Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter - Ukraine Russia War - Where is it Going_

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom fans. He's our regular military analyst, Scott Ritter. Scott, it's a pleasure. Welcome back to the show. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. Since we spoke last, we did speak about the evacuation of Kherson by the Russians and the claim of triumph by the Ukrainians. But since we had that conversation on air, President Zelensky of Ukraine went to Kherson and proclaimed that this is the beginning of the end of the Russian war.

So hold your fire. Here's what he said. This is the beginning of the end of the war. Of course, you see our strong army. We are step by step coming to our country, to all the temporary occupied territories. And of course, it's a pity, but it's a long way, difficult way because this war to the best heroes of our country. And so, but for us it's very understandable. We don't believe Russia. Yes, and they are tricky with all the world That's why we are going forward We're ready for peace

But our peace for our country It's all our country, all our territory So a couple of questions We're ready for peace Is that a signal to Tony Blinken and Vladimir Zelensky That maybe emissaries can meet in Geneva, or is this propaganda, or does he really believe what he's saying? Well, I mean, the conditions that Zelensky and the Ukrainian government have attached to peace

are unrealistic. One, they have to win the war first. If we can get to that, I'm sure you'll ask me a question about that. But, you know, when he says that our conditions for peace are that Russia not only has to withdraw from all the four territories, Zaporizhia, Kherson, Donetsk, and Lugansk, have to return them, and Crimea while you're at it. Understand that Article 64 of the Russian Constitution, this is Russia, theussia can't constitution can't heaven be uh they have to submit all of their generals officers and putin himself to ukraine for uh trials as war criminals uh so it's a non-starter it's literally a fantasy it's put

forward there uh and the united states has chastised them uh indeed uh just the other day william burns the director of the cia who just met in a secret back-channel session with the Russians in Ankara, Turkey, was traveling there to tell Zelensky, get real. That ain't going to happen, dude. The heavy fist is about to come down, and you had better get on the off-ramp before it's denied to you by the Russians. Is the Biden administration either approaching the limit that Congress authorized for military aid, or is Biden coming to his senses that it's time for us to stop financing this war? I mean, stated differently, what did Burns say and why did he say it? This is the head of the CIA talking to his Russian counterpart in Ankara, Turkey, if I have that right.

Correct. And it's not their first meeting, meaning that this is a back channel has been ongoing for some time. The purpose of the back channel is to create conversation to prevent escalation to nuclear conflict. But right now, the United States is trying to identify what conditions are set by Russia for the end of this conflict. I think Russia's made it clear, demilitarization, denazification, and NATO out of Ukraine, nothing's going to change. And I think Burns is relaying that to Zelensky and adding the fact that, hey, next month, remember you showed the clip where Zelensky was saying, you know, we've won. We're winning. Enjoy the moment, President Zelensky. Sure.

About 30 days before 220,000 Russian troops show up, you ain't got a solution to that. Okay. I was going to ask you that simple question that I usually ask you at the beginning, but you're so smart, Major. You answered it already. I'm sorry, Judge. 220,000 Russian troops are about to enter the theater of war. So Ukraine has not won, and Ukraine is not going to win. And the statement we saw was propaganda value, I guess.

He had his troops there. He had some jubilant locals there. You could hear them chanting and screaming in the background. Are you still of the view that the evacuation of Kherson was strategic and it wasn't a surrender at all? And President Putin knows that. Well, I mean, first of all, let's be honest. They had to do it because they were in a difficult military situation um they were in a situation that if they had attempted to retain the kerson bridgehead um they would have suffered losses um and the russian military was like we

don't need to die for this territory right now we can pull back because in a month we got 10 to 15 divisions showing up and the game is over at that point in time so why sacrifice 3,000 guys now when we can save their lives and this thing's going to be resolved next month when a new reality is created okay within hours of President Zelensky making that comment, a missile fired by, we don't know, manufactured by, we don't know, aimed at, we don't know, landed in a small Polish village and killed two people, not military people, as far as we know. A big uproar. And then, of course, the uproar died down because the Western media has persuaded everybody that this was a mistake. It was an error. It was probably the Ukrainians trying to shoot down a Russian missile. equivalent of his National Security Council after he received two reports that contradict what the Western media is now claiming. главкома залужного, я не сумніваюся, тому що це була не наша ракета або не наш ракетний

удар. Вони не мають сенсу їм не довіряти. Я з ними в війну пройшов. І з вами. Щось отримає. Остаточні висновки, якщо немає слідців. Мені здається, це справедливо. В спільній слідчій групі ми

маємо право, якщо говорять, що це ми. Хтось там говорить. Маємо право. all right it wasn't here's what he's saying it wasn't the ukrainian missile and the polls who are investigating need to have us a part of the investigation what what are your sources or what is your instinct tell you that is all about who who shot it? How did it get there? What's the truth? Well, let's start with basic facts. Two Polish citizens died. So if you're in the Polish government, you have to launch an investigation into what is in effect murder, because Poland's not at war. Somebody killed these two citizens. Who did it? A missile landed in Poland that killed these two citizens. That missile we now know is a Ukrainian S-300 surface-to-air missile. We know this.

The serial number's on it. Everything points to Ukraine. Russia doesn't have that missile. NATO admits that they tracked this missile all the way into Poland. NATO knows where it was launched from. We know everything about this. Trust me, I used to do this for a living. When that missile was launched, we know it.

When the radars were turned on, we know it. We know it's a Ukrainian missile. We know it impacted on Polish soil. That's why the president's telling Zelensky, stop this nonsense of denying. We know the truth. Now, Zelensky may be in a situation where he's being told that it wasn't his. And I'll tell you why I believe this might be the case. There are elements of the ukrainian military that realize because let's put in the context of why this missile was launched ukraine was getting a snot kicked out of it by 90 russian missiles that were knocking out their electrical infrastructure and their gas production ukraine's going into the dark ages and the ukrainian military knows there's nothing they can do to stop this unless nato intervenes they They need NATO to set up a no-fly zone over Ukraine.

That would be their salvation. So to do this, somebody in the Ukrainian military, I believe, launched this missile at Poland. Why? Because the missile, the Russian missiles are coming in from the east to the west. The way surface-to-air missiles work is you have a big radar that detects this. Then you have a little radar up front that guides a missile fired from west to east to intercept the missile. This missile went from east to west into Poland. How does that happen? And how does it do it on a ballistic trajectory? I know from my experience that you take it to make a surface-to-air missile, a ballistic missile. You point a radar point in the sky.

The missile guides on it and then goes to a ballistic trajectory down. Somebody in Ukraine painted the sky over Poland with a radar signature that sent a missile to Poland. That's the only way that missile gets to Poland. in an effort to, I guess, prick the thin skin of President Duda, the president of Poland, and draw the Polish in. I mean, this is the president who said, well, Russia's got to return Crimea before this is over, which of course, as you described, is insane and impossible, both legally and militarily. But this was an act of murder and a false flag. If you agree with that, could something of this magnitude have happened without President Zelensky having authorized it? I believe the answer is yes. I believe there's elements in the Ukrainian military that are, especially nationalists who are affiliated with the Western Ukraine territory to begin with,

who are conspiring with the polls to create the conditions for Article 4, the NATO charter, to be invoked. And look what happened. As soon as this was reported, you had the polls, you had the Latvians, the Estonians, Lithuanians, all official governments coming out saying, this is an Article 4 thing. We need to convene NATO, put air defense into Ukraine and a no-fly zone into Ukraine instantly before any analysis came out. That's the first thing that came in. They were on a hair-trigger alert to invoke Article 4. It failed because the adults in the room, the people who understand what Article 4 would bring, i.e. nuclear conflict with Russia, said, we're not doing that. Plus, they knew the evidence didn't stack up. But everybody else is backed down except Zelensky, because I don't think Zelensky knew that this was going to happen. Zelensky's being told, we didn't do it. But somebody did do it. And I'm telling you, there's no way that missile got from Ukraine to Poland

without a radar dot in the sky, and that had to be done by a Polish radar. In the tape we just watched, was President Zelensky lying to the National Security Council or did he believe what he was saying? Did his generals lie to him or did they believe what they were saying? I mean, there's a disconnect somewhere here. How does command and control work, if at all, in the Ukraine military and the Ukraine government if something like this can happen and the top guy doesn't know about it? Well, because you had officers at the bottom ranks who were probably nationalists who did this without permission. I believe that the Air Force commander and the chief of staff of the Ukrainian armed

forces are telling the truth to Zelensky. We didn't order this. All our missiles were fired against Russian missiles. We didn't do this. The problem is, before you make that statement, know that investigation Zelensky wants? I mean, the criminal wanting to go to the crime scene before the crime scene has been thoroughly investigated. It's absurd. But what he could do is seize the radar that was used to launch that missile, detain the crew, and begin questioning people. Give me your radar tracking. Let's look at this. Go to NATO and say, was a radar active at this site? Where was it oriented? What was the orientation? When was this launched? Do that investigation and you'll find who the culprits are. Somebody fired that missile. That missile was aimed at a radar spot that took it from an east to west trajectory. Find those people. If you want an investigation, President Zelensky, that's where you begin. of such that there are hotheads in there that would do something like this on their own

without permission from their superiors? I mean, what rank would have done this? Sergeant, lieutenant, captain, major? I mean, do they have ranks like we have in the West? They do. And this would be a section of a battery. So it could be somebody as low as a captain. It could be somebody, a major. It could be higher than that, but this is something that is easily done by a major. You don't need permission when you're being attacked to fire a surface air missile. They probably thought they could be clever

and put the tracking missile in that direction and send the missile that way and then claim malfunction. But the missile doesn't malfunction that way. I've investigated these things before. It doesn't work that way. Let's talk about diplomacy. What were the head of the, I guess it's the FSB, the successor to the KGB, Bill Burns' counterpart, and the head of the CIA talking about, and what were they doing in Turkey? Well, it was the head of the SVR, which is their foreign intelligence. The FSB is like our FBI with a lot more muscle. Don't let the FBI hear you say that. Well, they just heard it. They just

heard it, but they know I'm telling the truth. They don't have a private army. They do. They've been having this conversation for months now. Back in July, they met in secret in Armenia. And what was on the table then was nuclear de-escalation and talks about how do we prevent this from escalating to a nuclear conflict, establishing lines of communication and talking about the potential of arms control. This time, now that they've established that connectivity that dampens down the possibility of nuclear war, the next thing is how do we end this conflict? And Burns was having a frank discussion, I believe, with his Russian counterpart and received some hard truths, because the head of the SVR is not going to deviate meaningfully from stated policy of the

Russian government. The hard truths are what I just told you. Hey, William, baby, 200,000 troops show up on the battlefield next month. We didn't mobilize them for nothing. Don't come to us and ask about a diplomatic on-ramp. We're winning this war. We're going to win this war. And if you want the war to end, you have to give us something that we're going to get anyways. The key here isn't that we give up something. It's what you want Ukraine to preserve. If you want them to preserve Odessa and continued access to the sea, then they must end this conflict now on our terms, not their terms. If I were writing this script, I would write it just the way you did. And I might add this.

And by the way, Mr. CIA director, I'm doing you a favor by telling you this. Get your CIA agents who are in plain clothes out of there because they're not going to last much longer. Yeah, it's going to be a tough time for Ukraine. Look, again, I'm taking a smile off my face because this is tragic. They literally are going into the Stone Ages right now, and particularly American diplomats that America has the God-given right to control the world and can finance puppets to fight for that control and then can tell those puppets what kind of government they should establish. I mean, you've told us many times, Phil Giraldi has, Colonel McGregor, that this war started in 2014 and it started by the CIA fomenting a revolution against the popularly elected, albeit pro-Russian government. Do you

accept everything that I've just said as a fair summary of your views? And if you do, can you take the ball and run with it? I do accept that. I mean, I accuse America of being infected with the disease of hubris, national hubris, the arrogance that comes with that. Read the National Security Strategy document that was just published by the Biden administration and look at the emphasis it's played on the rules-based international order. Then ask yourself, what is the rules-based international order? It's not international law set forth by the United Nations Charter. It's a bunch of side agreements and deals that the United States cut with the rest of the world in the aftermath of the Second World War to imbue us, the United States, with total power and authority over everything the way the world works, especially financial.

And so now, because the dollar, especially the petrodollar after the 1970s, touches everything, anything that touches the dollar, we feel we have a right to sanction and control. So we're dictating terms of global existence to the world that doesn't want to be dictated to. And that's what we're running into right now. The world is starting to get tired of American hegemony. They're tired of the arrogance. We call ourselves the exceptional nation. We say that the world cannot function without us. Well, the world's been ready to say, watch us.

So if there's any negotiating going on, any back channel, if anybody from Russia and Ukraine is secretly meeting in a hotel room in Geneva, there's somebody from the State Department there. There's no doubt about that. Okay. So this can't end with a negotiation unless President Zelensky comes to his senses, and he might come to his senses

if President Biden calls him up and said, that's it, that's it. I can't take the political heat. The Republicans have taken control of the house. I can't get another nickel out of the Congress. My slush fund is empty. You got to talk. Yeah. I think the only negotiation that's going to take place is going to be similar to what took place on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay in September of 1945. That wasn't much negotiation. None whatsoever. Or the negotiation took place in Berlin in May of 1945, where a German general sat

down at a table full of Soviet generals who said, sign the paper or die. That's the negotiation that's going to occur. Scott Ritter, always a pleasure, my friend. Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.