Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter: Russia Will Demolish the Ukraine Military

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

Scott Ritter: Russia Will Demolish the Ukraine MilitarySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, July 2, 2024. Scott Ritter will be here in a moment on how long will it take for the Russian military to demolish the Ukraine military. But first this. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital, but I'm also a customer, a very satisfied customer. About a year ago, I bought gold and it's now increased in value 23%. So $100 invested in gold a year ago is now worth $123. You have $100 in the bank. It still shows $100, but $100 in the bank is now worth 24% less. Inflation has reduced all of your savings, all of your buying power, and mine, by 24%.

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Learn about how to transfer this to an IRA. Protect your savings. 800-511-4620. Learjudgenap.com. Tell them the judge sent you. Scott, welcome back to the show, my dear friend. Much appreciated, as always. Does the Kremlin truly believe that the United States of America was responsible for the

killings on the Sevastopol beach two Sundays ago? Judge, not only do they believe it, they know it. The Russians have extremely capable intelligence services. They are fully cognizant of the role played by American, British, NATO intelligence platforms and gathering information, transmitting that information, how that information is used. Vladimir Putin laid out a very coherent and cogent description of the fact that Ukraine can't use these American weapons, these German, well, not German yet, but these French weapons, British weapons, the Scalp and the Storm Shadow missiles, the Atacoms missiles, HIMARS missiles,

they can't use them without the intelligence provided by the United States. And that intelligence, because of the complexity of the guidance and control systems, can't be inputted into the weapon systems without the technical assistance of the French, the British, the Americans. So the Russians know for a fact that the United States played the essential role in this attack that resulted in hundreds of Russian civilians being wounded and, you know, a score being killed, including five children, one two years old, one eight years old, and others. And this is an attack that Russia isn't going to walk away from. This is one of those decisive moments of the war. It changes dramatically the Russian political approach to how it will deal with what it considers to be, you know,

American malfeasance, American murder of Russian civilians. Did someone in the Pentagon decide affirmatively that this projectile filled with cluster bombs would make its way to a Russian beach? Well, they knew definitively that it would overfly a Russian beach. I believe that the target was a Russian military airfield that was further downrange on Crimea. But that, you know, again, we're missing the point. We're not seeing the forest for the trees. What happened on the beach in Sevastopol is a tragedy. Civilians were killed. But the United States authorized Ukraine to attack Russia using an American weapon.

That's the only point relevant to the Russians. The fact that civilians died is just a continuation of the tragedy of conflict. America attacked Russia. That's all we need to talk about. It doesn't matter if the cluster bombs landed on a beach or on an airfield. America attacked Russia. And from the Russian perspective, that's not tolerable, nor will it be tolerable from the American perspective if Russia attacked the United States. If Russia wanted to hit an American airfield in Florida, let's say Homestead Air Force Base, but instead the Russian missile was intercepted over Miami

Beach and Russian cluster munitions fell down on civilians, killing some, wounding hundreds of others. It's not that that sets America off, although it should be. It's the fact that Russia attacked America. That's what sets us up. America attacked Russia, and there's no other way to see this event. How has this event altered Russian military preparedness? Not at all. This was a political decision. Russia is a mature nation state. Russia understands what war is. War is give and take. You will suffer casualties. Ukraine will strike Russian bases. Ukraine will continue to destroy Russian equipment. Ukraine will continue to kill Russian soldiers in large numbers. Russia is not an immature nation. Russia is not a nation

that shies away from the reality of war. Russia is fully engaged in this conflict within the limitations set by their own political objectives, which fall short of full-scale war. But Russia has always been prepared to wage this war of attrition. And a war of attrition assumes that you are going to suffer losses as well. Vladimir Putin, in his recent discussions at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, spoke of, at the current time, the ratio of deaths being five to one. For every five Ukrainians, one Russian is being killed. Now, sometimes he spoke a while back that it was 10 to one. Some Russian leaders have spoken on

occasion that the highest rate of attrition being 21 in favor of Russia. But the bottom line is there's always that one, no matter what the Ukrainian number is, there's that one. And five to one, when Russia is killing 2,000 Ukrainians a day, you just take 2,000, divide by five, and I think the number is 400. That's 400 a day. Remember, at the height of the Vietnam War, we were bringing home 200 a week, 200 dead Americans a week, and that broke the spirit of America. The Russians are suffering 400 guys dead a day. And this is horrific from the Russian standpoint. They're prepared to absorb these casualties. This is why they're recruiting 30,000 to 50,000 men a month to go to war against Ukraine, against NATO, against the West. Russia's more than prepared to deal with this. This doesn't alter anything. It alters the politics of this. Russia cannot allow the United States to get away

with directly attacking Russia. Yes, we're using a Ukrainian proxy, but this is an American weapon system that America targeted, that America gave political permission to point. This attack could not have taken place without American permission. Who in America would have given permission for it? The President of the United States gave permission for this. Not necessarily this particular attack, but the President of the United States said, I give the green light for Ukraine to use Russian, to use American provided weapons to strike targets inside Russia. This falls straight across Joe Biden's desk and everybody below him gave a concurring opinion. Did the fury amongst Russian people animated by this event? Does that fury still

exist? 100%. But it's not just the Russian people. You do know that the Russian foreign ministry called in the American ambassador. And the fury was made apparent there because that ambassador was scared to death when she left that meeting. She went back to the embassy and fired off a cable that said, we're in deep trouble because Russia is no longer talking about the potential. Russia will retaliate. And Russia's at the point of taking this retaliation to the next level. And then that was communicated to the State Department, which immediately got on the ring with Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, who immediately picked up the phone and called his counterpart, you know, the Minister of Defense of Russia, Bill Usov, and had a conversation in which Bill Usov listened

and then said to him, we blame you. We hold you accountable. We will retaliate. That's a guarantee. The United States is very concerned about this right now. This takes this conflict to a different level. And just to remind people to show the level of concern, Vladimir Putin has now ordered Russia to begin building short-range and intermediate-range missiles to be armed with nuclear warheads to be targeted against Europe. This is the treaty that I was involved in. We got rid of those weapons. Those weapons weren't threatening Europe or the United States for decades because of the work that I did and because of the stupidity of the Biden administration. Because it was Trump that

withdrew from the INF Treaty, but Russia said, okay, but we're not going to take that step. We're not going to begin producing these weapons unless you introduce them into Europe. Well, Joe Biden introduced them back in September of last year in a training exercise in Denmark, but even then the Russians went, we don't want to take that step. Thanks to the stupidity of the American leadership that authorized Ukraine to strike a target in Crimea using the Atakams missile, Russia is now going to open up the production lines, begin building these missiles. And now, if you think about it, you know, Russia, by complying with its treaty obligation, they had missiles, ground launch missiles that could go 300 miles. That strikes a number of countries in the periphery of it. But now Russia will be building missiles

that strike all of Europe, all of Europe with nuclear warheads. Thank you. Here's President Putin yesterday, Scott, discussing this very subject subject matter cut number one. We declared in 2019 that we would neither manufacture nor deploy these missiles until the United States does so in certain parts of the world It is understood today that the United States not only manufactures these missile systems, but has also transported them to Europe for drills, specifically to Denmark. Recently it was announced that they have arrived in the Philippines.

It remains unclear if they've removed these missiles. We need to respond to this situation and determine our next action steps. It appears that today we will be discussing the Russian Federation's next moves concerning a one-sided halt on deploying land-based intermediate range and shorter range missiles. Actually, what you were talking about before I ask you to analyze what he just said, I want to ask you what I've asked you several times in the past. Does the United States understand Russia, Putin, Lavrov, the defense minister, the Kremlin, the Russian mentality? No, we used to. I mean, that's why we had the treaty that I played a critical role in implementing. We understood the Soviet Union, but to understand the Soviet Union, you had to

understand Russia. We had quality ambassadors like Jack Matlock, like Chas Freeman, who I believe you've interviewed. We had quality military officers who were trained foreign area officers, experts in the Soviet Union, experts in Russia. We understood Russia. Therefore, we understood the need to talk to Russia, to negotiate with Russia, and come up with treaties designed to reduce the potential of conflict with Russia. Today, we don't have anybody in the U.S. military or the U.S. State Department trained to that level because we stopped respecting Russia back in the 1990s, and we've allowed a mindset that minimizes Russia, that perpetually puts Russia down, that prevents a genuine discourse of Russia because of

the Russophobia that we have injected into the mainstream American public. We don't understand Russia, so we continue to take actions that miscalculate how Russia will respond. We have literally gone back to square one. I invite your audience, please go back and look at the late 1970s, early 1980s. There was a reason why Americans put a million people into Central Park in June of 1982, because we were scared to death of the intermediate nuclear forces we were getting ready to deploy and how Russia would respond. And we understood that we were literally on the brink of nuclear annihilation. That's why Ronald Reagan signed that treaty on December 8th, 1987, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. That's why I spent two years in the Soviet Union helping getting rid of these weapons so that we didn't have to worry about this. We've gone back to square

one. We're back to where we started, ladies and gentlemen. And that was a very, very dangerous place to be. Thank you, Joe Biden. Who abrogated the treaty? Donald Trump. And why did he do that? Well, why? Because Mike Pompeo told him to. What was the thinking behind the people that advised him to do that? The United States intelligence community, again, because we don't have good communications with the Russians, detected the testing of a sea-launched missile and interpreted that to mean that it was a ground-launched missile being tested in violation of the treaty. The Russians said, no, you got this wrong. We're willing to work with you. And the Russians actually put out a display where they put the missile that we were

calling a long range missile violation there and said, come in and look at it. We should have gone and visited. Instead, we banned our people from visiting. We could have used the INF treaty mechanisms to get greater access to the system. Russia was ready to play ball. We weren't interested because we knew we were lying. We were looking for an excuse to get out of this treaty, not because of Russia per se, but because of China. We were concerned that China was getting a strategic advantage in intermediate range missiles that China could produce because they weren't part of the treaty, but the United States couldn't because we were bound by this treaty. I just want to

remind people and say, well, that makes sense. One of the conditions we placed on the Soviet Union with the INF Treaty is they could not retain SS-20 missiles in the Pacific Theater, which they believed they needed to offset Chinese capabilities. We said, when you get rid of intermediate nuclear forces, it has to be all the missiles and the soviet went went along with it instead of keeping 120 missiles to offset uh chinese capabilities they got rid of anything uh everything because that's what the treaty demanded so we demanded it of the soviet union now when the situation becomes complicated for the united states and the pacific we decided that the treaty wasn't inconvenient. And so we got out of it not believing that Russia would react the way that they have. And indeed, as Putin said, they weren't going to react. Russia understands

the danger of intermediate range missiles. Russia was not seeking to employ these missiles to produce these missiles. But because of the actions of the United States, Russia has now undone everything that myself and hundreds of the United States, Russia has now undone everything that myself and hundreds of others, Americans, hundreds of others of Russians worked so hard to achieve. The elimination of an entire category of nuclear weapons from the American and Russian arsenals, that's done. America has brought it back and now Russia has too. We're back to stage one, a very dangerous situation. And the Biden administration obviously doesn't understand this since they exacerbated what Trump did. The Biden administration doesn't take Russia

seriously, and that's the problem. They're learning because everything we've done with Russia has led to a worsening situation. Imagine if we had actually implemented Minsk like Russia asked us to do back in June of 2021 when Biden met with Putin in Geneva. Imagine if Biden had kept his promise because he said, I promise I will instruct Tony Blinken to implement Minsk. But he knew he was lying because we were using Minsk as a shield to build up a Ukrainian military to attack the Donbass and push the pro-Russian forces out of the Donbass. We were lying the entire time. Imagine if we had sat down with the Russians in December 2021 when they put forward a draft treaty that talked about how to prevent a conflict in Ukraine to create a new European security framework that was equitable to all parties. Imagine if we had done that. Imagine if we had taken advantage of Russia's proposal for

peace with Ukraine that Ukraine was ready to accept in April of 2022. Imagine if we had done that, this war would be over. Russia wouldn't have built up the strongest military. Their military would still be at 900,000, not over 2 million now and growing. They wouldn't have retooled their entire defense industry. They wouldn't have perfected their mechanisms of mobilization, and they wouldn't be deploying intermediate and short-range nuclear missiles back into Europe. Imagine if we had just taken Russia seriously. We have failed across the board. We don't understand Russia, and Russia reacting, not being proactive, reacting to our provocations has become the most significant player on the year, on not just the European stage, but the global stage when it comes to strategic issues.

Imagine if we had a secretary of a state that spoke with his opposite number. Imagine if we had a secretary of state who was taken seriously. Imagine if we had a White House that understood the Russians. We obviously don't. So back to my question earlier about Sebastopol. Has this put pressure on President Putin to do the type of things that we just heard him say he's going to do and that you have been describing? And B, does it put pressure on President Putin, I'm going to use his phrase now, to finish the task, meaning to end the war? Any pressure coming, being put on Putin comes from inside Russia. That's where the real pressure is. We could be putting pressure on Putin if we had diplomatic relations with Russia worth a damn,

excuse my language. Right now, we have an American ambassador just sits there in Russia, provoking Russia, and she's become insignificant. She's now simply a conduit for what limited communication exists between Russia and the United States. Putin faces pressure inside Russia to get this task done in a timely fashion. But Putin has wisely decided that while it's politically inconvenient for him to have this conflict continue, strategically, every day this conflict takes place, Russia gets stronger. We weaken NATO. We fracture NATO. We are destroying the NATO armies that have been built up at hundreds of billions of dollars worth of cost inside Ukraine. Russia's military gets stronger. Their economic posture gets

stronger. Russia has built an economic machine that thrives under economic sanctions. And Russia's geopolitical position gets stronger because it's the West that's becoming increasingly isolated, not Russia. So from Putin's perspective, there's no need to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of Russians that wouldn't die if he didn't push for an immediate military victory. Russia could win the war this summer. Russia knows this. Russia just put the pedal to the metal and push forward. But this could not only cause increased Russian casualties that they don't need to suffer, it could lead to an expansion of the conflict with NATO, which Russia is assiduously trying to avoid. Russia wants to win this war without expanding the war. And for that, Putin is willing to allow this war to drag out longer than could be if he wanted to win the war now. Russia's under no

significant pressure, real pressure, to alter the course of what it's doing in Ukraine today. They're winning every single day this war continues. How decimated is the Ukrainian military no matter what Joe Biden sends there? They are incapable of meaningful, as I said, Russia today, if they put the pedal to the metal, could take the Ukrainian military off the map. But the Ukrainian military is capable of fighting, resisting. I always remind people that the United States in its fight against Nazi Germany, the bloodiest month of that war was April 1945, the last full month of the conflict. It wasn't June 1944 D-Day.

It wasn't December, the Battle of the Bulge. It was April 1945, the last month of the war when the German army was defeated. But the German army continued to resist, resist hard. There was a lot of hard fighting, and we lost more men in that month than we lost in any other month. Russia could win this war right now, but they would lose a lot of men that Putin has made the decision he doesn't want to lose. Is the United States planning to put 12 or 15 military bases in Finland? The Finns have opened up 12 to 15 of their military bases for

use by the United States. I think what the United States will do is go in and do a survey of these bases, determine which ones meet their needs. And while we may not be permanently deploying troops into Finland, at least not in significant numbers. We have to, now that Finland's part of NATO, we have to have a plan for reinforcing Finland. One of the things the most recent NATO exercise showed is that Finland, it's impossible to reinforce Finland right now. They're isolated. That's the stupidity of the Finns joining an alliance that can't come to their rescue

if there is a war. So this is why NATO now is talking about the need to create a strategic connectivity between ports in Norway that go through Sweden into Finland so that American troops can disembark in Norway and make their way across. Once we can do that, then the American troops will have to fall in on logistics infrastructure in Finland. And that's what these 12 to 15 bases are, is a place where we can forward deploy some equipment, where we can have some connectivity, some arrangements, operational arrangements, so that when we come there, we're familiar with the terrain, we're familiar with the Finnish troops, and we can have a joint plan of action. So that's what the Finns are doing.

They're talking about opening it up so that America and NATO can flow in if the time ever comes. But, you know, A, that's going to be horrifically expensive. B, that line of communication is going to be vulnerable to Russian interdiction. So, C, the troops we think we're going to get to those 12 to 15 finish bases won't arrive in any significant numbers if there ever is a war. Isn't it a provocation that we're that close to the Russian border? Let me put the question to the people of the United States. Would it be a provocation if Russian troops were that close? What if Russia decided to create 12, or Mexico said, we're going to open up 12 to 15 bases along the southern border of the United States. And Russia went, oh, super. Yeah, we'll plan on deploying

40,000 troops there. Let's do some exercises. Do you think the United States would go, don't worry about that. That's not a big, we'd be in full panic mode. Russia's not in panic mode, but it is of concern to Russia. It's a provocation, a provocation beyond dispute. Let's get back to Ukraine again before we leave. Is there any legitimate, bona fide, legal, valid government in Ukraine to negotiate with the Russians, even if, if that were such negotiation were in the cards? No, I don't like to get involved in telling other nations, sovereign nations, how they get to pick their governments. There is a case that can be made that because Ukraine is a nation at war of an existential nature, that having normal elections would be impractical and indeed impossible, and that the Ukrainian government has every right to suspend elections and push forward with what is in effect a civilian-slash-military dictatorship. Zelensky rules by martial law

with a Ukrainian parliament that plays no meaningful role in government today. You could make that case. The problem is then when you overlay reality onto that theory, that case falls apart when you realize the extent to which the United States and Great Britain are pulling the strings to which NATO and the European Union are influencing this government. You can't speak of the Zelensky government as a truly sovereign government capable of making genuinely independent decisions. And so from the Russian perspective, and from the perspective of other nations, the Zelensky government lacks the authority to speak on behalf of the Ukrainian nation because it has

become little more than a puppet of Western influence. So the Russians have said that when the time comes to negotiate the end of this, they will negotiate with a partner that isn't named Zelensky, a partner that isn't controlled or dominated by the West. And so that's where we're at. I think Zelensky undermined his credibility as a leader of Ukraine by foregoing elections. People can say all they want about it, but elections have been held in nations at war before the United States held elections during World War II. During the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln was at greatest peril, he held an election, ran against General McClellan, one of his generals who was critical of Lincoln's approach to the conflict.

So truly democratic nations find a way to preserve their democratic character by holding elections in a time of conflict. You know, even though I'm not a big fan of the Iraq elections that took place in 2005, the fact is we, the Americans, recognized the absolute necessity to have an election in Iraq at a time when it was being torn apart by internal sectarian strife to avoid the path of least resistance by saying, no, we can't really have an election here. And you know what happened in 2005? The Shia majority won the election, even though we didn't want them to.

That's the risk. That's the danger of having an election of democratic nature is that sometimes the people vote and they choose a path that the outside manipulators don't want. And I think the fear of it... If there were an election in Ukraine and they elected a president who respected Putin and whom Putin respected, and they sat down and negotiated an agreement, it wouldn't be the agreement that Boris Johnson scuttled, but it'd be a lot better than continued...

If there was an election in Ukraine, it's almost guaranteed that the president to emerge from that wouldn't be named Zelensky and the parliament that emerged would be a parliament that would be more receptive to a negotiated peace settlement, which is why there isn't an election in Ukraine. It's not because of a decision Zelensky made, it's because of a decision the United States and Great Britain made. Yeah, here is President Zelensky lamenting a little bit, talking about the dead and wounded, and for the first time about the need for negotiations. We have to find and to prepare this plan and to put this plan on the table. During months, we don't have too much time

because we have a lot of wounded and dead people on the battlefield and through civilians. That's why we don't want to have this war during years. So that's why we want to prepare this joint plan, put it on the table to the second Summit second piece Summit I don't think it's going to get anywhere but it's the first time I've seen him uh lament the sorry state that he has allowed Ukraine to devolve into in such a public way. He can't last,

this government can't last, their military can't last much longer. Can they make it to Christmas? Well, I mean, again, the question there is what Russia is willing to do to drive the stake through the heart. And Putin has made it clear that he's not willing to sacrifice um you know a significant number of russian casualties that don't need to be sacrificed that as long as nato and ukraine want to play this attrition game uh look what's happened in kharkov you know the russians came in took high ground north of kharkov dug in and now ukraine is just compliantly throwing all of their reserves into a futile counteroffensive that's getting destroyed. In Chesiv Yar, the Ukrainians have dug into a city and they're getting blown apart.

This is why Zelensky is saying what he's saying, because every time he engages the Russians decisively, his army gets chewed up and spit out dead. The Russians suffer casualties. Of course they do. The Ukrainians are brave soldiers. They're fighting very bravely, but they're dying. The Russians are going to do that which is necessary to keep the Ukrainians dying at a casualty ratio that is favorable to Russia. That is how you demilitarize Ukraine. And as a result, you get the result we just saw. A defeated Ukrainian leader finally can be

confronted with the reality that the cavalry is not coming, that they're going to have to find a way to resolve this issue. He still lives in fantasy land. He speaks of a second peace summit. He speaks of imposing Ukraine's will on Russia. As the Russians have said, as Vladimir Putin said, the best offer Ukraine's ever going to get, it was already put on the table. And at some point in time, probably after the NATO summit, if Ukraine refuses to pick that up, then the next time they meet, it won't be called a summit. It'll be called the unconditional surrender of Ukraine, where Russia will dictate far different terms that will be far worse for Ukraine, and frankly speaking, far worse for Ukraine and frankly speaking, the entire system. There are reports this morning that Viktor Orban is in Kyiv delivering a message

from President Putin? I think probably delivering a message from Viktor Orban and maybe indirectly from an empowered European political opposition. I don't know if people understand the relevance and significance of what happened in France. The first round of parliamentary elections, Macron's party got trounced by the far-right party. While the far-right party hasn't quite taken control of the French parliament, the bottom line is all that talk that Macron was doing about intervening, siding with, getting strung, is gone, finished. France has been neutered, literally neutered. France is going nowhere. Germany, likewise, is in a very

difficult position. Europe cannot sustain. In the United Kingdom, we have an election coming up on Thursday that could change their ability to back up the rhetoric that they put out. The European front, in terms of supporting Ukraine, is collapsing rapidly. And one of the reasons is because of people like Viktor Orban and others who have taken a stance saying that's not the direction we want. I think Orban is going there telling Zelensky that, you know, you've got to change your evil ways, baby, to quote Santana's song. But the other thing is that Orban, I think, is empowered by what's happening in Europe now to lay the law down for Zelensky too. There's a significant Hungarian population in Ukraine. And right now, this mobilization that Zelensky is doing is impacting this population.

They are being rounded up and sent off to die at the front. And I think Orban, now looking at the change in political situation, now feels empowered to come in and dictate to Zelensky, cease and desist, where that part of Ukraine may not be part of Ukraine when things start to go south for you. Hungary has an interest in those people. And if you can't take care of them, we will. Scott Ritter, terrific analysis, my dear friend. Thank you very much. As always, a happy Independence Day to you and your family. We'll see you next week.

Thank you very much. Of course. A great interview. I love it when Scott's on fire, and I know those of you who are viewing do as well. At two o'clock this afternoon on these same topics, Matt Ho, and at three o'clock this afternoon, these same topics with somewhat of an emphasis on the debate last Thursday night, if we can call it a debate, Karen Kwiatkowski, Justin Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.