclear conflict is very real very imminent and i think the more we see the um the failure of american policy the I mean, Blinken can say all he wants, but rhetoric is

hot air. Ground truth is boots on the ground, steel in the body. And right now, the Russian boots on the ground are putting Russian steel in the bodies of Ukrainians. That's the reality, and no amount of hot air from Blinken, Austin, or Biden is going to change this. And yet you have American politicians who are embarrassed by this. So they keep talking about putting troops on the ground, things of that nature. That's suicide. What is the American intelligence community, I guess CIA, maybe there are military intelligence there as well. You would know that better. What is the CIA advising the president? Russia has an unlimited number of troops that are about to come in, or Putin's

inner circle hates him and somebody is going to knock him off in the next two weeks. Oh, no, I think it's somewhere in between. I think, again, if this was the CIA that I was familiar with, where they had Soviet analysis being the elite analytical arm of the CIA, they would be giving the president a hard brief. That would be that this war is strengthening Putin, that our economic sanctions plan has failed, that's unlikely to succeed. And that while we are creating logistical difficulties for the Russians, this war has lasted longer than Russia, I believe, thought it would. They're eating up resources they didn't think they were going to have to eat up. Russia is not weaker. In fact, in many ways, Russia is stronger because Russia has highlighted failures in their doctrine, and they're now adapting to reality. And the Russian forces,

the way they're fighting today, is far more lethal than what they were doing when they first went into Ukraine. Is Putin weaker or stronger with the Russian people and with the Russian elites who surround him? I don't mean the oligarchs. I mean, the government people, the head of Russian intel, whom he insulted recently on international television. Is he stronger or weaker with those people today than he was two months ago? I believe he's much stronger with the Russian people. I think that this war has tapped into a reservoir of patriotism, the likes of which haven't been seen since the Second World War.

Americans may poo-poo the concept of the Azov Brigade, and for the Russian, it's life and death. It's real. They understand what Nazi ideology is. They understand the sacrifices made. They also understand what NATO expansion into Ukraine means to Russian security. So Putin is a very popular leader. And I think Putin is very much in control of the fact that he could insult the head of their intelligence service, the fact that he could fire 150 Department 5 intelligence officers from the FSB for their failures in Ukraine shows that he's firmly in control. He fears nothing. Imagine a president trying to fire David Hoover.

Wasn't going to happen. Putin's firing people because he's not afraid of them. Let me go to the third rail of this conflict, which was addressed by Chris Coons. Chris Coons is the senior United States senator from Delaware. He occupies the seat that Joe Biden occupied for 36 years when he was in the Senate. Chris Coons is also Joe Biden's best friend in the Senate. He's a moderate Democrat. We're not talking about Lindsey Graham or the late John McCain. We're talking about a moderate Democrat from Delaware, recently said we have to think seriously about American troops on the ground. Question, is the White House and is the Pentagon thinking seriously about that? And then if there's a political view that you may have, I know you're a military analyst.

Would Kuntz have said this without running it past old Joe first? Well, I'll answer the first part first. I don't believe there's any military professional that's advising the president of the United States to put troops on the ground. The president made it clear that we will not be going into Ukraine. We will not fight for Ukraine because to do so, to bring about World War III. So the president is clear-eyed about this. He knows the ramifications. Chris Coons is a politician. Chris Coons is not a military expert. Chris Coons isn't on any major, he's not able to officially articulate dispatching troops as policy. This is personal political opinion. I think it's political cover. The Democrats are going to be slaughtered over Ukraine. This is a huge failure on the part of Joe Biden.

And I think what Coons is doing right now is creating a scenario that said, we could have won this if type thing. So it provides political cover that I said, if we had sent US troops, we wouldn't face the situation we face now. But he knows darn well that US troops will never be on the ground in Ukraine. And how does he know that? Because he's a close friend of Joe Biden.

He's had this conversation with Biden. Putin wouldn't be saying this unless Biden said, yeah, go ahead, you can say that. But I'm telling you right now, there won't be a single American boot on the ground. Last question, my dear friend, how much longer will this last? Because I want to have you back before it's over. Well, you know, the Russians have slowed it down. When I said that they re-looked at how they were applying doctrine, they are using all of their advantages to their advantage, which means they're killing a lot of Ukrainians and they're not losing a lot of Russian troops. But the reason why that is, is that they've slowed the pace down, which means that this this war could easily drag on for another month. month um but i don't see it lasting much longer than that because at some point in time the culmination of all the russian advantages will synchronize and it'll be over you know before you know it so i see this going on for another month of grinding combat where the russians lose

a few people the ukrainians lose a lot of people and as i said the the the end result is inevitable there's no way to change what's going to happen, which is a decisive, strategic Russian victory. Scott Ritter, it's always a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. If you're watching us this afternoon, I'm going to be popping up with some solo hits in a few minutes, including some rarely seen before clips of Alec Baldwin being interrogated by the police shortly after he pulled the trigger that killed a producer on the set of the movie Rust. Scott, it's a pleasure. We'll see you again soon. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.