Judging Freedom - Ukraine is DESTROYED, there_s nothing left - Col. Doug Macgregor

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

Hi there, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, March 2nd, 2023. It's about 1.35 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Colonel McGregor joins us now. Colonel, thank you very much for coming back to the show. When we were last, or since we were last together, the Secretary of the Treasury made a surprise trip to Kiev, Ukraine, and handed President Zelensky a piece of paper which purported to be a check for $1.8 billion. It's almost inconceivable to me that she would actually hand him a check and somebody would go and deposit it in a key bank. But she did say that she to trust that amount of cash in the hands of a regime like

Zelensky heads? Well, it's hard to believe that the money was just dumped on Zelensky. I doubt that that's the case. But as you point out, this is probably the most or one of the most corrupt nations in the world. Zelensky and his regime sit on top of a huge mountain of corruption. But keep in mind, we own Ukraine as far as the state goes, as far as the government and its military are concerned. We pay for everything. We own it lock, stock, and barrel. And we've decided that regardless of what happens, we're going to essentially sail this ship despite how many icebergs it may strike. And I think it's already struck one and the ship is already sinking. But, you know, we don't seem to care about that. We're more worried about how we look than what really happens. You recently said Ukraine is destroyed.

There's nothing left. Can you elaborate on that, Colonel? Well, if you look at the cities, I think it was Graham Allison, whose landmark work, of course, goes back to the 1960s and 70s about the Cuban Missile Crisis. And he observed that in addition to the russians sitting on virtually everything that is of any value to ukraine uh 80 90 of its gross domestic product effectively its mineral resources oil gas coal and steel production factories 40 percent of ukraine's urban centers are largely destroyed because the Ukrainian army positioned its forces in those areas and the Russians had no choice but to attack them. And they've had to attack air defense assets positioned in urban areas. The transportation infrastructure is in

terrible shape. They can't move very much anymore. And when they do, they're immediately at risk. Communications are down. Millions more are trying to get out of the country. We don't really know how many people are left in it. So for all intents and purposes, I would argue this place is destroyed. How are we going to get it back? I have no idea. Well, Ukraine was once called the breadbasket of fill in the blank, Eastern Europe, the West West whatever because it's sold so much wheat what has become of those fields of wheat well we have to assume that some of it is being has survived and will be grown but you're not going to see the kind of harvest that we've seen in the past until quite recently the the most impressive harvest in the history of Ukraine occurred in 1915. Believe it or not, communism

just about destroyed the agricultural sector, and it took decades to recover from that. So, you know, it's a tragedy. But we don't seem to have a coherent military strategy, but we have a damn good media strategy. Well, the media strategy is who knows who else is going to go to Ukraine. I mean, with Secretary Yellen, with Secretary Blinken, he didn't have a check for $1.8 billion or he didn't claim that he had a check. So we don't know what promises he made or conversations he had. But, of course, the administration makes a big deal out of that. A man you and I admire a lot, Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona, not only for his intellect, but also his fidelity to the Constitution and his personal courage. He's like shoveling against the tide in the House of Representatives,

arguing that the government is suspending us into oblivion and that we shouldn't be sending a blank check to Ukraine, told me on the show earlier today that the Defense Department assured him that we do not have any troops on the ground in Ukraine, that there are only contractors there. Now, do they call troops in civilian clothes contractors? Do they hire contractors outside civilians to show the Ukrainians how to run this equipment? Or is this just some sort of a word game that the DOD is playing? Congressman Biggs didn't believe a word they said, but they did say it to him. Well, as a general rule, not believing them is probably a good thing to do.

So I doubt that that's actually the case. But contractor simply means someone who wore a uniform yesterday and doesn't wear one today and is sent in to do whatever is required. And right now, Ukrainians have admitted that they really can't operate most of the equipment that they're receiving, which means that things like HIMARS, even these new tanks that are coming in, are going to have to be operated by contractors on behalf of the Ukrainian state. They've taken such very heavy losses that I know we're recruiting as many mercenaries as we can, and they're being paid through various front organizations by the CIA. So we are desperate to keep this thing going. Ukraine is actually on life support, let there be no doubt about it.

But until the life support is cut off, it will continue. All right. So you say some of the tanks need Americans to operate. The Americans who wore uniform yesterday are in civilian clothes today. Is it conceivable that some of these tanks are actually being manned by Americans? And when there are tank battles, Ukraine versus Russia, the Russians could be firing unwittingly or maybe wittingly at tanks that are being operated by Americans. Well, I don't think that the Americans are the ones operating the tanks. Europeans, Poles, Czechs, Germans, Lithuanians, Latvians, perhaps some Norwegians, some British. I don't think the Americans are as involved in that as they are in the intelligence business,

transmitting information from satellite-based surveillance to the Ukrainians in real time to give them a leg up against the Russians. You know, that sort of thing, as well as obviously the more complex targeting exercises and use of rocket artillery and so forth. I want to put up on the screen a statement you sent me earlier this week. I don't know the source of this. Schrodinger's offensive. I gather this is some source that you have in Europe. On one extreme, there are those who believe that hundreds of thousands of Russian troops are prepared to launch an enormous big arrow offensive at any moment. On the other extreme, we have those who claim that the Russian military is so depleted, there will be no offensive at any point whatsoever. Which of these positions is

closer to the truth, Colonel? Well, actually, this is an excellent article. It's called Schrodinger's Cat, the Russian Offensive. And the author is trying to make some valid points. And it appears that the Russian offensive, which we know has been planned, we know they have several options, we know they have hundreds of thousands of troops and the equipment they need to fight, has been held up. It's been held up for various reasons, one of which is, as the author points out, these so-called shaping attacks and operations in southern Ukraine to complete control of the Donbass have taken much longer than originally anticipated.

That has something to do with the forests, the rivers, the terrain, and also the capacity of the Ukrainian fighters. So it's taken the Russians longer to fight their way through this. They have fought their way through. And this place called Bakhmut is now prostrate. That's going to vanish as a possibility. I think the whole southern front will crumble. The problem is that the opportunity for any sort of ground defense have really presented itself in late January, early February, where the ground was solid enough to support a lot of troops. Someone made the decision, that's not enough time. We need more time for freedom of maneuver and suspended it.

And he's saying, well, maybe not. Maybe the whole plan is just to attrit the Ukrainians. Just keep killing large numbers of Ukrainian troops that present themselves on the battlefield. The Russians have certainly done a brilliant job of that. In January and February, the Ukrainians were losing a thousand a day. There's no question about it. They're back down to about seven or 800. but the exchange ratio even in these house-to-house fighting exercises with the wagner group whom they refer to as ammunition musicians always involved one one russian killed or wounded for seven or eight ukrainians killed or wounded so that ratio continues to work against ukrain. The problem with this assertion is that all warfare consists of

both attrition and maneuver. And you always want to organize to maximize your exploitation of accurate, devastating firepower. We could go all the way back to Bonaparte and look how he planned his artillery strikes and massed his forces to take advantage of them. This is an old thing. It hasn't changed except that now the precision is much more accurate. The timing is almost immediate. But you still have to exploit it. And the point is this war will not end. And I think this is what the Russians are concluding. It will not end until they have hundreds of thousands of troops around Kiev. And it's very simple. Life support continues. The level of assistance that comes through Poland is not ended. In other words, they're continuing to be supplied. They're continuing to get money. They're continuing to

receive contract support, as you point out. They're continuing to get mercenary support, which is another form of contract support. So the Russians know you can't win this thing by simply killing people because you're going to be killing them over and over and over again for a long time. You're going to have to move on the key point. That's Kiev. They've got to go there. I want to go back to something you said So I don't think you could say it's American. It may not be. Look, we've done this before. We recruited matinyards and all sorts of people to fight for us in Vietnam. We've recruited even former members of ISIS to fight for us in the Middle East. This is an old exercise. It's nothing new. Phil Giraldi can tell you more about it than I can.

I'm just, all I'm saying is that this life support is going to continue until the Russians themselves cut it off. The only way to cut it off is to cut the communications line between the Polish border and Kiev, block that, and bring the rest of the forces around Kiev and put an end to this regime. Because, you know, when I said the administration doesn't have a real strategy, it has a media strategy, I'm not kidding. I mean, what we've really decided to do is, well, we want to hurt Russia. No one really believes that Russia can be destroyed. No one in their right mind believes that the government is going to be overthrown. What we want to do is harm Russia, and we think if we harm it over time long enough that we can eventually persuade them to stop and go away. By the way, we took this position in Vietnam. We said if we kill enough of them,

we fight them to a standstill, they'll give up. Well, we found out in 1974, no, they kept coming back until they finally won. So that won't work. But the media strategy is equally important because as long as you can visit Zelensky and he walks out in the open and he demonstrates that he's the leader of Ukraine and he's surrounded by these troops and so forth, people think it could happen. People believe something could happen. People believe something could happen. Let me play for you a portion of a documentary produced by the Ukraine government idolizing President Zelensky. I don't think you'll be startled by what he says at the end. This is about a 90 second clip. I don't think you'll be startled about what he says at the end. This is about a 90 second clip. I don't think you'll be startled about what he says

at the end, but it was very, very provocative. Now this is in Ukraine and there are subtitles. We may have to play it twice. The subtitles are small, but I think those watching us now will appreciate the mania. And I'll let you assess that, Colonel, that is going on. Take a look. Ні. Зараз я не готовий з ним спілкуватися. Точно буде й момент, коли буде відчуватися крихкість режима Путіна всередині їх держави. Тоді хижаки з'їдять хижака. Це дуже важливо. Але їм потрібна буде причина для себе. І вони згадають слова Комарова, Зеленського, ще когось. I'm not ready to talk. The most incendiary thing is the predators will eat a predator. He's calling for an assassination of President Putin. How dangerous and unstable is he?

Well, it sounds like Mr. Zelensky has been coached by Lindsey Graham. I think they've said essentially the same thing over and over and over again. If we press hard enough, push long enough, survive this, well, people will eventually overthrow Putin. There's no evidence for this. This is more evidence-free analysis, claims that have no basis in fact. I would say that Mr. Putin is far more secure in his position than Mr. Zelensky is in his. And Mr. Zelensky should be far more concerned that people around him suddenly decide that they either no longer need him or he's outlived his utility and he could easily disappear the united states we always forget this the united states is a

maritime and an aerospace power keep telling people this when things go bad and they don't serve our purposes anymore we get into our ships and our airplanes we fly and sail away zielinski has nowhere to sail unless we take him with us. The Russians aren't going anywhere. The Europeans on the other side of the border aren't going anywhere. That's the difference. So I would say he's in far, far greater jeopardy every day. Every morning when he wakes up, I'm sure he's grateful to be breathing. And it may not last much longer. Look, we had reports today that the Ukrainians are evacuating women, children, families, civilians from the Kharkov area. Yeah, I saw those reports.

I mean, the Ukrainians know this is coming, this major offensive. And they've already been beaten to a pulp by effectively elite light infantry formations and artillery from the Russian army. They haven't even faced the main body that would come in a major attack. And they're in very serious condition because he's thrown everything he can into every counterattack. He's got almost nothing left. This was the folly of his action. But if you're him, you've got to demonstrate, look, I'm alive. We're fighting. We can still win. If he doesn't do something people say well maybe we shouldn't support him anymore he knows right that's all this morning uh in mumbai india

at a meeting of the g20 or maybe it was actually yesterday by now uh secretary of state lincoln took his opposite number uh from russia the r foreign minister aside, and they spoke for about 10 minutes. And according to the Secretary of State, he told them, we're going to keep supplying Ukraine no matter what it takes. Do you think he really said, how about we start some back channel negotiations? Or is he foolish enough, crazy enough to have missed that opportunity just to mouth the Biden administration macho line? Well, that's an unfair question because I'm compelled to say yes to the second part. I know your opinion of him.

Well, it's not just him. I don't know him personally. He may be a terribly nice guy. That's not the point. The point is that he and his co-conspirators in the White House and in the federal bureaucracy do not live in the same world that you and I do. They've concluded that they're right and that they're morally superior to everyone else and that whatever they do is justified. They also completely dismiss out of hand the possibility that we are on the edge of a financial crisis that could destroy us. They refuse to see that. That's why someone like Andy Biggs' warnings fall on deaf ears. This is the crowd that says, debt doesn't matter.

What difference does debt make? We control the financial system. Well, good luck with that. That hasn't worked in the last 5, years very well i don't think it's going to work out for us very well so i'm afraid he probably said something stupid like that and and having seen mr laveroff at close range where i was fortunate to sit with 10 other people and listen to him at lunch a couple of years ago i'm sure that laveroff was polite because he is a gentleman and he probably walked away and said, thank you for reaffirming or reconfirming what we already know, which goes back to my original point. You can kill large numbers of Ukrainians indefinitely. You can destroy infrastructure

indefinitely. At some point, you've got to move your force into action. You don't waste time diverting south into Odessa. You don't turn around and take Kharkov. You go to Kiev and you crush it. That's what must happen because when that happens, the game is over. It's up. Colonel Doug McGregor, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for joining us today. Sure. Thank you.

Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.