Judging Freedom - Ukraine Offensive - Is it Failing? w/Larry Johnson fmr CIA

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

Ukraine Offensive - Is it Failing? w/Larry Johnson fmr CIA#Ukraine #Biden #Putin #RussiaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, July 24, 2023. Yes, it's very good to be back. And thank you for all the kind messages of good wishes and welcome back messages as well. Larry Johnson joins us. Larry, always a pleasure. I was only gone for 10 days and I was only in Italy and Switzerland. I might as well have been on the moon because I come back to claims from Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State,

and Joe Biden, the President of the United States, that, wow, Ukraine has won the war and Russia lost. So am I missing something or are they delusional, Larry? Well, they qualify for the medical definition of schizophrenia when you're seeing things and hearing things that aren't there. It is a complete divorce from reality, what they're saying. They can't point to a single accomplishment of Ukraine and they're much Valley Hood counter-offensive and at the same time what they can look at are the mounting casualties both the in terms of human beings being killed by the Russians as well as the tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles that are winding up in junk piles and smoldering heaps.

So let's listen to the President of the United States. Everybody knows there are cognitive issues. They seem to manifest in this clip. So this is not about his brain, but it's about his administration. Here's Joe Biden saying, oh, Putin has lost the war. Take a listen. 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.

All right. So, Larry, this is the mentality that has put troops on the ground out of uniform, sent between 63 and 68 billion dollars worth of military equipment to Ukraine because Congress gave him a blank check, and most recently introduced something that a year ago he called an instrument of war crimes, cluster bombs. So A, does he know what he's talking about? And B, should we take him seriously, even though he is the president of the United States? No and no. I mean, look, he reminds me of the actor William Shawn in the movie Princess Bride. Kept using the word inconceivable, inconceivable.

And finally, one of the other actors, Andre the Giant, looked at him and says, I don't think you know what that word means. And so here's Biden using the word lost. He has no idea what lost means. For Biden, he gets lost just maybe walking from his bedroom to find the Oval Office. But it's just objectively nonsensical. And what's worrisome about, it'd be one thing if he was just some pundit on television blathering away, but he's the president of the United States and he's supposed to have in his hands the security of this nation and plays a major role in the security of the world. And to be that out of touch, that divorce from reality is shocking. But what we've seen is it's not just Biden. I mean, Biden, we could attribute to the mental deficits, but we've seen Anthony Blinken and others in the

Biden administration say the same nonsense. Here's Secretary Austin, shortly after President Biden made that statement, predicting that Ukraine will soon be a member of NATO. He might as well be predicting World War III. 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 every country, all the countries in the room say as much. And I think that was reassuring to President Zelensky. Now, this was taped 10 days ago in Vilnius at the end of Vilnius. At the end of that conference, of course, President Zelensky was somewhat petulant and unhappy that he wasn't welcomed with open arms.

Biden tried to assuage things by saying, well, you'll be in one of these days as soon as the war is over. Do they know what they're talking about? I got to ask you this again. We've turned in, NATO's turned into Wimpy from Popeye. I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. We're promising that Zelensky is something he's not going to get. And in fact, since the end of the Vilnius summit, we've seen Zelensky come out very, very strongly to complain that it is the lack of weapons being supplied from the West that's keeping Ukraine from winning. It's counter-offensive. They're losing because the

West is not providing enough support. I mean, when future historians look back at this, they're going, they will be struggling to find words to describe the insanity that has seized global leaders, including Putin and Rishi Sunak and Great Britain, that they failed to come to grips with the reality of this conflict that's literally killing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers. What has become of the spring offensive about which the mainstream media doesn't even speak any longer, Larry? Like a bug flying into a windshield of a car traveling 70 miles an hour. It's flat. The Ukrainians have not made any kind of significant progress. They haven't even gotten up to the first line of defense that Russia constructed last fall. They are out in front of it.

And in fact, in some areas, the Russians have turned and launched their own offensive and have advanced several kilometers. So it's not going well for Ukraine. And with each passing week, they're losing more soldiers and more vehicles. And there's not an endless supply of that able to be brought to the scene to reinforce and keep their fighting strength up. So it's akin to a boxer in a match that as you get into the 10th and 11th round of a heavyweight fight, you get tired and your muscles start going out on you. And that's frankly what's happening to Ukraine. Colonel McGregor, our friend and colleague,

reports that Ukrainian troops are deserting. If this is true, obviously Colonel McGregor believes it's true, but if his sources are accurate, because you don't see this in the mainstream media, how much longer can this last? How does this end, Larry? Well, it ends with a defeat. I personally believe that I don't see how Ukraine can sustain this effort beyond December of this year, simply because the attrition level of its forces, its lack of replacements, able-bodied replacements, and its lack of facilities to do the training and the time to do the training that would be required to turn new recruits into marginally effective soldiers on the battlefield. So there are growing signs of the discontent within the ranks of the Ukrainian troops and their complaints about their leadership. So here's Admiral Kirby doing his best Baghdad Bob imitation for my friend and former colleague Martha McCallum at Fox. Take a listen. 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 4As 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. They're firing thousands of them a day.

It's really a gunfight. So I caught two lines in there. One, turn the tide. I guess that's an admission that the tide is against the Ukrainians. The first time I've heard him say that. Right. And at the very end,

and this is absurd, we don't have the artillery ammunition to give to them. So we gave them cluster bombs instead. Yeah. But just the lack of logic, the inconsistency of what Kirby said. On the one hand, he says, what do Ukrainians need? The 4As. And he ticks off the 4As.

They need that. Okay. Why do they need that? Because there's an express, we've been supplying in unprecedented amounts. So if you supply in unprecedented amounts, and they still need it, what's going on? And what it is demonstrating is that the United States is stripping itself of its military capability in terms of weapons, ammunition supplies, and that here is Ukraine, which he candidly admits, they lack artillery, and they particularly

lack mobile artillery. They lack air defense, even though we supplied some Patriots that don't work, and they lack ammunition, and they lack armor, because they are going up against a Russian military that the West continues to dismiss as insignificant and incompetent. And yet that insignificant, incompetent military in Russia is crushing through attrition the Ukrainian proxy. Because let's remember, at the start of this special military operation, even though Ukraine was not a member of NATO, its troop size represented the second largest army in NATO

after the United States, followed by Turkey. Think about it. So this is, NATO knew exactly what it was doing. They thought that they could use Ukraine to defeat Russia. And they're finding out, whoops, we miscalculated. Now we can't even produce enough artillery shells to provide Ukraine with its daily needs. So we're sending them weapon systems that are condemned by much of the world as being inhuman because of the kind of create bomb lists that kids are going to pick up and blow off their hands and legs. Here's General Milley being very candid saying we're sending them F-16s. Forget about it. It'll be years before

these people are trained and know how to use them. I can't believe he's being this candid, his term of office, I think, ends at the end of next month. But I'm anxious to hear your thoughts on this. Do a quick math drill here. 10 F-16s are $2 billion. So the Russians have hundreds of fourth and fifth generation airframes. So16s 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. So I guess what he's saying is it's not going to help them. You and McGregor and the others are opining that the war will not go on beyond the end of this calendar year. And here's the outgoing chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying it'll take years, which has got to mean at least two and maybe three or more, before we can train people to use the F-16s. There probably won't be a Ukraine as we have known it by the time those F-16s are ready and the pilots are trained. Yeah, the F-16 is nothing more than a dangerous symbolic gesture because it's symbolic in the sense that it's not going to change anything on the battlefield. It's just a new air platform that the Russians are going to get to shoot down and destroy. But I say it's dangerous because the likely source of the F-16s is going to come out of perhaps the netherlands and my understanding and have scott ritter talk about this at length uh is that those

particular f-16s are are equipped so that they can carry a nuclear warhead that's how they they train with those planes to do that so russia would view this as a potential increase by the United States of moving towards that nuclear threat line. And, you know, that's what's the danger of this is that NATO has discovered that it is weak. It is incompetent. It is incapable of mounting any kind of credible military operation in the face of what Russia presents. And so in that situation, you go for desperation. And that's what we're seeing on the part of the West. They are frantically grabbing at anything like a drowning passenger.

So, you know, one hand you get Biden and Blinken saying, oh, the Russians have lost. And then you get Milley saying, well, you know, we're not going to have enough planes anytime soon. Oh, yeah, we can't supply artillery. You know, I wish somebody could step up and actually lay out and say, yes, this is our strategy. And this is what's being accomplished. And here are the results on the ground. Nobody's doing that. It's a media blackout because if the media covered it, the American public in particular would be outraged. Let's move on to the

attack on this cathedral in Odessa. We have some interesting tape from CNN showing what happened, and I'm anxious to hear your thoughts on it if we're ready to run that, Chris. Today was in the historic downtown, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Church of the Transfiguration, it's a cathedral, suffered major damage. That was among the 25 different architectural monuments, a local military official says, that sustained major damage. At least one person was killed, a security guard. And President Zelensky on Sunday says that Ukraine needs what he called a full-fledged sky shield, saying that that is the only way to defeat Russian terror.

All right. First of all, what is a full-fledged sky shield? And secondly, who or what destroyed the cathedral? Yeah, I have no idea what a full-fledged sky shield is. Otherwise, it would be known as effective air defense system like the S-400. S-500 is, you know, top of the line. But no, we've given them Patriot missile batteries, which don't work. In fact, they really do not work. So this story, this is typical.

Ukraine carried out the strike on this church. How do I know that? Ukraine destroyed a Catholic church in Ukraine. Right. I think it's an Eastern Orthodox church. Okay. I don't think it's Catholic, but about 30 minutes, an hour before that strike took place, the Wikipedia page for describing

that church was changed to note that it had been hit by a rocket, a missile, blaming it on Russia. So they do that in advance. And look, this fits the method of operations by the Ukrainians. Remember the Kerch Bridge when that was first attacked? They had a stamp made up and ready to go the next day. So they knew what was coming off. And Russia has no incentive, one, to bomb that church. Number two, it's not Russia that's been going throughout Ukraine locking up clergy from the Eastern Orthodox Christian faith. And they've not been confiscating churches. That's been Ukraine. So what Russia has been focused up on is hitting military targets and commercial economic targets in the port of Odessa, going after the church. You know, if it had not been for that change in the Wikipedia page, I think Ukraine would have had a great propaganda victory with this blaming it on Russia. But, you know, the objective evidence as far as

anybody that goes and changes a Wikipedia page first, and then the event happens, you're either, you know, Kreskin who can predict the future, or you're involved with the operation. I don't really get it. Is it worth destroying a historic monument, a church that is also a museum, just for the propaganda effort, particularly when you're caught with your pants down? Yeah. They have no other option, Judge, if you look at it. They're not winning on the battlefield. In fact, just the destruction of this church is in some ways a metaphor for what the Ukrainian leadership and with NATO support is doing to the men of Ukraine.

They are being destroyed and decimated. The casualty figures for killed in action looks to be in excess right now of 300,000. So think about that. In less than 18 months, Ukraine has lost more men in battle than the United States did in 12, you know, six times what the United States lost in 12, 14 years in Vietnam. What do you think the kill ratio is? If they've lost 300,000, that ratio, number of Ukrainians lost to number of Russians lost, that ratio has to be huge. I can't imagine the Russians have lost anywhere near a number like that. And of course, they started out with a larger army. Right. And they still have a larger army through their recruits. And Russia has suffered minimal casualties. Well, how do you know that? All you got to do is look at social media.

Russia has not shut down social media. And in Ukraine, you've got social media. The images from the cemeteries in Ukraine, you just can't cover up. You're not seeing that similar kind of footage of row upon row upon row of graves, freshly dug graves with Russian flags in Russia. Putin and the military leadership in Russia have been very careful to try to limit their tactics so that they're not risking mass human wave assaults that are going to result in significant casualties. They've been very careful to husband those resources in stark contrast to Ukraine. Larry Johnson, always a pleasure, my dear friend. We'll see you again shortly. Thank you, Judge. Thank you very much for joining us. Tony Schaefer.

Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you. Tony Schaefer right here at 11 o'clock this morning, Bill Giraldi at 3.30 this afternoon. Judge Napolitano, good to be back for Judging Freedom. We'll see you next time. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.