Judging Freedom - Ukraine Offensive Achieving NOTHING w/Col Doug Macgregor

Episode Date: July 25, 2023

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, July 25th, 2023. Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us in a moment. Has Ukraine already lost the war? But first this. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Lear Capital. You know that I believe that that government is best which governs least, and that government is worst, which interferes the most. There's no better example of this than government printing money. It decreases the value of everything you own, and it raises the prices on everything you buy. And I believe that one of the best protections against this kind of governmental interference is physical, unprintpled gold. Your savings and your retirement should be filled with gold.

Gold has a long history of protecting wealth against economic uncertainties and government interference. Learn more by calling Lear Capital. You know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital. I have partnered with Lear because I trust them and believe them, and I buy my gold with Lear. Why? They have over 25 years of experience and thousands of five-star reviews and a 24-hour risk-free purchase guarantee. Give them a call today, 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620. The information is free. There's no obligation to purchase. When you call, ask how you can qualify for $15,000 in bonus gold. It's time to consider gold. It's time to consider Lear. 800-511-4620 or learjudgenap.com. Colonel McGregor, always a pleasure, my friend. Missed you while I was away, as did

so many of our fans and regular viewers. Thanks very much for joining us. Has Ukraine already lost the war? Oh, absolutely. There's no question about that. It lost it some time ago. What we're hearing now is the quiet whispers in the corridors of Brussels saying, you know, this is a dead end. How do we get out? Where's our off ramp? I think the Europeans are very, very concerned about that. I think there's some concern in the White House, but they haven't figured it out yet. So until they have some kind of off-ramp that they think can conceal their folly, having dragged Ukraine into this as well as Europe, they're going to continue to tell us that things are rosy and getting better and more equipment's on the way. Talking about folly, here's President Biden in Helsinki the day after the conclusion of the NATO meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, two weeks ago.

The issue of whether or not this is going to keep Putin from continuing to fight, the answer is Putin's already lost the war. Putin has a real problem. How does he move from here? What does he do? And so the idea that there's going to be what vehicle is used, he could end the war tomorrow. He could just say, I'm out. But what agreement is ultimately reached depends upon Putin and what he decides to do. But there is no possibility of him winning the war in Ukraine. He's already lost that war.

Imagine if even if, anyway, he's already lost that war. PAUL JAY I'd psychoanalyze the president, but he can't possibly mean what he says. JOHN PODESTA Well, he contradicted himself. He then followed up by saying, this war can end immediately. It's up to Putin and what sort of agreement he's willing to sign is effectively what he said. Well, he's right. It is up to Putin because Putin is sitting in the driver's seat. He's got the strategic initiative, not us. We're playing catch up at this point and we're trying to limit the damage to ourselves that we've done.

You mentioned whispers in Brussels. Do you think the same whispers were there in Vilnius, or was this NATO gathering to which President Zelensky was invited and at which he behaved like a petulant child just for show? Well, I don't think it was just for show. I think there were a couple of things that we need to take away from Vilnius. Remember that our friend Zelensky was promised the world back at the end of March, beginning of April last year, when Boris Johnson flew in because his negotiating team had let it slip that Ukraine could accept neutrality. Boris Johnson showed up almost immediately to say, absolutely, it's off the table. Don't even consider it. I've spoken to President Biden.

He's absolutely of the same mind. We must fight this to the bitter end. You will have NATO on your side and all the scientific, industrial, military might of the United States and NATO. You're going to win. Well, I think Zelensky believed him. And Zelensky has played that card to the hilt. The problem is it hasn't turned out the way either Boris Johnson or President Biden had promised. So that's the first thing. Second thing is at Vilnius,

there were lots of discussions behind the scene about difference in goals and objectives. Remember, our goals and objectives, as outlined by President Biden in Warsaw when he spoke, are very extreme, very maximalist. The Chancellor of Germany grabbed, I'm told, grabbed President Biden and said, look, we don't want to destroy Russia. That's not what we're about. And he's not the Lone Ranger. Others are saying the same thing. Listen, we don't want to destroy Russia. We want to end the conflict. Well, we're still in the business of trying to destroy Russia.

That's the problem. And that's going to promote the fragmentation and, I think, disintegration of NATO. Is it realistic for NATO to have articulated the view that when the war is over, Ukraine will be a candidate for membership? I mean, who knows if Ukraine will exist as a nation when the war is over? Well, I think that's right. Right now, we have no idea what will emerge from this. And as we said before, yes, Mr. Putin now has to make some decisions. But his decision involves, do I march all the way to the river? Do I have to send Russian forces straight into Kiev? Is that going to be enough? If that's not enough, then do I have to mobilize another 250,000 troops

and move further west? This is the question for the Russians. The Russians have moved cautiously, deliberately, and incrementally. There's a reason for that. Mr. Putin doesn't want a war with the United States or NATO if he can avoid it, or both. And so he's moving very carefully and deliberately. He's now in the position to say, look, the Ukrainian army is melting away. It's falling apart. For the first time, large numbers of Ukrainian troops and units are actually coming over to the Russians saying, we've had it. We can't do it anymore.

What the Russians are trying to do now is goad the Ukrainians into committing their last reserves. That's about 10 brigades, maybe 30,000, 35,000 troops. If they can goad the Ukrainians into committing those, the Russians can chew them up. Once they're gone, there's nothing. And the Russians know that. So I think that's where they are at the moment. So this offensive, which is moving north and to the west, up in the northernmost region

near Kharkov, that's part of it. But you now have Russian forces all up and down the line, gradually, deliberately moving forward, inviting the Ukrainians to attack. Surely what you have just told us is known to the CIA and to the American military and to Jake Sullivan. I don't know if the president understands it, but still they persist with their nonsense. Here's Sullivan about a week ago that Ukraine can win this war and the United States can help them do it. We don't have to put boots on the ground. I can't speak to what's in the mind U.S. position in this comes down to a single clear point, which is we are going to support Ukraine without having U.S. boots on the ground

and American soldiers fighting Russian soldiers. And that will remain consistent throughout the course of this conflict. If he knows what you just told us, and he must know it if he receives CIA briefings, unless the CIA is lying to him. I don't know how he can make a statement like the statement he just made. Biden's another story. I don't know how he processes facts, but as far as I know, Sullivan is not mentally impaired. Well, no, presumably not, But he's not going to tell the truth at this stage. No one is going to step up and say, you know, this whole thing is falling apart. It doesn't make any difference what we send.

Remember, from the very beginning, we were always trying to build Ukrainian military power on the fly. You can't do that. You can't just import sets of equipment from overseas, tell your soldiers to fall in on the equipment, and then after a little bit of training, send them into action. I mean, this is the problem with the way we think about warfare today. Warfare is very complex. It takes a lot of time and technical expertise in order to employ the weapon systems effectively. So it was never a good idea to begin with, but he can't admit that at this stage.

So I think the message that Jake Sullivan and President Biden have sent to Moscow is this. Gentlemen, you're going to have to march west. Nothing will stop until you make it clear unambiguously that you've won. And that may involve running Russian tanks down the streets of Kiev. Unfortunately, that's what they're saying. These people are not reasonable.

They're not rational. Anybody else would have said by now, no more death. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are dying. No more wounded. The country itself is being destroyed. But there's no humanity in these people. They don't care. You and I have talked about this for over a year now. There's no reasonably articulated, militarily achievable goal for the United States and NATO.

And politically, there is no off-ramp for the United States and NATO. And politically, there is no off-ramp for the United States and NATO. You told us what Scholz whispered into Biden's ear. I mean, that is telling me that they're thinking about an off-ramp. But what off-ramp does Biden have other than to admit that this was a colossal mistake, worse than Afghanistan? Well, I think he has to say something along the lines of Ukrainian people have done everything that could be expected of them. Ukrainians have fought courageously, but the fighting now must end. And we have to come to terms with the Russians and acknowledge that they have legitimate interests in Ukraine. That's something he doesn't want to do. Secondly, he needs to acknowledge that whatever emerges from these talks that we call Ukraine

must be neutral. Now, the Europeans, I'm told behind the scenes, with the exception of the British, are taking the position of, well, that's fine with us. Let's get this thing over with. But the rest of the bunch in London and Washington and New York City don't want to admit that. They don't want to say, fine, we'll accept neutrality. Here's Secretary of Defense Austin. Sounds like he didn't expect the question on whether or not Ukraine truly will join NATO. So you have no doubt that after the war, Ukraine will become a member of NATO? I have no doubt that that will happen.

And we heard just about all the countries in the room say as much. And I think that was reassuring to President Zelensky. Just the party line, it can't be realistic. No, I don't think it is. Again, what we don't appreciate is the very severe divisions in NATO behind the scenes. Tell us about them. It's not just Hungary and Bulgaria. You have various European statesmen now behind the scenes that are saying, look, we're going to have to accept something less than we went out, went after. I think the French are

saying that behind the scenes. The Germans certainly are. I don't know how the Swedes and Finns feel at this point, since both of them have been historically neutral, and they were willing to give that up to join this alliance when this alliance cannot prevail in this conflict. And it's very obvious that they cannot. Remember, none of these countries have the wherewithal. They don't have the ready combat formations. They don't have the stockpiles of ammunition, missiles, rockets, artillery rounds. Those don't exist. We don't have integrated air and missile defense forces all the way from Finland down to the Adriatic in northern Italy. If you don't have those things, you cannot go to war unless you're prepared to

accept enormous damage. And I think the Europeans are coming around to understand that if they continue to stonewall, if we continue to stonewall an agreement, they risk all-out war with Russia, which is something they are not prepared for. How is it that Ukraine and all of its Western partners have run out of artillery shells? Well, because nobody expected to fight. Listen, the NATO command structure is a job for generals program we have all sorts of headquarters all over Europe filled with officers and have lots and lots of generals we've got four stars from the various NATO countries as well as our own it's it's a wonderful opportunity to go to a nice place live in a big headquarters participate participate in virtual exercises, occasionally go make a visit to some

show unit, a group of paratroopers that fall out of the sky and land with other paratroopers who embrace each other as comrades. Of course, none of that stuff is going to have any impact at all in a war. It won't survive. It'll be cut to pieces. These are anachronisms. Doesn't matter. That's what NATO has become. It's a facade. Putin knows that. Here's Admiral Kirby with my friend and former colleague, Martha McCallum on Fox News, acknowledging, you'll hear it at the very end, why we sent cluster munitions to Ukraine. What they really need are the four A's, artillery, ammunition, air defense, and armor, tanks. And on all four of those, we have provided an extraordinary amount of support at, quite

frankly, unprecedented speed. Those are the four capabilities they need most. And if you look at the packages, just we announced one yesterday, and there's going to be one here in coming days, you'll see that we are really trying to get them those kinds of capabilities. Now, look, the F-16s will get there probably towards the end of the year, but it's not our assessment that the F-16s alone would be enough to turn the tide here. What they really need more than anything of all those four A's is artillery. And that's why the president made a difficult decision to provide cluster munitions as a bridging solution as we build up our production capacity of normal conventional artillery rounds. That's what they're firing thousands of them a

day. It's really a gunfight. Dated differently, we don't have the artillery shells to send them, and so we sent cluster bombs. Right. Well, he's at least for once, he's being honest. He's telling you the truth. We purchased a huge quantity of 155 millimeter ammunition from the Koreans. I'm talking about the Republic of Korea. We paid a very, very high price, I'm told. I don't know what the exact sum was, but it was certainly a lot more than the ammunition was worth. We've run out of options, frankly, and our industry has no surge capacity. In other words, we're not in a position to say, well, we produce 100 of X every month, but we want to surge now to 500 or 5,000 a month. We don't have that capacity. We can't do it. So you're talking about things that might make a difference that

won't arrive for months. And frankly, by the time the F-16s show up, all the airfields and airstrips in Ukraine are probably going to be in Russian hands the way we're headed. Here's General Milley. I think you'll agree with him on the F-16s are not going to get there, if at all, for a long time. Do a quick math drill here. 10 F-16s are $2 billion. So the Russians have hundreds of fourth and fifth generation airframes. So if they're going to try to match the Russians one for one or even two to one, you're talking about a large number of aircraft. That's going to take years to train the pilots, years to do the maintenance and sustainment, years to generate that degree of financial support to do

that. You're talking way more billions of dollars than has already been generated. How much longer can the war possibly last? The F-16s, by the time they get there, there'll be no Ukraine government to receive them. Well, I think that's the real risk at this point. How long will it take once the decision is made by the Russian side to break out of all of these defensive positions and move all the way to the Dnieper River? I don't think it's going to take very long. Again, what the Russians do is that they carefully move forward their integrated air defenses. Then they move forward their strike systems. Once they have achieved another bubble

of protection with those systems, then they'll move forward the maneuver troops. And again, this will happen over and over and over again. I would say if they wanted to, within a week, they could certainly be on the outskirts of Kiev, especially since you have a Ukrainian force now that's, as we said, rapidly melting away. There's no more faith or confidence in Ukrainian forces. We're told that Ukrainian commanders are arguing with each other over whether they fight or they retreat. They're openly telling each other, look, this is it.

We don't have any more. We've got to fall back. And then people hang up the phone in disgust or anger because they know that's true, but they feel like they should stay in fight. This is the wrong kind of situation to be in an army, let me tell you. This thing is falling apart, and a lot of people are going to be killed unless we can come to the negotiating table, because you take most of your casualties during retreats and withdrawals. Do Ukrainian commanders shoot Ukrainian deserters?

Well, I know that there has been talk of that, and we have a couple of videos that were posted on Telegram that show us that going on. In one case, after talking to a group of Ukrainian soldiers inside a bunker, they just said, we've had it, we're worn out. If we attack, we're just going to be killed. And so he comes out and rolls a grenade into the bunker and kills everybody. At some point, that can't work, because you're talking about large numbers of people, and they'll turn their weapons on you. I don't think that's a viable solution. On the Russian side, it appears that Defense Minister Shoigu has fired a substantial number of well-regarded, well-experienced

Russian generals. What is that all about? Well, that's what everybody would like to know, and I don't have an answer. I think some of them are well regarded and actually had the affection and support of their troops. Whether they're being removed because they were too outspoken in their criticism of what the high command was doing, I don't know. That could well be the case. You know, during World War II, the biggest problem that we had with George Patton wasn't what his army did as much as it was what he had to say publicly, because he was extremely critical. And when he was killed at the end of the war, General Eisenhower and a lot of other people were relieved that he was gone,

because the last thing they wanted him to do was to go public and tell the truth about all the things that were wrong in the way we conducted the war. So maybe there's some of that. But again, we don't know. We just don't know. And we don't know how deep the bench is. You know, the problem that they had in the Confederacy during the Civil War was they didn't have a deep bench. You couldn't replace people like Jackson or Longstreet or Lee or any of these individuals. The Union Army was in a better position. They had a deeper bench. I don't know what their bench looks like, but I don't think this is a, what's the right word, a deal breaker or a game changer. They've got plenty of general officers. They'll replace them. It doesn't appear to have had any impact whatsoever on the ability of the Russian forces to advance

because they're advancing. What is the latest intel from your sources on Progozhin? You know, was it a stunt? Was it real? Well, again, the real part is as follows. Number one, don't dismantle Wagner. In other words, we want to keep this around. Please don't put us out of business because Shoigu and Gerasimov both wanted to dismantle it. So they came to a resolution and the resolution was those that want to stay part of Wagner can do so. Those who are willing to join the regular army, they're free to do so. And so we're down to what, 8,000 members of Wagner that are now repositioned in Byelorussia and the rest have been integrated or assimilated into the Russian armed forces. And the second part of it was, look, President Putin, we love you. We don't hate you. We're not trying to remove you, but we really, really, really would like you to take the gloves off

and hammer the living daylights out of these Ukrainians to get the war over. Now, in his defense, we've seen the gloves come off. We saw them come off quite recently with this new offensive that is breaking through up in north eastern Ukraine in the direction of Kupyansk, and then they're turning also north towards Kharkov. So that offensive is underway, and that is undoubtedly gratifying to many in the senior ranks, as well as the Russian population. But you saw these strikes on the very outer edges of Ukraine against the naval facilities or dock facilities right on the river that borders Romania and Ukraine. Now, there were a couple of reasons that happened. Part of it is bound up with the collapse of this grain deal and the attacks that were launched on grain storage and fuel storage

in Odessa. They had to stop the arrival of ships coming in that were supposedly empty, but were carrying weapons and ammunition for the Ukrainians. So that had to stop the arrival of ships coming in that were supposedly empty, but were carrying weapons and ammunition for the Ukrainians. So that had to end. But this strike up along the river is much more important because it's right on the border with Romania. And these are accurate strikes from drones and missiles. And the message there is a very important one that NATO can't miss. And that is, if you decide to intervene

in the last hours of the survival of this Ukrainian regime, and you cross the Polish border, the Romanian border, or you cross into Moldova with the objective of crossing then into Ukraine, as soon as you step foot on Ukrainian soil, you are going to be annihilated. How anxious are the Poles to enter this war with troops on the ground? I mean, can this happen by accident? No, no, absolutely not. I mean, if there's one thing that would not be accidental, it's an intervention by the Poles and Lithuanians. I think what they're still trying to do is drum up support from us. My great concern is not that we'll say, well, we'll go in with you. We'll say, well, if you go in there, you know, we'll support you as much as we can. And if you're attacked, well, then

we'll come to your aid. I mean, that's my concern that a dumb remark like that would then unleash five, six, 7,000 Polish and Lithuanian troops to move into it. Remember that President Putin specifically cited Lvov or Lviv as Ukrainians call it, that's in Western Ukraine and said, we all know that the Poles have their eyes on this. We're not stupid. We know. But if you do it and you go in there, you will never leave. You will remain forever in Ukraine. In other words, you're going to be buried there by the Russian armed forces. I hope people are taking it seriously. Those are not idle threats. Those are deadly serious statements. So I hope the opposite is true. I hope that Jake Sullivan is on the phone on behalf of President Biden to the President of Poland and saying, look, Duda, we love you.

You've done all you can, but don't march into Ukraine because NATO as an alliance is not prepared for war. Colonel McGregor, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you so much for joining us. Sure. Good to see you, Judge. You look terribly healthy and happy. You're very kind, trying to be both. More as we get it. Scott Ritter later this week, Matt Van Dyke from who knows where. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Altyazı M.K.