Judging Freedom - Ukraine Offensive's NEW Strategy - HOPE? w/Scott Ritter

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

Ukraine Offensive's NEW Strategy - HOPE? w/Scott RitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, August 17th, 2023. Scott Ritter joins us now. Scott, always a pleasure. Thank you very much for coming back on the show. Thanks for having me. What is your view of the state of military affairs on the ground and others that i believe that the ukraine will be strategically defeated from a military perspective by the end of summer early fall um we're on course to achieve that the ukrainians have committed their strategic reserves um they're i think it's the 82nd airborne landing brigade equipped with challenger 2 tanks from great britain german martyr infantry fighting vehicles and american made striker infantry fighting vehicles these have been committed to the battlefield in the zaparizia

front around the village of rubitino which has been the epicenter of Ukraine's counteroffensive. It was here that Ukraine, coached by NATO, believed they found a seam in the Russian defenses between the 291st Regiment and the 70th Regiment of the 42nd Guards Motorized Infantry Division. But that seam turned out to be the hardest scar tissue you ever saw in your life it's held the ukrainians have gone nowhere um just yesterday when this brigade was committed one battalion of this brigade was taken out of a battle by casualties and it appears that the that same fate is going to befall this brigade and the two others that were brought in as part of the strategic uh reserve and after this there are no more forces ukraine is down to nothing um this is the beginning of the end

we're in a situation now where russia has maintained pressure along the entire line of contact it's something i've been saying russia would do and um ukraine has been thinning out forces to fill in gaps in their line and we see right now they have insufficient forces for the task of defending this frontage. In the north, in the area of Kupyansk, the Ukrainian line is broken. The Russians are on the offensive there, taking 5, 10, 15 kilometers a day, threatening to capture Kupyansk, which should fall soon, and threatening Kharkov. If the Ukrainians, and they will, lose this current bid in the counteroffensive, you'll see that similar gaps in their defense will emerge and Russia will begin the process of pushing the Ukrainians out of the current lines that are held. This is the beginning of the end. Does all of that mean that of the three lines of defense that the Russians

have created, more or less along the line of conflict between the two militaries, that the Ukrainians have not only not breached, but not even approached the first of those three lines of defense? Correct. They continue to fight in what's called the gray zone. I call it the crumple zone. It's the flexible defense zone where Russia begins using its fire traps. Fire traps are, of course, pre-designated zones for artillery fire where they are using their obstacle belts. That's primarily minefields, which they've laid in greater density than anybody anticipated on the Ukrainian and NATO side, and also mobile anti-tank guided missile teams that start picking off the Ukrainians. This is to break up the attack, but they're so successful in breaking up the attack that the Ukrainians are never able to reach that initial line of defense.

Do you surmise that the end of the conflict will come about not by political decisions, but by military ones? In other words, are the Ukrainian chief military commander, whom you and Colonel McGregor and the others have said is a serious military guy for which there is much respect throughout the world. Might he very well say, this is it. I'm not throwing any more men into this meat grinder and just go home. It's a little late in the game for that. He's just threw his last men into the meat grinder. So it's not like he's sitting on a large stockpile of men to continue to feed into. I think that Ukraine will

suffer a serious military defense, defeat, I'm sorry, which they're suffering right now. And then it comes down to how they want to politically end this war. Here's a reality. Russia has sufficient forces right now to defeat the Ukrainian army within the relative space of the battle as it's currently defined. The problem comes, let's say, that Russia pushes Ukraine back to, say, the Dnipro defense line. Ukraine goes behind that, concedes Kharkov, concedes the north, but holds on to Odessa. At that point in time, Russia will be able to hold that position. And it's a decisive victory. But Russia, as things currently stand, won't have the manpower to push much further beyond that, which means that if Russia seeks

to acquire Odessa, and Ukraine doesn't surrender, that this is a conflict that could go into the spring of next year and compel Russia to go through an additional mobilization, because they're going to need around 300,000, 400,000 more men than they have if they want to take Odessa and swing through the south. Now, if they forego the north and do the south, they can do that, but that's a much more difficult military proposition. Let me make sure I understand you. If Ukraine is running out of soldiers, how could they stop Russia from taking whatever it wants to take? Well, if they fall back behind the river, it makes their defense a whole lot easier.

Right now, Ukraine is compelled to defend every square inch of front line. But if they fall behind the Dnepr River and blow the bridges over the river, now Russia has a problem because they're going to have to build bridges to go over, or they're going to have to come in from a different direction, say Kiev, and come down. That's a more complicated military maneuver. But Russia right now has sufficient force. It appears that what they're doing is pushing Ukrainians out of the Zaporizhia area, out of the Donbass, back towards that river. But then after that, we run into a problem because if the Ukrainians decide to continue the fight, Russia doesn't have sufficient resources available to responsibly begin to advance. They learned their lesson last fall, not to overstretch their

lives. Ukraine will have the winter to rebuild a military, but it's not going to be a good military. It's a military that would be eaten up this quick. And the question is, would the West, would the Ukrainian military allow this to happen? I believe that what's going to happen first is the military defeat of the Ukrainian army, followed by a political resolution to this war. What that looks like, we don't know. What is the quality of the equipment that NATO and the U.S. have been sending to Ukraine? Garbage, 100 percent garbage. And we know it. We've admitted it. We give them old tanks. We don't give them the newest gadgets that were put on these tanks in terms of either armor upgrades, self-defense upgrades,

communications, things of that nature. That's stripped out. They get stuff that's old. And it's also equipment that, frankly speaking, is ill-suited for the nature of the war today. So, you know, I've said this all along. I said for NATO to give this equipment to Ukraine, we're literally killing Ukrainian soldiers. They would be better off receiving upgraded old Soviet equipment that they know how to use. It's part, you know, it's compatible with their doctrine, their tactics. But we're giving them this new stuff. They don't know how to use it and they're not employing it correctly and they're just being slaughtered.

Here's Russian defense minister Shoigu commenting on a number of things. One, the quality of the Western equipment that the Russians have captured and two, the level of either physical or moral strength of the Ukrainian army. It's in Russian. I'm going to have to read the subtitles, and he's speaking rather quickly, just to give you a little heads up of what's coming. Here we go. In real life scenarios, our weapons show reliability and effectiveness. At the same time, the much-hyped Western weaponry has shown itself to be far from perfect. You can check for yourself at the exhibition of the weapons captured in Ukraine. Despite the comprehensive assistance of the West, the armed forces of Ukraine failed to achieve their results.

An example of this is the publicized strategic counteroffensive. The skillful actions of the personnel of the Russian armed forces, their coherence and the high level of training make it possible to respond flexibly to the implementation by Kiev of the plans of their Western curators. Preliminary results of combat actions show that Ukraine's military resources are almost exhausted. Let's start with the last point. Is he talking about the soldiers being physically exhausted or the supply of weaponry and ammunition being exhausted? Both. He's talking about the logistics of weaponry and ammunition being exhausted? Both. He's talked about the logistics of this. Ukraine is running out of ammunition. They're running out of tanks. They're running out of empty fighting vehicles. They're running out of artillery pieces. And they're also running out of men. And the men are also running out of the will to fight. That's an important part of war. I mean, I would rather have a Marine with a 30-year old equipment who wants to be there, who's trained to be there and ready to be there,

going up against somebody with brand new equipment who doesn't want to be there. I'll win that fight every day of the week. Ukrainians have bad equipment and their guys, for the most part, just don't want to be there. Their best troops that they have left, the strategic reserves that they were holding to the west of Kiev have now been committed to the Robertino fight. Once they're dead, there's nothing left. I mean, there's a handful of motivated troops, but motivated troops can't cover a 1,000-kilometer front line. The vast majority of the troops are these territorials who have been bonked on the side of the head and literally shanghaied into the front line with no training. Is there, maybe there's more than one reason, is a reason why we have not given the Ukrainians first-rate equipment, fear that the Russians will capture it and reverse engineer it and find out

what we have? I mean, that's what we'll say. We reverse engineer it and find out what we have? I mean, that's what we'll say. We're afraid they'll find out the secrets. What we're really afraid of is that they'll find out that our best equipment's not that good, that our best equipment will be as easily defeated on the battlefield. And that's half the hype of NATO, is that we're NATO, we're big, we're bold, we've got this new equipment, we're sexy, we're better than you, we're better than your equipment. And what we don't want to become the reality is for the Russians to go, that stuff's garbage. You know, this T-90 tank we have is four times better. We have nothing to fear. And now you've increased Russian confidence that much more and you've deflated whatever advantage NATO could accrue by the myth of

NATO technological superiority. The West no longer has technological superiority. So the Guardian of London quotes unnamed sources in Kiev saying or complaining that American F-16s are not going to arrive in 2023. That's consistent with what you said, Tony Schaefer said, Colonel McGregor said, Larry Johnson, all of our people who have expertise in this field. If the F-16s don't arrive until 2024, will there be a war going on? Will there be of any, will they be of any use to the Ukrainians? Will there be a Ukrainian government there? Like I said, there's going to be an interesting moment sometime in late summer, early fall, when the current iteration of the Ukrainian military is strategically defeated on the battle

and we start to see the collapse of the Ukrainian line. This will open up the door for a political resolution. If the Ukrainian government's not prepared for that uh political uh to bring a political into this conflict it's possible they will be able to extend this conflict into the spring um but in the spring you're just going to get a repeat of what what exists now and the russians aren't going to over the winter they they'll put the pedal to the metal they'll put the pressure on the ukrainians um the bottom line is i, I don't think an F-16 is going to fly in anger over Ukrainian airspace. I don't think an F-16 is going to arrive on Ukrainian soil. I think this war will be over long before that. But if they do arrive, it'll be one of the shortest lived combat experiences of an F-16 in the history of that fighter aircraft.

Secretary General Stoltenberg of NATO made a very interesting comment yesterday. We don't have the actual tape of it, but we have a full screen of him saying it. So I'll read it to you. And I'm going to ask you, is this a crack in the wall? I almost can't believe he's saying this. It is the Ukrainians and only the Ukrainians who can decide when there are conditions in place for negotiations and who can decide at the negotiating table what is an acceptable solution. You know, this from the mentality of we'll give you all the equipment you need. You can beat the Russians. You're going to get uh crimea back no uh negotiations until the russians leave uh eastern ukraine and crimea why is he saying this well one reason is that the uh there was a conference in jeddah saudi arabia a few weeks back where uh 40 nations came

together to discuss uh the conditions under which peace could be achieved in Ukraine. And the foundational starting point was a 10-point peace plan that Zelensky had put forward, which is totally unrealistic. The surrender of Russia, the turning over of Putin, the pain of reparations. And pretty much the entire world told Ukraine at that time, that ain't never going to happen. You're going to have to come up with something better. Just the other day, Stoltenberg's deputy in a freewheeling discussion said, maybe it's time the Ukrainians accept the fact that they're going to have to make territorial concessions to Russia, meaning whatever territory Russia has right now, Ukraine's going to have to give it to them. In exchange, NATO will bring Ukraine in and make it a NATO member.

Ukraine immediately responded saying we will never give anything up. And how dare you set this? And so this was Stoltenberg's way of trying to correct the record. But it's a very weak way of saying it because it changes the fact that the reason why the deputy to Stoltenberg said what he said is that Ukraine has lost this war and NATO now knows it. NATO knows there's nothing that can be done to reverse that outcome. So the best thing to do is for Ukraine to eject from this downed aircraft before it hits the ground. Do you suspect, just in your gut, Scott, that there's some back-channel communications going on, maybe with three or four intermediaries, but somehow connecting dots between Moscow,

Brussels, London, Washington, D.C., and Kiev? No, I think Russia has been kept totally out of this. I do believe there's back-channel discussions taking place with Zelensky, trying to remind him of the reality of the situation, that this war will not go on forever. In fact, it won't go on for much longer. The West is exhausted and there's not an infinite pool of equipment that Ukraine can draw from. And sooner or later, Zelensky is going to have to budge. But the West has also backed itself into a political corner where it can't be seen as telling Ukraine what to do. Zelensky is going to have to be the one who says we're willing to accept this this territorial thing and so i think that's what we saw with uh stonberg's deputy he was floating you know one of those uh

trial balloons out there saying hey what if he gave up the territory and we promised you a membership in nato forgetting that the whole reason why this war began is that russia said ukraine's never joining nato part of if russia's winning the war, do you think Russia's going to go, oh, yeah, sorry, go ahead and join NATO. What the heck? This was never about territorial acquisition on the part of Russia. Here's President Zelensky's most recent statement to the general public in Ukraine. I've commented that he's doing an imitation of Claude Rains catching Humphrey Bogart gambling in Morocco.

This is his either real or fanciful complaint about corruption. There are 112 criminal proceedings against officials of the territorial recruitment centers. 33 suspects, regional, city and district military commissars, employees of the military medical commissions, abuses in different regions. Some took cash. Some took cryptocurrency. That's the only difference. The cynicism is the same everywhere. Illicit enrichment, legalization of illegally obtained funds, illegal benefit, illegal transportation of persons liable for military service across the border.

Our decisions are the following. We are dismissing all regional military commissars. Okay, so a couple of things to unpack here. What does it mean, all regional military commissars? And is the recruitment, which seems to be the target of this statement there, recruitment particularly susceptible to corruption? Well, the commissars are the people that oversee. You've seen the videos of the guys in their vans running around and hijacking Ukrainian men off the streets. Right. That's the kidnapping that's done because they have to fill a quota. Now, why are you filling your quota that way? The reason is that the sons of rich officials, the relatives,

businessmen are buying their way out of their duty to report. And this has been one of the greatest corruption schemes since the very beginning of this conflict. The guys that are doing the kidnapping, I hope their day comes because they had to buy that position. They're guys that otherwise would be on the front line dead now. But what they did is they put money on the table and said, hey, let me stay in the rear here so I can go around and kidnap people. I'm going to pay you $30,000. I'll give you a cut of everything we do. This has been one of the greatest corruption schemes ever. But remember, Ukraine is the most corrupt nation on the planet. Zelensky calling the military commissars corrupt is rich, coming out of his mouth, one of the most corrupt men in Ukraine today.

Him and his minister of defense and everybody who works for him. The government just sees corruption, but it became a political problem. That's what happened. These videos and the fact that they're showing up to the front lines. When you bring, they had a very sad video of they brought in a guy who was unable to pay the penalty. He was clearly mentally deficient. His mother was there and the guy was walking, looking very, very badly. And they found him fit for military service and sent him to the front lines where not only did he probably die, but he's a liability.

The Russians, they're showing the people that they're capturing now, and the Russians are almost embarrassed because they're like, this is an old man, this is a crippled man, this is a man with health conditions. Why are they here in front of us? It's a bad thing. So Zelensky had to take action because it had become a political problem for him. Earlier this week, President Putin sat back and spoke sort of in philosophical and historical terms about Russia and Ukraine and NATO and the West and the United States. It's in Russian. There are subtitles, so I'll read the subtitles. But I'm anxious to hear your thoughts on what he had to say, Scott.

We can clearly see where the policy of adding fuel to the fire leads in the example of Ukraine. By pumping billions of dollars into the neo-Nazi regime, supplying it with equipment, weapons, ammunition, sending their military advisors and mercenaries. Everything is being done to ignite the conflict even more, to draw other states into it. Hotbeds of tension are also smoldering in other regions of the world, and although the security challenges in each of them have their own characteristics, all of them are generated by geopolitical adventures, selfish neo-colonial actions of the West. NATO member countries continue to build up and modernize their offensive capabilities, and make attempts to transfer military confrontation to outer space and to the information space.

They use military and non-military means of pressure. And all of this is happening amid the destruction of the arms control system. The United States seeks, among other things, to adjust the system of interstate interaction. And that has developed even into the Asia-Pacific region. I'm going to guess that you agree with everything he said. Look, he's not factually wrong, and his tone is correct. Everything about that presentation is good. I mean, look, he's clearly reading from a teleprompter, but that's not a criticism. That's

what people do. Vladimir Putin's a man, however, who has shown he can stand for four hours in front of an audience and speak without notes, answer questions and speak coherently, unlike anybody in the West that we know of. But this this was a prepared remarks designed to go on the record. What I've learned in watching Vladimir Putin over the course of the last 20 plus years is that he knows the value of words, the importance of words. He's not someone to speak lightly. And when he speaks, especially in prepared remarks like this, every word is calculated for effect. Every word has meaning. So what I would advise people to do is not to push this off as political or politicized rhetoric. Every word he says there is linked to a policy objective, negotiating platform, something of substance that Russia is pursuing. Look, he's the only

adult in the room right now, sadly, you know, on global affairs. You know, I mean, I think Xi Jinping could also be called an adult. These are responsible leaders. I'm not saying they're perfect. I'm not saying their policies are are responsible leaders. I'm not saying they're perfect. I'm not saying their policies are beneficial to America. I'm just saying that these are people who act like adults when they get involved in these things. If you take a look at the West, we lie, we cheat, we steal, we mumble, we stumble. There's nothing serious about Western leadership right now. Scott Ritter, always a pleasure, my dear friend.

Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Well, if you like what you saw and heard, and I suspect you do, like, subscribe, tell a friend. We're up to 183,000 subscribers. Our goal is 200,000 by Labor Day. You know what we do here on Judging Freedom. We're looking out for your liberty. Thank you.