Judging Freedom - Ukraine Fighting - What_s Next, after Bakhmut_ Larry Johnson fmr CIA

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

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Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is, what day is today? Today is Tuesday, May 23rd, 2023. It's 5.30 in the afternoon here in Switzerland, where I find myself today, 11.30 in the morning on the east coast of the United States, from which our friend and colleague Larry Johnson joins us today. Larry, always a pleasure. Thanks for spending your time with us. Since last we spoke, it appears pretty certain, even from grudging admissions by the Ukrainians, that Bakhmut has fallen to the Russians.

How bad a defeat was this for Ukraine? It was decisive in the sense that 26,000 troops on the Wagner side defeated over 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian side. Now, normally, the statistics in war normally are that a defending force, like the four Ukrainians, they're defending Bakhmut, that you would need an army three times that size to take Bakhmut.

Instead, an army one-third the size took Bakhmut. Now, the Wagner Group didn't do it all by itself. They had dramatic support, significant support for Russian artillery, Russian fixed-wing aircraft, et cetera. But the story, the narrative that was presented to the public was that this was Wagner by itself. And it sort of blows up the U.S. criticism and the NATO criticism. They've characterized the Wagner folks as a bunch of conscripted convict criminals who are just, you know, they're against their will, they're not very good.

Hey, all we can say is 30,000 guys beat over 100,000 Ukrainians. In one of your postings on this, since the Russian victory in Bakhmut, you referred to the battle there as a meat grinder, and you listed, it almost seemed endless, single-spaced, the list took up a whole page of all the brigades and various militias and entities that the Ukrainian military poured into Bakhmut. Did they overplay their hand? Would it have been better for them to have surrendered rather than to have suffered this catastrophic loss of human life?

The decisions that were made in Bakhmut were played out in terms of politics, not military strategy. There have been reports that there was a real split between President Zelensky who insisted upon staying in and holding on to Bakht and General Salewski who has been absent, noticeably absent over the last several weeks, who wanted to withdraw forces. A list of all of the different brigades and battalions. When you total them up, it's well over 120,000 people. And the estimates from the Ukrainian side are they suffered 70% casualties. Now, I didn't come up with that. That list was provided by a Substack fellow by the name of Simplikius the Thinker. But the list, as you rightly point out, it's extensive.

And that it wasn't just Ukrainian. Remember, this was a NATO-trained and equipped army. This was, in effect, the Russians fighting the West, and the Russians in this particular contest prevailed. Did the Russians intentionally use what you, I think, once referred to as a meat grinder, almost like an iron claw where they tricked the Ukrainians into entering and fighting and then destroyed everybody that entered that area that the Russians surrounded. In other words, could the Russians have taken this earlier with fewer Ukrainian casualties? Or stated differently, did the Russians use this as a mechanism for

depleting the strength and the size of the Ukrainian military? I believe it's the latter. When you go back to what Putin initially outlined as the goals of the entire special military operation to demilitarize Ukraine, well, the only way you demilitarize it is you destroy its military force and you destroy its equipment. They certainly could have taken Bakhmut in more conventional, what's called maneuver warfare, where you don't directly attack the city. You go out, surround it, cut off the surrounding access roads into the city, deny it logistics, starve it out. They chose not to do that. And it is reported that Serovikin, the general who ran operations previously in Syria, was the one instrumental and said, this is what we're going to do.

And the Ukrainians took the bait. They kept pouring men and materiel into that death trap. And the numbers that were lost there are really staggering in terms of the overall size of the Ukrainian force. And when it's all over, what did they achieve? Nothing. Larry, as you point out, General Serebryan, who is or was, I don't know which answer you're going to give us,

the commander of all military operations is a well-respected on the international scene military general, not a political hack. Is he dead or has he been killed? Oh, you mean Zeluzny? I'm sorry, Zeluzny. Yeah, yeah. The reports are now, and I think they're credible, is that he was wounded and that he's been hospitalized and those wounds severe wounds being treated there are there was a report that uh he claimed supposedly had a conversation uh with uh lloyd austin the u.S. Secretary of Defense, just the other day. But I'm very skeptical of that, because the initial reports about Zaluzny had Zaluzny going on vacation to Crete, you know, swimming in the ocean. It turned out those photos were from several years ago. So

there clearly has been a stage-managed information operation regarding Zelensky. Whether he is alive or dead, what was clear is there was a split between him and Zelensky. And I think Zelensky is in some real trouble in terms of his political standing in Ukraine. Are parts of Russia being dragged into this war because the Ukrainians are using NATO equipment to attack land that is indisputably Russia? Yeah, you're referring to the cross-border incursion in the Belgorod region that just took place on Monday. And Ukraine has said, you know, sort of like Butterfly McQueen from Gone with the Wind, I don't know nothing about no invasion. And the United States has said, oh, we don't know anything about it

except what the Russians captured were American-made MRAPs, vehicles, armored vehicles. So it's not like General Motors set up a car lot in Kiev, sell it to whatever buyer happened to wander by and, you know, fork over, you know, a half million dollars. So this clearly is Ukrainian surrogates going into Russia. But they're getting killed. They were all killed. So you've got to step back

and say if you're going to use force, what's your objective? What is the outcome that you want? If just getting yourself killed is the purpose, that doesn't get you into the winner's circle. So, Larry, this is very dangerous given Ukraine's geographical location. Would they have gone into Russia? Would they have attacked Russia without the knowledge, consent, or even knowledge of looking the other way of their NATO bosses? No. And that's the real problem, Judge. What's going on here is that there is now no off-ramp. The vitriol that's being voiced by the group, the G7, by the United States, by the United Kingdom, portrays not just Putin, not just the Russian military, but all of Russia, its people, its economy, its culture, as an enemy, as nothing to be respected, as something ultimately to be destroyed, to be

dismantled. And the Russians realize that now. They understand that. That was not their understanding more than a year ago. And you've got to, if you don't have grounds for negotiation, it's going to end in conflict. Here's President Biden in Hiroshima announcing that he changed his mind and the allies to whom American industry has sold F-16s are now free to ship those F-16 fighters to Ukraine. But just as important, maybe more important in the grand scheme of things, Larry, the U.S. will be training Ukrainian fighter pilots in the U.S. to use these jets. Watch this. The United States, together with our allies and partners, is going to begin training Ukrainian pilots and fourth-generation fighter aircraft, including F-16s, to strengthen Ukraine's air force as part of a long-term commitment to Ukraine's ability to defend itself. In one of your postings, I'm smiling because this is typical of the Larry Johnson I've known for many years, referred to the G7 meeting in Hiroshima as a clown show. Why did you use language that strong? There's not an announced leadership or vision.

It's all ad hominem attacks on their part. Here's Joe Biden. It looks like he's going for the Nadia Komanich award, given the number of backflips he's had. I mean, this guy's putting on a gymnastics performance, a metaphorical one at that, but he's reversed course on everything that he said that he wasn't going to do. And they're not stepping back and taking a look at the reality, which is, you remember the game changers of the HIMARS? Oops, that turned out to be a game changer. And the Patriot? Oh, the Patriot's going to change the game.

No, that didn't change it. There is no such thing as a miracle weapon that's going to change the trajectory of this war. That the F-16, if it is introduced, and the only way it can really be introduced is it's going to have Western pilots in the cockpit. It's not going to have Marines. And I think as Doug McGregor pointed out in your previous show, that's crossing a red line that's going to escalate this dramatically because Russians will shoot these planes down. They will not make their way into any kind of effective attack. All they're all they're all looking for. Is the U.S. and NATO, I guess NATO, using Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia?

Trying to, but it's a pretty flaccid one. I mean, because the reality is the Ukrainians are the ones dying in droves, not the Russians. The Ukrainians are the ones that are losing aircraft, artillery pieces, tanks, armored vehicles, and droves with no easy means to replace them. Whereas Russia's economy is actually growing, in part because its defense industry has been rekindled. And it's producing massive amounts, tanks, armored vehicles, artillery pieces, shells, missiles. So it's just, it is a, you know, a decided loss on the part of the Ukrainians. Why does the G7 think or treat Russia as if it thinks Russia is a creaky autocracy on the verge of economic collapse. Don't your former colleagues in the intelligence community who monitor economic

factors as well as military, political, and intelligence ones tell old Joe and his buddies, hey, Putin's doing pretty well. The Russian economy is booming. House sales are up. You can get a loan at a bank. Notwithstanding, notwithstanding, Mr. President, all of your sanctions. That's what's so alarming to me, Judge. It's not just the G7. There is a solid element in the foreign policy establishment in both Washington, D.C. and London and Germany that genuinely, really, truly believe that Russia is a creaky old economy, that it's a corrupt communist autocracy, that it has ignorant, drunken people, and that it's hanging by a thread.

And if we just push it a little harder, it's going to break. And it's like they haven't been paying attention over the last year if you you recall I'm sure that starting at the end of March of 2022 more than a year ago we were being informed oh Russia's going to run out of those missiles any day now they they can't keep this up and yet now we've seen over the last three weeks, going on now three weeks, Russia's been carrying out missile and bombing strikes at a rate not seen at any time in this war, hitting targets throughout Ukraine and at no risk of being shot down by Ukrainian air defense systems, which are kaput. So you have given high marks at times to the CIA for its technical ability to gather evidence and the same for British Intel. You of course and I with you have been critical of them as well, but don't they provide truthful information to their bosses, their civilian bosses, so

that the civilian bosses, notwithstanding what they say in Hiroshima, must know that Russia is in far better shape than they are portraying it as being. And they portray it as a weakling, as if it were, as if Putin were Brezhnev, as if this were 30 years ago. When they do this, they portray it that way at their peril. There are some in the agencies, in the CIA in particular, that present accurate information or try to but if you've read Cy Hirsch lately what Cy has pointed out is that there is a real rift between elements in the CIA where they're not listening to the

professionals in the CIA that have been trying to warn them. Now this may be the CIA recognizing that the car crash is coming and trying to exit it, you know, either put on a seat belt or get out of the car before it happens. But the fact of the matter is that the White House is shutting out any alternative intelligence voice that's trying to bring some clarity to it there there simply is no grounds for discuss this but McGregor talked about that as well and one of your latest broadcasts that there is no open door that if you go in you try to talk some sense that Russia's not our enemy Russia's not intent on rebuilding this, we hear about imperial Russia. What a nonsense term.

When Russia was, quote, an empire, it did not have colonies around the world. Countries that had colonies around the world. Yeah. Us, the Brits, the Germans, the French, the Dutch, you know, this is psychological projection at its worst. We keep attributing to both the Chinese and the Russians imperial ambitions, where the West is the only one that's actually been out exploiting the people of color around the world. Why do they so hate Russia? Why are they so willing to cut it off? Why do they, and I say they, I'm talking about the foreign policy establishment that Joe Biden has appointed in this country, and they are

of like mind with, I think, their Western European colleagues. Why do they not understand there will never be peace negotiations with an enemy that you don't think even has the right to exist. Yeah, it gets to the issue of control. In the past, both the United States and the West felt that they could effectively control, coerce, bully Russia, particularly in the wake of the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991. And they hate Vladimir Putin because he will not bow to them. He will not surrender his country to be raped.

The United States, the West, they are lusting after Russia as the most rich country in the world in terms of natural resources. Uranium, nickel, gold, the fertilizer. I mean, just go down the list on almost every significant commodity and mineral. Russia is a leader. And the West desperately wants that, but they're not going to get it for free. And that's why they hate Putin. And that hatred is now extended to all things Russian. Do you think that NATO is planning some sort of an attack on Russia, either from the air or the ground?

I do not think, I don't think they're that crazy. I think, I know that there are some colonels and lieutenant colonels and majors that they're the working worker bees within the military who are saying that that was just a totally insane idea uh and hopefully their views prevail but i do not put it past them that they will look for some way to insert u.s military personnel who are on leave into these combat roles and And all it's going to lead to are, you know, more body bags coming back to Dover, Delaware. And when the first F-16 is shot down, and when the first F-16 is shot down, and we find out it was piloted or co-piloted, I don't know what the phrase is, by an American, and that poor soul

comes back in a body bag, where does that leave Joe Biden and his globalists? Well, it's going to force them to escalate. They are going to run into a confrontation with Russia because as Russia begins to take out U.S. military assets, the political pressure in the United States is going can be so great in terms of insisting that there be retaliation. We can't take this. We've got to show them who's boss. And, you know, you've got people like this. You know, there's an article by Elliot Cohen, who gave a speech to a Polish conference just the other day. He's a former major player in the neocon foreign policy arena.

And he was talking just to those Russian CRF-35s. You know, there's a $100 million aircraft that is a white elephant. And when that gets shot down, too, you don't have an option. So my attitude is you don't walk into a bar that you don't know anybody in the bar because they all may be related, and then you may end up fighting the whole family. Nicely put. Larry, always a pleasure, my dear friend. I appreciate you changing your schedule to accommodate my travels. Thank you very much for joining us.

Always happy to, and stay from talk over there. Thank you. More as we get it this week, no matter where I might be. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.