Judging Freedom - Ukraine Not Withdrawing from Bakhmut - Jack Devine

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, March 16, 2023. It's about 11 o'clock in the morning here on the east coast of the United States. Jack Devine joins us now. Jack, always a pleasure. Welcome back to the show. The last time we spoke, it looked like the Russians were going to overtake Bakhmut. Now it looks like there's a stalemate there. There have been a lot of losses on both sides. Should the Ukrainians just give this up and not lose any more human beings? The city is 70 to 75 percent destroyed. There's 3,000 civilians left out of a normal population of 100,000.

How does the government decide, the Ukrainian government decide what to defend or the American government decide what to help them defend? Well, I think, Judge, we've talked about this a couple times remember you had a few guests we won't quote them the big offensive was coming the 300 000 man army was going to roll and you know we're talking about one town now the problem with this is the little bit that they've got they've paid a huge price the question shouldn't be whether the Ukrainians can tough it out. Are the Russians prepared to continue to lose the high number of casualties for that little piece of territory? Then what happens? After the Ukrainians pull out, okay, we had that town.

It's a victory. I mean, that's laughable, right? So are these villages or towns over which they're fighting and of which we in the West, untutored as you are, have never heard of before, are they just victories over which you can boast? Are they victories for morale or are they strategic military victories in Putin's march westward? I think there was a small strategic value, like it buttresses against a major highway transportation link, but that's not the only city that does it. However, once you say this is something we're taking, as the Russians did, and I really want to watch this, the head of the Wagner group, who's made a big deal out of it, then it becomes suddenly a strategic and psychological thing.

Now, God forbid they leave for their sake, because if they pull out and they can't take one town when they put everything in it, so I think it's overrated, and I think the Ukrainians can move back, but it's not going to change the battle. It's not going to change the battlefield. Then you have to take the next town, the next town. I don't know what the real numbers are, and I don't know if anybody does, but we start talking about hundreds of thousands of deaths or even 100,000. That's a mother and father, brother, maybe sister, neighbor.

I mean, you know, back home, that's a lot of dying. Well, Reuters reported two days ago between 170 and 200,000 Ukraine military deaths. I would think that that's huge. Yeah, I think that's off. But I would say whatever the number is, because I don't want to give a number because I don't really know. I think the Russians are losing double or triple because of their poorly led and their strategy. But Ukraine is a smaller country. So if it's just we're going to fight the last man. When I was out there in 18, I talked to a number of very, very senior heads of cabinet level groups, and they were the same thing. We'll fight the last man. If you fight

to the last man, I mean, that eats up all of Russia's three times the number. So it's horrific that we have to see this kind of war being carried on because of the mindset of Vladimir Putin. All right. You mentioned the Wagner Group. What does the CIA think of them? How does the CIA evaluate them with respect to their professionalism as a fighting force and their being subject to the Russian military chain of command. I just would say, if I were back in the day, this would be a nightmare. If I had some private sector group out there running a war, and you were in the chain of command, you were the head of the armed forces, air, navy, and you have a paramilitary guy out there. And

remember where all the basic recruits are, not the better soldiers. He has some good mercenaries. Most of them are criminals living out of prison. And he has a problem now because there are only so many prisoners in Russia, and they've been using them as cannon fodder.

In other words, they are the first wave in every attack. And they are going to lose. When you say they, you mean the Russian military or the Wagner group? No, this is the Wagner group. But the Russian military is also letting it happen. I think the key here, though, Judge, above all things, think of yourself with Vladimir Putin and Prokofiev is saying, you know, I think I'm going to get in politics as well. Suppose your contractor is criticizing the armed forces.

Think about the United States. If one of the defense contracting groups was given a big mission and they kept criticizing the commander chief of the armed forces, they wouldn't be around for a long time. That's what I talked about a year ago when we first started talking about this. This is dissent. This is not the way a smooth operation runs. It's the building of resentment between regular army and special forces. And it's out in the public because of social media. He is a very outspoken guy. Does the government fund the Wagner Group or does Bogosian and his billionaire buddies fund it? This is a hard thing to read. I don't know how any private person can support it. My guess is it started out of the government's money and ammunitions and looked like a good thing. You could use them out there as the out of the government's money and ammunitions and looked like a good thing.

You could use them out there as the point of the lance and you saved your best traditional soldiers. Then, but he's got an ego of a considerable size. He's now taking himself more seriously, and I think they wanted him to. So he's now that tiger that you have to contain. You know, it's your tiger, but, you know, you don't want him to bite your right leg off. So I think there's real dissent. I think he loses. I always bet there was the end of the day.

If Putin's there, do you side with your military, your own military team, or do you side with a guy like him? So there is a fight brewing, which I'm betting on Putin and the traditional military and Perzovian will regret having played this role, I think. We'll see. It's an unusual way. U.S. Army would never, we would never run a war this way. Never. I'm going to show you a film of what took place over the Black Sea two days ago. Take a look at this, Jack.

That's the Russian fighter jet spewing fuel, and that's the underbelly of the American drone. Now you're going to see a second shot. It's either the same jet again, or it's another jet. Here it is coming at the drone again, and this time it hits the propeller. If you look carefully, after the screen materializes again,

you'll see that one of the propellers, propeller blades, there it is. You see it is slightly damaged, and that, of course, is when the controllers of this thing, which I guess are somewhere in the United States, decide to bring it down. Are you surprised that the American military, I don't think this was CIA, I think this was Air Force, but you can correct me, was flying drones over the Black Sea. And if it is, what are those drones doing there? Well, I hope we're flying drones over the Black Sea. We're in the intelligence

business. We should be knowing where every Russian ship moves, where every brigade moves. I mean, we've been doing it for years. So I guess the point that I would make is there's nothing surprising about the fact that we have a drone up there. Now, this was an international order, as I recall. Well, there's a dispute as to whether it was international or restricted space. One of the American generals said yesterday he thought it was in restricted airspace, and we should never have agreed that the Black Sea was restricted airspace. Do you know anything about this? No, but I'm going to go with the Americans on this. I mean, the Russians haven't said a truthful thing since the beginning of this war about what's going on. So I have no reason I would accept anything the Russians say.

But even no matter where it is, it wasn't over Russian territory. I mean, that's my own view. But what happened here is they wanted, I think what I read was they did make a conscious decision they were going to take out one of our drones if it was in an area they felt they should do that. And look to me by looking at this film, even if you allow for the movie's maverick, right? I don't think you have a jet and you fly out a drone and you try and clip off half of its propeller. I mean, you know, I wouldn't want to be in that plane trying to do it. So I think there might have been an accident on that part,

but they wanted to bring it down, and maybe they would have just shot it down at a certain point. Spraying oil, that's a new one for me, and I'm not saying it's not a great technique. I'm just not familiar with it. The point is it was an aggressive act against, and on my view, an aggressive act against an American platform in international waters.

If it's over their territory, then there will be less of a fight about it. How did it get there? You're entitled back to the U-2 and the U-2 and Khrushchev. You go over your territory. We just shot down the Chinese, and that's fair game. So I think, but it has bigger ramifications, obviously, right? It's not, are they going to continue this?

What's our response? Well, here's Senator Lindsey Graham who never met somebody else's blood. He didn't want to shed. Well, we should hold him accountable and say that if you ever get near another U.S. set flying in international waters, your airplane would be shot down. What would Ronald Reagan do right now? He would start shooting Russian planes down if they were threatening our assets. You're going to kill a Russian pilot because he sprayed oil at an American drone in what could have been Russian restricted airspace?

In my books, I always address the issue of proportionality, right? When you get into these struggles and it's a tit for tat, okay, But if you double the ante, in other words, you shoot down a plane with two fighters, two pilots in it, and you kill a pilot, that's different than a machine in just about everybody's lexicon. Of course. But the question is, do you just sit and let them knock down all your platforms,

your multimillion dollar platforms at will? So you have to respond. This is where proportionality. If they did that, I'd take down one of their drones under similar circumstances, center conditions. Okay. But you wouldn't take down a fighter jet with one of the human beings in it? Absolutely would not do that. But I also wouldn't sit and suck my thumb waiting for more and more. I would allow that maybe this was one-off, and maybe you just make less of a dramatic. All right, tell me about it.

But the second one, I would respond for sure, and I would respond in kind. Well, tell me about the drones. They know that we have drones watching their every movement in Crimea, and we must know that they have drones that can see traffic jams on 6th Avenue in New York City from 50,000 feet above Canada. Am I exaggerating? You're only exaggerating in the limitations. They could do that in 1968, Judge. Today, they can give you the, how big is the tip of the pen, I'm thinking. But everyone has capabilities undreamed, unthought of before. You just go in with the assumption. Anybody that comes to an intelligence table and thinks they're hiding anything under a bush and it can't be seen or heard is in for a big surprise. So yes, they know what it is. Now they are hunting. What I

understand is they're looking for the drone because they want to see what technology so that they would try to reverse engineer it if there's things on there that they don't already have. It's at 4,000 feet under the sea. It's a long way to go, but we've gone for submarines. I mean, it's a very common historical thing to try and get other people's technology that way. Right, right. All right. So the drone, the American drone is looking at Crimea, so it can inform American intel, you tell me if I'm wrong, which would inform Ukrainian intel of what the Russians have and what they're amassing and when it's coming. Chris, come over here. I don't think we need a drone to do that. I mean, let me

put it this way. I think if I were in Langley, my guess is I could probably look at every inch of Crimea without leaving my desk and without a drone. Then why do we have the drones? I'm allowing, well, I'm allowing that there are esoteric things that they might want to know, right? Things that are not available just from a picture taken at an extraordinary height. So I don't know the answer to that. Give me an example of what is esoteric that the drone could see, who couldn't see from your office in Langley. Right. So I think the types of things you think about are communications right i mean are you know battlefield communications and are people using what the russians are doing apparently

they're using the open lines on their on their phones and so you know there's things to listen to now we have satellites that do that too right everybody does but i don't want to get into a true too far but i would just allow that it's um there's things you don't put them up for no good reason so there's something they're collecting and the russians want to get rid of it because it's you know it's an intelligence platform and it's fair game except in international territory are the c CIA drones better than the Air Force drones? They're better than the Russian Air Force drones. Well, is it the same hardware that the Air Force uses as the CIA

or are the CIA's different or better? Judge, there's an old saying, one team, one fight. So the agency has one role in our military, the other. When the drone program started, remember, they started at Langley, right, in terms of using drones. So they were used for non-war purposes, right? And I was involved because there was things in the drug area that actually stimulated interest and then terrorism.

And then somebody decided, well, it wouldn't be fun to arm them with hellfire missiles. And that changed life. But we had one mission, collection. And maybe it was smaller frames. And then the military had bigger issues. So I think they both have. I don't think there's any competition between the services had bigger issues. So I think they both have, I don't think there's any competition between the services on the platforms.

I think they carry out different missions. Okay. I want to switch to big picture and geopolitics, which I know is your field. Could I just make one comment on the last one? Sure. Because I would not make, overblow this issue

and wait and see if it's going to continue. One of the things that concerned me was when I passed and listened to Milley speaking, the commander chief of our armed forces. It wasn't what he was saying, but it just was a flashback to a period in life where the stakes are getting higher and you can back into problems. And I'm not saying it wasn't, I'm not saying it was the wrong thing. What I'm saying is we have to be careful that we don't let any of these things spin out of control. And I'm not saying that's what he was doing. I'm just saying I got a little tense about the growing, where we are with Russia and China, and largely because of their doing. But I think we're in a more dangerous world was my takeaway. All right.

Do you have a sense that the stakes are getting higher, that we're in this thing too long, too deep? No. In fact, I actually have a different view, and that is I think we inevitably had to get in. I mean, you just can't have a land war started by Russia. And why are the Europeans so forceful in this? It's because they know that he'll go further, try to go further. The Poles gave him the planes. Why are they giving the planes?

Because they really, really fear this. But what I do think is that there's an opportunity in this that is a greater global strategy. He started this. And what he's really queued up is he needs to go and Russia, this adventure needs to stop. If we want to have global balance in the world and more peace, in other words, it isn't enough. I think at this point, we have to stay long enough that Russia changes its course, the Russian people decide to change its course. Okay, you said he has to go. Your buddies in the CIA still think that this war should result in the removal or can result in the removal of President Putin from office.

You see, what I wrote last year in March was when he crossed the border, he sowed the seeds of his own demise and he will fall of his own weight and the Russian people make it happen. I'm not suggesting we, I actually said in your, do not do covert action, do not mess around inside Russia, just keep this struggle going and his own failures would do that. But I also think if you look at the world, if he's gone and there's a more accommodating Russia, I'm not saying a democratic free one, it is also the way to contain the power of China and what you have instead of a global bloc on one side of the table with the Russians and China. Jack, we don't know who's going to replace him.

He could be replaced by his predecessor, Dmitry Medvedev, who said he wants to invade Poland. So here's my take on that. He fails. Why? Because he didn't bomb enough houses? Because he didn't kill enough people that he didn't put his best? No, the next person isn't going to have new armies. So the next person is doomed to fail. I honestly do not believe. I know it's an acceptable argument. I'm

just saying that's not the assumption I'm working on. I'm working on when Putin goes, they're going to sit around the table. Hey, enough of this stuff. Let's get an air gap. So I do not think they can't be more hostile. There's no more hostile play. It's not like Putin's laying back and being nice to us. So I think his departure is critical. And if anything is inevitable in life, I think the way this is being handled, I don't see how he survives and the Wagner fight with the military is just the first sign of what the strains are going to be within his systems if he's seen as a real loser. Hey Jack, I'm going to put up a full screen of a book and you tell me if I should

buy it and read it and if I do, what I'll learn from it. Judge, that's a spectacular book. I couldn't recommend anybody more that I would rather read right before you go to bed. I'm proud of this book because it came out a year before the invasion. And I very candidly and directly say he's underestimating the Ukrainians. If they go in, you know, he will be underestimating what he's going to face. And my quotable quote was Kiev will be the new Berlin of the third, the next Cold War. Now this is a hot war. But I would change a couple of things in the book.

It's going to come out in paperback this year. But I think I thought it was really tough on him. And I was drawing a lot of attention to Russia. And all my friends said, oh, it's all about China. I would be tougher on him. I think he's more dangerous. And I gave him too much credit for technical prowess. I thought he was just a hard, tough KGB guy, formidable adversary,

but I didn't appreciate, I knew he was badly wounded by the fall of the Communist Party and the KGB. I didn't realize how deep that hatred for the United States is, that we are the main enemy. I didn't appreciate, I don't use the word evil, and I know sometimes we've had discussions about evil, but it's usually in theological arguments. Very few people do say they're evil. They say they're bad, they're this. Is Putin evil? Yeah, I think he fits into that category. When you kill the way, the deaths are mounting in Ukraine and you're not remorseful about it, it puts you in a new category.

So I think he's dangerous. And the second thing about him is I thought, you know, he was more political than I take. You know, I was tough on him, but I will take him down a few more notches on the big things that I thought were important and that we needed to have an accommodation with Russia and there was room. There was no room. He has a different mindset and is much more black and darker than I thought. And I think it makes this problem more formidable. Jack Devine, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.