Judging Freedom - Ukraine Russia Update - Phil Giraldi, former CIA Case Officer and Army Intelligence Officer.

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

Ukraine Russia Update - Phil Giraldi, former CIA Case Officer and Army Intelligence Officer. #Ukraine #Russia #Putin #BidenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here with Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, May 19, 2022. It's about 2.50 in the afternoon on the east coast of the United States. We turn today to one of our stalwarts, one of our standbys, one of our regulars, when it comes to an intelligence analysis of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, the former military intelligence and former CIA, the great, courageous Phil Giraldi. Phil, it's always a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me on. So one of our friends and colleagues, who also is a regular on this show, Scott Ritter, gave an interview to a radio station and somebody extracted one-liners from the interview, which led the public, particularly our friends on social media, which is almost everybody that watches and listens to Judging Freedom, that Scott had done a 180 on what he thinks will be the likely outcome of the conflagration in the Ukraine.

The next day he came on the show and backtracked on what he said, basically saying the Ukrainians are doing better than I thought. They're using American equipment better than I thought, but they are still doomed to defeat. Has anything changed in Phil Giraldi's view or your access to American intelligence information that would cause you to look differently at the Ukraine-Russian conflict today at the end of May than you looked at it a month ago? Well, I would have to answer that by saying that as a general rule, I never try to say anything like somebody is winning or somebody is losing. The reason for that is that when you deal with intelligence and you're analyzing intelligence,

you're getting a very small window into what actually is going on on the ground and in deliberative councils in the various governments and so on and so forth. So to make that kind of judgment is always kind of dangerous, I think. I believe that Scott, in this case, has basically been looking at the smaller pictures and putting them all together, which he's quite capable of doing and I'm not quite capable of doing. And he's made various judgments and he's expressed those judgments and I've always respected those.

He's not the only one. He's not the only one making judgments not the only one doing you know making judgments on who's winning who's losing and i felt but he was one of the ones that really had a good insight into what the situation might be do you see anything whether it's in the news media or your own uh sources which would uh fortify the view that the Russians have stumbled, and it's going to take them a lot longer to achieve their goals than everybody thought when this started out. Yeah. Well, let me first of all take the end of your comment,

which is their goals. Now, nobody really knows what their goals were when this started. There were a lot of pundits that were saying that Putin wanted nothing less than to overthrow the government in Kiev, replace it, and run the country. A lot of people were saying that. But it was pretty clear in terms of the tactical moves that followed. It appeared to me that Putin had no such intention, and nobody knows what his exact intentions were when it started. Does the American intelligence community, from whatever sources it has, and don't reveal the sources, have an idea of what his goal is and when he'll declare victory and go home?

Unless they have a bug on his telephone or someone sitting in on his top level council meetings, which I doubt in either case, they don't know. They have a lot of guesses based on what they see and what, again, let's go back to this analogy of the little windows. They have a lot of little windows. And unless they have an actual spy at the top of the Putin administration who's relaying intentions, intentional information back to Washington, no, they don't know. Is there a rational belief that the Ukrainians can hold out? Or is the rational belief that Putin is so determined, his forces are so much grander, greater, and larger, that he's destined to achieve some goal? The recapture of some part of Ukraine. I mean, if he fails, if he goes home with his tail between his legs, I would think he'd be thrown out of office and maybe even arrested. He knows he has to bring something tangible home, doesn't he?

Yeah, I think that the answer to all your hypotheses right there are all yes um this war could be prolonged uh on behalf of Ukraine by NATO and the U.S in particular arming the Ukrainians until the last Ukrainian is dead so that could go on forever or it certainly can go on for a long time and as for Putin, Putin clearly in his own head has plan A and plan B, a fallback plan, maybe even from plan B to plan C. And in each of those, he has what he sees as an acceptable outcome for Russia. Now, I don't know what they are. Donbass would seem to be a pretty clear marker that he wants to incorporate that in Russia or set up some kind of arrangement where it has almost complete autonomy. Beyond that, obviously Crimea is an important point. And then the NATO membership. But all these points are kind of flexible and there are probably ways to manipulate them if the US and the allies were

acting in good faith, which of course they're not. So Ritter told us that with the United States and the Senate formally approved this this morning sending 53 billion, 13 in equipment already there and another 40 billion in aid and equipment uh on its way the 53 billion in aid to the Ukrainians is more money than Putin spends on his entire military in a year yeah question is the United States prudently spending its money and giving away its military equipment? No, it's not. It's doing overkill. It's dumping a lot of programs and a lot of equipment and a lot of money. Now, the money, I assure you, will disappear pretty quickly. It'll go to line the pockets of people like Hunter Biden, who I assure you are are already in Kiev figuring out what the angles are for doing exactly that. And a lot of it will go back to defense contractors in the U.S.

And from defense contractors in the U.S., it, of course, goes in the pockets of politicians. So the real numbers are probably much smaller than we're thinking. But the fact is, this is still a huge sum of money. It's more than the entire budget of Ukraine was before this fighting started. The entire government budget, not its military budget, its entire government budget. Yeah. Wow. Wow.

So this is like a fire hose of cash to them, the likes of which, even by Ukraine standards, they've never seen before. Yeah. Yeah. This is precisely what it is. Most authorities, again, I hate to say all authorities, but most authorities certainly agree that Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe and it is also the poorest, and it got to be the poorest. It was not the poorest when the Soviet Union broke up. It got to be the poorest because of the corruption.

Now, that has not gone away, and that's going to sap whatever efforts the U.S. and NATO make to prop it up and keep it fighting. So we'll see how it plays out. What is your opinion about Putin's stability as the president of Russia as we speak after the losses he has taken? Well, again, all these things are relative. And it seems that from what I'm reading in the Russian media, he still has substantial support. Sure, there are some dissidents who are speaking up there are families that have lost uh soldiers and sailors who are speaking up but i think as as of right now uh his situation is probably relatively stable and um but you know these things could change it on dime um got it if you know biden can make some very bad decisions he's already made a lot of bad ones.

If he makes a couple more in the next week or so, then suddenly the support among the American public for this war might go away. Phil, always a pleasure. I hope you'll come back and join us again. All the best to you. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Of course. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.