Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter - Ukraine Russia War Update 11-30-22

Episode Date: November 30, 2022

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Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, November on intelligence and military matters and one of our regular go-to guys here on the show. And, of course, as all of you watching know, and have made him this, a fan favorite. Scott, welcome back to Judging Freedom. It's always a pleasure to have you on. Thanks for having me. So where do we stand in the war in Ukraine now or the military expedition, whatever we're going to call it this week. Winter is coming. Some of the ground is frozen. Kyiv goes

through these periods of time where it has no water, no electricity, and no heat. Today they announced the water and the electricity are back. Have the Russian conscripts arrived yet? Have they been adequately trained? Give us your take on where things are this last day in November of 2022. Well, we'll just start first and foremost. The world is bearing eyewitness to the death of a nation and it's tragic the death of Ukraine um and it's just going to get worse there's nothing the Ukrainian government can do to stabilize the situation uh the Russian attacks uh if they continue again I'm not I'm not a target here for the Russians coin so i can't tell you what they're going to do but um logic implies that

they're going to continue a strategic air campaign that's having um an extraordinarily detrimental impact on uh the ukrainian state and the ukrainian government ukrainian morale and ukrainian ability to sustain uh resistance so you know we're seeing this part then um on the battlefield i'll just a quick correction they're they're not russian conscripts these are reservists these are people who served so it's not like you're taking some kid off the street who's never served taking guys who have done a full term of contract service between four and six years um and they've received refresher training depending on how long they've been out of service around 87 000 of them have already been um rolled up into the forces on the ground they are plugging gaps in the defense they've solidified the

defensive line uh there are no more ukrainian breakthroughs. There's just a lot of dead Ukrainians, dead Poles, dead mercenaries. Let me stop you. Dead Poles. Are there Polish troops on the ground in Ukraine fighting with the Ukrainians against the Russians? Tens of thousands. And thousands have died. Wow. And that has not triggered anything from the rest of NATO by way of troops on the ground. No, because the Poles aren't there as Polish troops. They're there.

They've been in the United States. We call it sheep dipped, meaning they basically take off their Polish uniforms. They get dipped in Ukrainian uniforms, and then they go forward. But they fight as Polish units. I interviewed a senior Russian commander, actually a Chechen, Opti, I'm going to butcher his last name. And he said, look, he's in the Lugansk front. He says, we used to we listen to the chatter all the time the radio traffic he said where we used to hear ukrainian

voices all we hear now is french english and polish that's all we hear polish polish and the dead bodies are just piling up polls have acknowledged uh so far over a thousand bodies have been returned to poland it's becoming a problem because the Polish people are starting to ask questions. Why so many dead Poles? Are we at war? Imagine America engaged in a conflict that we weren't being honest with the American people and a thousand bodies came home. What other country has troops on the ground wearing Ukrainian uniforms besides Poland? Romania. There's a lot of Romanian troops that are there, Polish troops. And both those, I believe those are part of official policies, meaning that the Romanian government and the Polish government have an official policy where active duty soldiers can be sheep dipped and turned into ukrainian soldiers

on a voluntary basis but then we have you know literally hundreds if not thousands of french british canadian american citizens people with prior military experience who are in Ukraine on U.S. government-funded contracts. They're private military contractors, and their money's coming from the U.S. government. And I just, we're at war. We are at war. Why is it that the Polish government doesn't see the futility of this? I can understand the Ukrainians wanting to fight to the bitter end. They have hope. It's not much of hope, but they have hope. But what's in it for the Poles?

Don't they see that Russia is going to prevail? And don't they see that they're just wasting innocent lives and material? I can't speak for the Poles, but I try to put myself in their shoes and find some sort of logic. And here's the logic that I can come up with. The Poles at some point in time are going to make a play for western ukraine for the volve and um and other uh territories and cities that used to be poland back before 1939 and in order to do that uh the polish army has zero combat experience zero it's a it's it's a conscript military um They're not professionals. And what Poland's doing right now is getting a crash course in combat readiness. They're sending troops in. They're being blooded on the battlefield. They're learning're already there. They're not going to be crossing the border from Poland into Ukraine. They're already in Ukraine. All right, so you're suggesting that part of the reason for the Polish presence,

or maybe the principal reason for the Polish military presence in Ukraine, is to occupy the Western portion of it once the Russians leave. is that a fair summary of what you just said yeah it's the only logic i can find because otherwise you're just sacrificing troops for no for no reason there's no reason to send your troops into eastern ukraine where they're literally being slaughtered yes they're getting combat experience but they're being slaughtered by the russians um the only reason i can see to do this is that you're blooding them, you're getting combat experience, and you'll have the troops on the ground already when the time comes to convert back to being Polish-controlled. How professional has the Russian military

become? I mean, my understanding is that before this war, the Russian military was essentially defensive and prepared for defensive incursions by NATO. Now, this is a major offensive incursion by the Russian military. Has this changed the Russian military at all? I mean, stated differently, has American military aid to Ukraine actually made the Russians better fighters? Yeah, look, Russia up until 2008 was, as you said, primarily a defensive organization, especially when it came to Europe. They had decommissioned their tank armies, their combined armed army. they were primarily a brigade type force where you had brigades that could go do small wars here there

the war with georgia was an eye-opener for them because these russians went up against georgian infantry that were trained by marines i'm bragging a little bit here but uh the marines trained them well and the russians we trained the Georgians. So we trained the Georgian brigade and they performed outstandingly in terms of the small unit tactics, maneuver communications, things that make infantry units look knack professionally. The Georgians were doing, the problem is they didn't have any artillery or tanks and the Russians just steamrolled them down. You can be good infantry, but if you aren't backed up with nice artillery and tanks, you're going to get rolled. And the Georgians got rolled, but the Russians took a

lesson from that saying qualitatively, man for man, the Georgians were better than the Russians. And that means that NATO's better than the Russians. And they said, we have to change that. So from 2008 to 2014, Russia underwent one of these dramatic defense reviews. They reorganized their military. They went back to these tank armies, these operational mobile groups. They began to practice offensive war. They re-equipped themselves, new communication, new uniforms, new everything. That's why in 2014, when the Russians went into Crimea, the whole world woke up and went, whoa, what just happened here? The little green men. You've heard

about the little green men. Well, the little green men were all over Crimea looking and acting like really professional troops. And the West went, there's something going on here. And then in 2014, as the Ukrainians tried to steamroll into Donbas some Russian units got engaged artillery units and Army units and they wiped the slate with the ukrainians just took them straight out and again NATO was like this is impressive and the Russians have only been getting better ever since but again they haven't done the large-scale offensive operations what's happening now there's an outstanding trilogy trilogy written by Rick Atkinson about the US Army in World War II. And I see so many parallels between the story he tells from North Africa up until D-Day and then moving into Berlin and what's happening with the Russians

right now. The Russians are becoming a professional, offensively oriented military that does war better than anybody on this planet doesn't mean they're perfect they do war and doing war means you take your lumps you absorb them you adapt you move on uh there's no such thing as the perfect military machine where everything run right but the russians right now have a system where they are adapting. They are learning. It's almost like artificial intelligence. They're just sitting there learning and keep learning. I want you to repeat what you just said about what the Russians are becoming.

I want to make sure I heard it correctly, Scott. Are they becoming, have they become the best offensive ground military in the world? Today, yes, because the U.S. has lost it. There was a time when, I mean, what the U.S. did in Iraq, both times, both in 1991, 2003, that's offensive warfare. That's putting a large amount of tanks, armor, moving the logistics. Oh, we can't do that today. We forgot how to do it because of Afghanistan and the counterinsurgency conflict in Iraq. We broke our military.

So we're no longer on the playing field. The Russians weren't on the playing field, but they're now on it, and they are learning how to do this. The proof will be in the pudding. When the troops show up on the battlefield, we'll find out if they can take theory and make it reality. But right now, they're better than the conversation. Here's where I want to go in the conversation. You have argued that the American military equipment that we're sending is coming not just from our surplus, but from our substance. Now you have argued that because of the Russian experience in Georgia, Crimea, and now in eastern Ukraine, the Russian military has become the best on the ground infantry fighting force in the world.

Combined arms fighting force. Okay, okay. I don't want to put words in your mouth. Does the Pentagon know this and does the White House know this and does the State Department know this? Again, I'm not sitting there so I can't answer this definitively. They're in a position to know this. I would tell you what. Is your opinion of this an outlier or is your opinion what mainstream military and former military, I know you're always a Marine, observe when they look at this? I have the same training they do. So what I'm seeing, I'm not spinning. I'm not coming in from as an outlier. I'm coming in from somebody who has been schooled in the art of maneuver

warfare and the people that are out there receive the same training, the same experience, et cetera. So they're seeing the exact same thing I'm seeing and they're looking at the U S army and they're saying that can't compete. I'm not, you know, individually, the U S soldier is Supreme. He's a good soldier, good physical fitness, all that kind of stuff. But to turn them into an armored brigade with sustainable combat efficiency, I'm not talking about one day clashing Japan stuff. I'm talking about grinding it out on the battlefield and sustaining that.

They can't do it. The Russians can. I would love to go to Fort Leavenworth. They have an army school. We used to call them the Jedi Knights, the School of Advanced Military Studies, SAMS. They have the majors course, and then they have the lieutenant colonel's course. And they always, I'm betting you a dime to the dollar that they are doing nothing but studying what's going on in Ukraine right now. And I would love to be able to sit in with the majors as they sit there and plot this out and game it out and they're all all of them are sitting there going

i mean i'll tell you this any army officer worth his salt is looking at this saying holy beep right 80 000 rounds of artillery how the heck do we begin to operate under that kind of fire? We don't have the sufficient counter battery capability to knock it out. We bring up our artillery. We might make a couple of it. They're going to grind us down. We've got nothing. They all have to be saying this.

I am fascinated by this analysis. And if I take it to the next step, and I know you won't go where your intellect won't take you. weakened and the Russian ability to engage in offensive warfare has been strengthened by the American military delivery of equipment to Ukraine. Agreed? At the point of contact, yes. Remember this, Russia's operating on interior lines of communication with relatively comparatively short logistics lanes. So their logistics hubs that sustain them are right next door to where they're fighting. The United States is unsurpassed in its ability to project power. Remember, any combat we would be engaged in in Europe, we have to go back to the United States. We have to flow this equipment in. And we can do that better than the Russians can. So it's not like Russia is going to leave Ukraine

and suddenly invade Europe. Can't do that. Russia is capable of winning a conflict in Ukraine. But the Russian military is not organized, equipped, and prepared to do World War II type deep operations in Europe. So I don't think that NATO is under threat. The notion that NATO is going to fold and the Russians are coming in, I don't see that. I just see that in Ukraine, the point of contact, Russia is unbeatable. Is it more likely than not that the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Oval Office are getting intelligence reports that have the conclusions in them that you have just presented to our audience? Or are we still back to where the senior intel people are telling Joe Biden and Anthony Blinken and Lloyd Austin what they think they want to hear rather than what's really happening on the ground. No, I think it's interesting to watch the temperament of the people speaking today. To give you an example, General Clark is a retired

four-star general, Wesley Clark, commander of NATO forces, et cetera. And he has been embarrassing himself over the course of the past several months about how bad the Russians are. They can't tie their shoes. They can't chew gum and walk. They can't do this. But he's finally-

Is he changing his mind? Is he changing his mind? Yeah, he came on the TV and he stared in the camera with this big wide-eyed stare. And he said, Ukrainians been lured into a trap in Bakhmut by the Russians, and they're going to all die. And the Russians are going to win, and there's nothing they can do to stop it. And I'm like, General, this has always been the case.

You should have known this, but you were obeying your CNN answers. Now he's actually seen the truth. And you see that with everybody. There's not a single professional in the diplomatic corps. They're desperate for a negotiated settlement because they know, they keep saying this will be solved on the battlefield. They know that it is. Ukraine loses. So they're looking for a diplomatic off ramp.

Nobody wants to see this thing through. Nobody's talking about realistic sustainability into the summer. We have nothing left to give. Nothing. All right, Gary, put up the map of Ukraine, please. Okay, so the red area says do not travel. This is a map from some travel service, but it's a good, easy, readable map. We can see where Kiev is up north, but more or less, it's the capital, but more or less in the middle of the country. How far west are the areas where the Russian military is beyond where the red is? Have they occupied the next provinces that you see there? Yeah, there's... If you go up from Crimea,

there's Kherson province or obelisk. Where the town is, Kherson, you have the Dnieper River, and you follow the Dnieper River up. The Russians are on the right-hand side as you're looking at the map.

The right-hand side, so that should all be red up through Zaporizhia. And then then the then the map will turn over where in Donetsk, where it shows Donetsk. There's a good chunk of Donetsk, the western part of Donetsk that's still controlled by the Ukrainians. And that's where the for instance, you see the town in the airport says Kramatorsk, that's under Ukrainian control. That's what's so important about the Battle of Bakhmut right now, is that if the Russians take Bakhmut, they penetrate the defenses and they put Kramatorsk under risk and all of Donetsk under risk. But so there's still part of Western Donetsk that

is under Ukrainian control, but pretty much all of Zaporizhia and the parts of Kherson that are on the right-hand side or the eastern side of the Dnieper River are under the control of Russia. How far west do they want to go? Do they want to go west of the Dnieper River? I'm talking about the Russian military. Yeah, if you look over, if you go all the way over, you see where Odessa is, and then you go to the left where the where the yellow border is, there's a dashed line there. And that dashed line is where Transnistria is. That's a Russian, a pro-Russian enclave part of Moldova. And the Ukrainians have been making noises saying that, you know, they may attack Transnistria to draw the Russians in. So I believe that the Russians have to occupy the southern rump of Ukraine all the way up

to Odessa to secure the Transnistria region. And then I also believe at the end of the day, they're going to basically take Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk. And who knows if they take Sumy? I don't think so. Ukraine will be landlocked. Yes. And that'll know, who knows if they take Sumy? I don't think so. Ukraine will be landlocked. Yes. And that'll be the end of the Ukrainian economy. There will be no Ukrainian industry worthy of the name. Ukraine will become a agricultural based economy with forever trapped in poverty.

As I said, we're witnessing the death of a nation as we speak. What negotiating levers can President Zelensky pull? What does he have to offer? His resistance is about to collapse. What would he or what would his foreign minister say to President Putin's foreign minister if they were to sit down with Antony Blinken in Geneva next week? There's nothing they can say. They'd have to be listening. The Russians would say, everything that we've annexed is ours. You get nothing back.

That means you have to get out of the territory that belongs to us. We annexed the whole thing. Even though your troops are there, they're gone. Don't debate us or we'll kill you. I mean, basically, this is not a negotiation. This is a dictation of terms. And then the Russians will say, if you want to keep Odessa, you have to demilitarize. And if you want to stay in power in Kiev, you have to change your constitution to get rid of the far right wing parties. The denazification has to be real. You can never be

part of NATO ever. And, you know, there'll be other treaty-related things. But it's basically the Ukrainians have to sit there and listen and pray that the Russians don't move. Because if Russia moves out of the four areas that they've already annexed, whatever they occupy, Ukraine will never get back. That's what the Ukrain... All right, we have 40,000 American active duty in uniform troops, some of them 101st Airborne, others belonging to other entities in Poland. What is the likelihood they move east and engage the Russians?

Zero? Zero. Zero. It's just not going to happen. How long, much longer is this going to go on? Winter is coming. It's already winter-like in much of Ukraine, but the bitter cold winter for which that part of the world is well known is upon them or just about. Yeah, here's the thing. As the Russians advance, and they're going to advance, there's two realities. One, they still are not

in the business of hurting civilians. So as they advance, it's going to be a slow methodical advance that's designed to minimize civilian casualties. Two, as they advance and they retake these civilian areas, the Russians have to bring in services to these people. These people live in devastated areas. The Ukrainians don't care about them. They don't care about them at all. They've abandoned them. The Russians will come in. The Russians have to bring in the gas. They have to repave the roads, clear the the roads bring in electricity um which means that the russian advance is going to be slowed by the necessity of taking care of civilian populations as they move in the last thing is even though the russians are probably you know i think the numbers

are going to be between 500 700 000 russian troops that are going to be available for this next phase of the operation but as you expand right now they now, they're in a constricted area. Looks pretty good. But as you expand, the frontage grows. As the frontage grows, those 700,000 troops not only get spread along the expanding front, but they have to secure the rear. And 700,000 troops go away real quick. So the Russians don't have unlimited capability. Whatever they're going to do, it has to be targeted and focused and kept within the realm of the possible. Because sometime in late spring, there's going to be about 40,000 fresh Ukrainian troops coming out of the NATO training pipeline. Now, that's not an earth-changing number, but it's enough to give

Russia a bloody nose if Russia makes the mistake again of having too thin of a line, having overextended its forces. So the Russians have to be thinking not only about what's going on now, but what's going to happen a couple months from now. They have to be thinking in that direction. And I believe these guys, they go to military academies. They're some of the finest intellectual warriors out there. And if I'm sitting here thinking that, I can guarantee you the Russian staff officers also thinking the same thing. So I think whatever we see come out of Russia in terms of offense is going to be slower than most people anticipate. Somehow we think this is going to be World War IIi general patten operation cobra driving through france i think it's going to be slower it's going to be more methodical and it's going to be deadly as you know what for the ukrainians i think it's going to go

at least through the spring you don't see a quick russian victory no i i don't see the russians i i actually i think this has the real potential. Victory would mean Zelensky's on the phone with Joe Biden saying, get me some sort of peace talks in Geneva. That's how I'll define victory. Well, see, there's two things. There's military victory. Then there's political victory. I think the Russians will achieve military victory by the end of next summer.

But do you think there'll be negotiations before that? Again, no negotiation. It'll be the Lenski government has to, or whatever replaces it, has to decide whether or not they're going to show up on the battleship Missouri and Tokyo Bay, because that's the only negotiation. Okay. Here's an interesting political question. Is he replaced by people harder and farther to the right than he is, the sort of neo-Nazi crowd that wants to fight to the last drop of blood? Or is he replaced by more rational people who realize that for a portion of Ukraine to survive,

they better stop fighting? If he gets replaced, I believe he'll be replaced by military professionals who have come to the realization that continued resistance is futile. All that's going to happen is more troops are going to die, more territory is going to be lost, and the best thing is to preserve as much of Ukraine as possible. Scott Ritter, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.