Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter : Ukraine Running Out of Time

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

Scott Ritter : Ukraine Running Out of TimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? Jefferson was right? What if that government is best which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish

fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now? Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Monday, September 21st, 2006. Scott Ritter will be with us in just a moment on Ukraine as running out of time. But first this. What if you could build a plan B legally for your money, your family, and your future? On October 1st and 2nd, Mikhail Thorpe, founder and CEO of expat money, is hosting the expat money summit. Mikhail has spent more than 26 years living, investing, and doing business around the world, traveling to more than 100,000. and 10 countries and helping thousands of people diversify internationally. This year's theme is freedom is rising in Latin America.

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Join us on October 1st and 2nd. Reserve your ticket today at escap with the judge.com. That's escape with a judge.com. And remember to use code word judge for your VIP experience. Scott Ritter, welcome here. here, my dear friend, as always, thank you for accommodating my schedule. You have been in Russia a little bit lately. I just want your take on what you saw, what you've perceived, the Russian elections, the fruitless efforts of Ukraine to disrupt them. Well, it's not just the fruitless

efforts of Ukraine, it's the fruitless efforts of the West. It's been a very directed, concerted effort. Remember, Ukraine does nothing in a vacuum. Ukraine is a proxy of NATO, proxy of the United States, and therefore, the plan that Ukraine has implemented is a plan that's been drafted elsewhere

and being directed to the Ukrainians. This entire drone campaign that the Ukraine has been embarked on since, you know, the mid-last year, has been a propaganda exercise

to create the perception that Vladimir Putin was incapable of defending Russia. The old idea was to inject doubt amongst the Russian people in anticipation of the September 20th elections. You know, this has been a long time strategy of the West to delegitimize Vladimir Putin's rule by undercutting him in the Duma. If you go back to 2011, this was a central plank of the Obama administration. Joe Biden actually went to Russia, Moscow in March of 2011 in an effort to disrupt the Duma elections. Hillary Clinton was called out by the Russians for doing the same thing. Michael McFaul made this one of his central theses, but it failed, and it failed this time. The drone attacks

have achieved nothing more than temporary sound and light shows for the Ukrainians. Anybody trolling social media will see that they like to show flames at refineries and smoke, not saying that within a day the flames are out, the smokes down, and the refineries were repaired, and Russia's back to normal. The Russian people aren't, you know, bothered by this at all. I mean, Gilbert Doctro can put forward all of his nonsense that he wants. He's been proven 100% wrong yet again. The Russian people have rallied behind Vladimir Putin. There is no dissension in the ranks. The general staff is not seeking a coup. United Russia came out with 57%. That's almost like an 8% rise.

It's untouchable. This gives Vladimir Putin the ability to do anything he wants to do. And what he's going to do is what he said he's going to do, stay the course. All the people out there saying that Putin is going to mobilize, there will be no mobilization, that Putin is going to attack or provoke Europe. There will be no provocation. Vladimir Putin and Russia is united in winning. this war. You know, there is no time frame set to it, but the gloves are coming off. That's the one thing that this election has empowered Putin is to take the gloves off and he's going to be pounding Ukraine into the dirt now. And the West has to sit by and watch. It's curious, though,

how the West puts so much emphasis on, you know, trying to awaken the Russian people to go to the polls in an election to, you know, undercut Vladimir Putin. But as soon as the election, place. Oh, these are illegitimate elections. There is no democracy in Russia. Why? Because Putin won. What did you think was going to happen? Did you really think that the Russian people would abandon their leader in a time of war when attacked by people who don't care about Russia, who, you know, have been seeking to undermine and destroy Russia for decades? I think Russia is in a very, very strong position today. Vladimir Putin is in probably the strongest position he's been politically for almost any time in his tenure as the president of Russia.

Alastair Crook gave us a comparable analysis a few hours ago and then said, but I must add, the EU leaders are so foolish they want to provoke a war with Russia. Now, A, do you agree with that? And B, what would be the conceivable reason for that because they couldn't win. In fact, they would be decimated quickly. I don't know if they want to actually provoke a shooting war with Russia because that would be the end of Europe and even the most deranged European official recognizes that at the end. I continue to believe that Europe labors under the notion of Vladimir Putin as a weak leader whose hands are tied. Again, the Gilbert doctoral thesis of a weak leader who doesn't have the full

support of the Russian people with dissension in the ranks, a military that's, you know, leaning forward trying to get the job done restrained by Putin and the military is not happy about this. Europe believes that if they provoke Russia, that Russia will either fracture from within or will overreact. Maybe not a direct shooting war with Europe. I don't think anybody's looking for that, but do something in Ukraine that's so outrageous that it legitimizes a European intervention.

This is what Ukraine desperately needs. They need Europe to intervene. And this is sort of the kick in the butt that NATO needs. They need an excuse to work through their numerous economic, social, political, military problems to, to, you know, create a rallying moment that they can use to say, we really have to get serious about this. Because void of that kind of Russian overreaction, all you have is European leaders talking. I mean, Sikorski, the foreign minister of Poland, can sit there and talk all he wants about 2,500 airplanes versus this,

that and the other thing. It's all fiction. The polls have nothing. The Germans have nothing. The British have nothing. The French have nothing. Europe has nothing. This is the reality. And the rhetoric doesn't match the reality. Russia is fully aware of the reality. They are worried about what's happened in the Baltic. Who wouldn't be? I mean, this is a very dangerous situation similar to what we saw in the summer of 1914 when Barbara Tuckman wrote a book, The March of Folly, that just talks about how Europe stumbled to a war that didn't need to be fought. In many ways, we're in a similar situation where people are stumbling forward doing things that make no sense under the belief that they won't actually trigger a war. But a war could be triggered accidentally. And

woe be it to Europe if they want to go to war with Russia. Russia has the largest most combat capable army in the world today. And Europe has nothing. So these people that are sound like they want to provoke Russia into attacking NATO so they can invoke Article 5. I guess they've forgotten about Article 4, which requires a consultation and debate and consideration and all that stuff. I mean, I think Article 5 only has been invoked once by George W. Bush right after 9-11, and it was effectively meaningless. Yeah, I mean, the time that Article 5 was invoked after 9-11 was because the United States begged NATO to invoke it.

There was no reason to invoke it. NATO wasn't under attack. The United States was attacked by terrorists, but we wanted to create the impression that the world was united in what would become a crusade against terrorism, the global war on terrorism. What did Article 5 get? We got some Luxembourg-AWax aircraft flying over the United States. We don't need them. purely symbolic. And we got a NATO-Nable mission in the Mediterranean to block refugees coming out of North Africa. That's it. That's all that Article 5 gave. Article 4 is actually the one

that we need to be worried about today. First of all, Russia isn't going to attack NATO. That's just, Vladimir Putin, it's just not in the business. None of his rhetoric matches, none of Russian preparations. NATO may attack Russia. NATO has attacked Russia. Let's take a look at the case of Norway. Norway just seized a Russian research vessel, including the Russian passengers who were visiting, as they are permitted to do by treaty, the Svalberg Islands, which is a Russian mining camp, et cetera. The Norwegian government didn't do this. What happened is an American law firm, Covington, worked with the Ukrainians to create a court case. They took it to a Norwegian court allowing the ship to be seized. The Russians have called it an act of piracy and said they will treat it as

such. In a panic, Norway passed some laws now that will prevent that from happening again. They don't want a war with Russia. They don't want to trigger a war with Russia. Nobody does. It's just they are, you know, flexing muscles where a mistake can be made. A Danish, I believe a Danish helicopter flew dangerously close to a Russian frigate who fired flares to scare it away. and the you know, NATO's saying, oh, that's an act of war. No, keep your helicopter away from Russian ships and you won't have a problem. This is the kind of stupidity that's taking place. But Article 5 is not the issue.

Article 4 is the issue. And this is what people need to be focused on right now. I think one of the reasons why Poland is flexing so much right now is that they understand what's about to happen in Ukraine. Ukraine is going to shut down. Russia is already destroyed 50% of their warehouse capacity. They've taken out 70% of their energy production on and on and on. they've blown away so much of the rail transport capability, and it's just going to get worse. From here on out for the rest of this fall and into the winter, Ukraine will disappear.

And when that happens, Ukraine becomes a land that's uninhabitable. And you will see a massive shift of population, whatever's left of the Ukrainian population, out of Ukraine, towards Europe. And there will be a tremendous pushback by the border regions like Poland, who will be saying we have to keep these Ukrainian refugees in Western Ukraine, But to do that, we have to safeguard them. This is something that NATO has been talking about for some time now, a no-fly zone, extending missile defense zone in. And here is where Article 4 could come in, where they say, we have an emergency,

we need to do something, and they may overplay their hands. Russia has made it clear that any NATO troops or any NATO military presence over Ukraine will be treated as a hostile act, and Russia will respond accordingly. That, to me, is the biggest danger. And just a mistake by NATO pushing it too far in the Baltics or, you know, NATO coming together. Because if Poland and Europe can't handle another refugee crisis, they can't handle 10 million Ukrainians fleeing to Poland. And so that could trigger some sort of, you know, NATO response or EU response to create a safe haven in Western Ukraine. And that could be problematic.

How can Ukraine get through a typical Ukrainian winter with grossly inadequate fuel supplies? They can't. The best way to do it is to surrender now and then throw yourself at the mercy of Russia. Of course, they're not going to do that. Zelensky is incapable of doing that. And it's not just Ukraine has a problem. You know, Ukraine actually has a large strategic gas reserve underground that is usually. actually feed Europe, which is having a huge problem, $150 for 1,000 cubic meters of gas before the war, $1,500 today. Europe can't afford energy. And they haven't filled up their gas reserves to the level necessary to get through a tough winter. And Russia could throw some irrescienics at this

underground storage facility and make Europe disappear as well. So, you know, both, Ukraine and Europe will put themselves in an extremely tenuous situation when it comes to energy. But Ukraine's in a lot of trouble. Again, I can't speak for the Russian government, but I have a funny feeling, especially given the fact that Ukraine just sent 1,400 drones against Moscow the other day, that Russia is going to come back harder than ever. And it's just going to be an impossible situation for Ukraine, an unsurvivable situation for Ukraine. Let's switch over to the Houthi.

and Saudi Arabia. Chris, can you put up that map with the red X's on it? We already know that Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz upper right hand. Lower left hand is Bob El Mandeb, now controlled by the Houthis. One of the middle shows the closure of the Saudi East-West crude oil pipeline. So question, how disastrous is this, A, for Saudi Arabia, and B for fuel for Europe and the United States? Well, Europe's not getting their September allocation. They probably won't get their October allocation. And Saudi Arabia says maybe November, but I doubt it because they haven't done anything to rectify the reality that Ansrallah, the Hootie, can shut down that pipeline at will. The Baba Mendeb belongs to Ansala and the straight Ormah moves belongs to Iran.

If they're not careful, Ansarla's missiles will shut down the Suez Canal as well. I mean, it's fully capable of doing that. This is the end of Saudi Arabia. I mean, this is an existential crisis for Saudi Arabia. Already there's talk within, you know, the disaffected ranks of the Saudi royal that Mohammed bin Salman's got to go. that he's the problem, not the solution. So in order to save the House of Saud, that MBS's head is literally on the chopping block.

And that's the beginning of the end, because the South family made a deal with the devil, you know, with the Wahhabists back in 1930s, and now with the United States in the 40s and 50s. And both those deals are collapsing. There's a lot of tribes that are, you know, angry at the South family. And we could be basically, seeing a regime change operation in Saudi Arabia. Their military can't fight. They're desperately

looking for assistance. The Mecca Pack turned out to be an empty shell. The United States will not come to their assistance. Donald Trump apparently said he was going to be bombing the hell out of Yemen tonight. Then he pulled back to the last second. Why? Diesel prices are closing in on seven bucks. And if he hits Yemen, diesel prices will hit 12 bucks, 15 bucks, 20 bucks. And that's the end of the American economy. That's the control that Anssela and Iran have over the United States, over Europe, over the world. Well, I was just going to ask you why, and you've answered it already, but I'll pose the question. On Thursday, Trump ordered the Air Force to get ready to attack Yemen. And on Sunday morning, he changed his mind and canceled it because somebody around him,

one ounce of intelligence must have told him what you just said. Yeah, Trump's got a problem. I mean, he's running around saying when Americans are confronted with high oil, high gas prices, I just tell them, Iran doesn't have a nuclear bomb and they'll be willing to pay those prices. No, first of all, the Americans know that Iran doesn't have a nuclear bomb. You haven't made the case that they are working on one. But what we do know is that at the pump, it's crazy. Five, a four 55 today when I went out to the to buy gas. And I haven't looked at diesel because I'm not a consumer of diesel.

it was over $6.50. Just a week ago, it cracked $6 for the first time in history. Now it's at $6.50. It's going to be at $7, and it's just going to keep climbing. And diesel is even more than gasoline is the major driver in the American economy. All those big trucks that ship things back and forth do so using diesel. And if they can't afford diesel or they transfer the prices to us, things are going to become unbearable. It's not just paying more price at the pump, but you're going to be paying more price when you go to the store.

The economy isn't rising, you know, paychecks aren't rising. Inflation's out of control. This is right before a midterm election where Americans, every time they go to the poll, you know, have to answer the question, are we better off today than we were in the last election? And the trend right now is not even close. This will be devastating for Donald Trump. So he has to get this under control one way or another. And you're not going to bomb your way out of this problem.

Bombing would just make it worse. Is he planning another invasion of Iran after the midterms? With what, though? That's the, I mean, you know, we hit Iran with everything we had at the beginning of this conflict. We lost. And I think your audience needs to understand the following. We lost this war. We got beat by the Iranians.

They beat us every way, step forward. They don't have to beat us by sinking our ships. We withdrew our ships so they couldn't be hit. We can't control the straight war. We haven't taken control of their nuclear program. We haven't changed the regime. We haven't stopped their ballistic missile program. We achieve none of our objectives.

We've been driven out of the Middle East. We're being pushed out of Jordan. Israel is silent because they don't dare strike because Israel will be devastated. All Donald Trump could do is talk. So if he wants to strike again with what? We have depleted munition stocks. There's not going to be some miraculous defense industrial surge, where suddenly between now and after the midterms, we've created thousands of PAC-3 missiles that can be sent out to the batteries to defend America.

We don't have PAC-3s. We don't have PAC-2s. We don't have anything. We don't have long-range standoff strike weapons. That means that in order to get close to bomb Iran, we have to bring our planes within, you know, a robust Iranian air defense systems that's shooting down drones on a daily basis. And then Iran will just pummel us into the dirt. so I don't think we're going to be doing anything of the sort. Donald Trump is talking big right now because his, you know, his stick right now is to say, I could have come in, but because I held off, the Iranians cut a deal. Now he's just looking for the deal that he can walk away with. Similar to what he did with Greenland, you know, declaring victory.

I'm the greatest man in the world. Look what we did. It's a 1951 treaty, Donnie, baby. All you did is pull it out of the dust, buff it up with some language. And that's it. You created a victory out of nothing, but the American people are so stupid that they believe it. He's trying to find some way to turn the straight-over moves of Bob Elmandeb into a similar non-victory, victory that he could sell the American people on the eve of midterm elections.

And if he can do this soon enough, we might get the drop in oil prices that he could say, look, here's the fruits of my victory. I mean, he last week said that the reason oil prices, are high is because Zelensky is attacking Russian refineries. This has nothing to do with the Middle East. Scott, nobody believes that. Nobody believes. He said it twice and then he stopped saying it. Yeah, it just shows that he doesn't understand the reality of diesel.

Somebody told him that the Russians stopped exporting diesel. And they did. He thinks that that creates a shortage of diesel in Russia. It doesn't. There is no shortage of diesel in Russia because Russia stopped exporting diesel. But it does impact the global market. But Ukraine, you know, their strikes, you know, aren't achieving any real harm to Russia. Just so people understand the price of a eurograde oil is up over $120 a barrel right now. And Russia is able to charge full price. Russia is earning $90 to $100 billion more this year in oil-based income. The Russian economy is not subject. suffering. There is no fuel shortage. The global economy is suffering because Russia is unable

to bring refined products, but Russia is getting its oil to the market. Russia is making a lot of money. Trump doesn't understand any of these relationships. The key thing right now for Trump is to, you know, if I were advising them would be you got to get the straight open, you got get Bob Elmandeb open, you got to get the Yambu pipeline open. That means that you just basically have to get the hell out of the region. If you leave and you've already, you've already been kicked out, Donnie, baby. We don't have any viable military bases in the region. Why don't we just acknowledge reality, declare victory,

tell them you're bringing the peace dividends, you're bringing the boys home, and the price oil goes down. And the American people aren't smart enough to understand, you know, what really went on there. They just know that prices went down. The boys came home, and Donnie said, we have victory. Call it a win. What do you expect we will hear from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu

when he addresses an empty General Assembly on Wednesday? Well, once again, he'll talk about the evil dangers of Iran. He'll talk about how Israel is a force of stability, that he is the guarantor of democracy. We'll just hear all the fiction. He's going to use this stage to reinforce the notion he's a security president because Israel's got critical elections coming up, so he's going to jump on the international stage,

talk about how Israel is a defender of democracy. And without Israel, the world would go to hell. And, you know, hopefully the collective world yons. Unfortunately, we have a Zionist-controlled media here in America, and they will echo his words to the American people. The American people are programmed to believe him. But the rest of the world is not. And even in America today, we're looking at a precipitous decline in support for Israel

across the board. Between 60, 70 percent of the American people don't support Israel anymore. So, you know, who cares with Benjamin Netanyahu says, frankly speaking. Well, how will Israel be affected by the demise of Saudi Arabia? Israel has long helped prop up Saudi Arabia as part of what they call a Sunni shield against the Shia Crescent. The Shia Crescent being Iran centered with Hezbollah, Ansrallah. Syria used to be a part of it. Iraq with its Shia dominant government.

So Saudi Arabia was the anchor of the Sunni shield. To have Saudi Arabia collapse, creates a power vacuum that can't be filled by anybody except Iran. And this is bad for Israel. So Israel will be working overtime to try and prop up the Saudi government. Does Washington, D.C. need a 250-foot-tall triumphal. arch in which are housed drones and snipers. Why would drones and snipers be in this arch? To what?

Use them on the American public? Yeah, it's, I, I, I hope there's a way to stop this. I hope Congress stops it, I hope they won't fund it. But this is creating a fortress. you know, in the center to control a strategic line of communication, to have sniper overwatch, drone overwatch. The implication is a nation under siege. And this is what he's trying to do.

This may be his plan B. There's a lot of people that say that Trump, you know, would be disrupting or trying to prevent elections in November. I don't think so. I don't think he has the constitutional pull to do that. And frankly speaking, Donald Trump's a coward. and he would never directly, you know, create a confrontation of this nature. But if he's confronted with a massive defeat in November, he has between November and January

to take some sort of action to stop the Democrats from taking control of Congress. And this may be part of the contention that, you know, the Democrats are an existential threat to American democracy that Donald Trump needs to institute martial law. he won't be disrupting the election. He'll just be disrupting the election results. I don't know. This is all speculation, but this is one of the dumbest ideas one could ever imagine, and I hope every American opposes it, and we do whatever we can to prevent it from being built. Scott Ritter, I know you'll be traveling, safe travels, my friend.

Thank you very much for today. Deeply appreciated all the best. I hope you can come to us from wherever you're going to be. I'll do my best, but where I'm going to be, as you are, aware, sometimes has intermittent internet issues. So we've been dealing with that, but we'll give it a shot. Thank you, Scott. Safe travels, all the best.

Thanks. Thank you. Coming up later today at 2 o'clock this afternoon, Janine Yunus, she is the terrific defender of civil liberties representing Max Blumenthal in the case in which the Department of Homeland Security stole his electronic devices. And at 3 o'clock, more on what we can expect from Prime Minister Netanyahu at the UN from Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.