Judging Freedom - Ukraine Russia War Status update - Col Doug Macgregor

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

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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, November 28th, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, November 28th, 2022, Monday after our long Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. It's a little after three o'clock here on the east coast, Colonel Douglas McGregor. Colonel, always a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. A belated happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. Such an American, such a quintessentially American holiday. It's true.

You have warned us about this, and during our four-day break over the Thanksgiving holiday, the New York Times headline was, or the one that's most memorable to me, U.S. and NATO scramble to arm Ukraine and refill their own arsenals. Question, Colonel, are we dangerously depleting, we the United States, not NATO, I'll ask about NATO in a minute, are we, the United States, dangerously depleting our own arsenals in order to feed the globalist narrative that we have to provide military equipment and ammunition to Ukraine? I think it's very clear that our ammunition stocks, as well as key items of equipment, such as your self-propelled 155mm gun, are in very short supply now as a result of having to supply the Ukrainians. You ask, is it dangerously low?

It's only dangerous if we are contemplating a confrontation with the Russians. That is out of the question in my view. And for that matter, if we were to go back to the Middle East and take on any number of opponents there, it would be equally ill-advised. So I would say it's not dangerous unless we are stupid and decide to intervene somewhere. Have we supplied the Ukrainian military from our surplus or from our substance? Both, but we have had to rely increasingly on the substantive American military capabilities. There's now talk about sending even more sophisticated missiles with greater ranges, which I find disturbing because the more we do this, the more likely we are to end up in a confrontation with the Russians, for which we're completely unprepared. But there's talk about that right now in the media.

The last time we spoke, which was a day or two before Thanksgiving, we talked about whether or not there was any impetus on the part of the State Department or NATO diplomats to push President Zelensky and President Putin, to the extent they can push Putin anywhere, toward the negotiating table. In the interim, you sent me some videos, which are too horrific for us to show, which show Ukraine atrocities against captured Russian soldiers. So these are captured Russian soldiers who ought to have been protected by the Geneva Conventions. Obviously, they weren't. They were executed with bullets in the head. Why would this have happened? Why would there have been videos of it? Why would the videos of it have been displayed on Ukraine streaming sites? Well, Judge, you're right. The videos that show Russian prisoners of war being essentially murdered after they've surrendered have been posted by Ukrainian soldiers. These are videos taken by Ukrainian

soldiers and then posted on the internet, essentially as a point of pride, in the belief that they are somehow another frightening or horrifying the Russians who knows. But I also think there's another sinister dimension. But I also think there's another sinister dimension to this. I think there's an interest in Ukraine, particularly in Kiev or Kyiv, to ensure that there can be no negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia. Not so much because of people in Kiev that might be willing to talk, but I think there's growing fear that Washington will ultimately abandon them. They know that Ukraine fatigue is not exclusive to Europe. Ukraine fatigue is certainly having an impact inside the United States.

They can read the news. They know that the new Republican Congress may well turn out to be much less willing to support them than the previous one. So under the circumstances, I think they want to make it almost impossible. And one way you do that is by murdering your opponent's soldiers and then posting videos about it because it so poisons the waters, if you will, with Russia. And it makes it so difficult for the Russians, particularly President Putin, to come to any arrangement because the Russian people are seeing these things and are incensed. You have Russian military commanders, and frankly, you know,

from the beginning, we've accused the Russians of terrible things. They did not do those things. They did not mass rape. They did not mass murder. That's all nonsense. It's all propaganda that the Ukrainians cooked up and then was disseminated across the West and eagerly regurgitated by the Western media, but it was never true. Well, I'm assuming that what you sent me was real. It certainly looked real.

It's absolutely, absolutely real. There was another video in the mix, though, that was kind of entertaining because it showed what appeared to be an attempt by the Ukrainians to orchestrate a fake Russian attack on civilians. I mean, unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess, for us, they showed the director of the operation, lights, cameras, and supporting people. And this has been done before by the Ukrainians as well. All right. Would the mass display of Ukraine war crimes and atrocities on captured defenseless Russian soldiers, boys, have been approved by the high command? Or is this some rogue endeavor by the more hardcore of the Ukraine troops?

Do you have an answer to that or an idea on that? If this was a one-off and then suddenly the Ukrainian government directed that these videos be removed and then made a statement that they're going to look into this to establish the facts, and if this is in fact true, they will take action. If that had happened, then one would conclude that these were rogue elements. But that has not happened. And so the only conclusion I can reach is that people in Kiev are saying, look, this will keep the war going.

This will make it harder for the United States to abandon us because the Russians won't do business. And that's what they currently think is in their interest. I want to put on the screen a map of Ukraine, which you have seen. In fact, you were gracious enough to send it to us. So I'm going to let our viewers take a moment or so to look at it. The red starbursts represent areas where there's been the concentration of Russian missiles and artillery. The blue represent areas of blackouts where there's no electricity or water to speak of.

In the sort of lower right of this portion of Ukraine, the striped area represents the area that has been under Russia's control for a while. So let me start going all the way west. Are you surprised that the Russians sent their missiles all the way west? What is the next country over there west? Forgive my ignorance. Well, west from the map that you're looking at

right now where you see Lvov, just west of that 20 miles is the Polish border. Wow. Is it reckless for the Russians to send their missiles so close to the Polish border? Is that a lesson to NATO? No, no. It's not reckless at all. First of all, understand what's happening now. This is very similar to what the United States did in Iraq, to what it did to the Serbs during the Balkan campaigns, the Kosovo air campaign, very similar to what we did during World War II to Germany and Japan. We systematically identified the networks, the infrastructure for fuel, fuel storage, fuel distribution, and today power plants on a grand scale. We did that. We destroyed those places and essentially put countries in the dark and did exactly what

you're describing, made it impossible for them to effectively lead normal lives. That was part of the plan. It worked very effectively in Germany. I mean, we were so effective against the fuel refining, storage, and distribution that it brought the Air Force and the Army almost to a standstill in Germany in 1945, certainly by the end of 44. So that's what we're doing now. And this is long overdue. And this is part of the larger plan to prepare Ukraine for the coming offenses. I mean, why would you let your opponent lead a comfortable, leisurely existence if you plan to attack him on a grand scale on the ground?

And see, before, with this first phase, no one ever completely grasped what Moscow wanted. They wanted an arrangement. They wanted a negotiated settlement. They were not interested in destroying the country. They didn't want to kill large numbers of people. By the middle of the summer, it was clear that's not going to work. So they threw those assumptions out. They went on to essentially a strategic defense, an economy of force mission. Let's use as few forces as possible to hold on to what's ours, and then we'll build up for the offensive. And that's what's been going on. Now it's getting cold finally. So perhaps in three, four, five weeks or something, we'll see a major offensive. Gary, can you put the map up again? Colonel, I want to ask you about the

sort of lower right-hand portion, if you will, where you see the gray and black stripes. Now, as I understand the symbols on the map, that reflects the portions of Ukraine in which Russian-speaking people live and which the Russian government controls. If I'm correct, don't I also see some red symbols there showing Putin attacking that area with either missiles or artillery? How unusual is that? There are Russians living there. Well, let's not say Putin attacking. You know, he's in Moscow and these strikes are ordered by the high command of the Russian theater and General Serovyan. Okay. So the generals in chief are attacking where Russians live. Am I right? Well, first of all, understand something. Today we have this capability we call

strike. Strike is different from what we imagine the standard use for artillery or rockets or missiles might be in the West. The only thing that separates one strike from another is time and space. And we have precision, which means that we could literally, if we saw something in your backyard where you live, Judge, and we thought it was threatening to us, we could target it and destroy everything in your backyard without necessarily harming threatening to us, we could target it and destroy everything in your backyard without necessarily harming you. Now, we demonstrated that capability during the Kosovo Air Campaign. Some of your viewers will remember that the Albanians in particular were shocked at our ability to attack Serb forces that stood next to or were positioned very close to Albanian homes,

but they never damaged any Albanian homes. Well, the Russians can do the same thing. And so there was a decision to attack there, ostensibly because there was some connectivity to this power generation network, and they decided to remove it. Now, beyond that, I don't know the details, but they're eminently capable of doing this with great precision. That's why striking those targets that were near the border with Poland was not reckless, because they know they can hit them with absolute precision. Okay, Gary, put the map up again, please. So, Colonel, if the Russians can move with that much precision, then their strikes around Lviv and Kiev, which we know destroyed residential areas,

were done intentionally, that the destruction of homes and apartment buildings was not a byproduct. It was the goal. Is that fair to say? No, again, that's not accurate because the power stations and the power distribution networks were inside those areas. We just want to level Keefe. I mean, if they wanted to level Keefe, they could do it tomorrow morning. It would take a couple of hours. So there on the map is the nuclear power plant or nuclear power plants. Well, the nuclear power plant of greatest interest, of course, is the one

to the south in the vicinity of Zaporozhye, which the Russians are protecting. The Ukrainians have repeatedly tried to launch missiles and rockets and artillery rounds against that power station in the hopes of precipitating a nuclear crisis that they think they would benefit from. Right above Zaporozhye, it shows the symbol for an explosion. Then to the left of Zaporozhye is the blue symbol for a blackout, and to the right of Zaporozhye is the blue symbol for the blackout. So you're telling us that they want to isolate without destroying and prevent the use of the nuclear power plant in Zaporozhye.

Yeah, well, it's not a question so much of preventing Ukrainians from using it. They are protecting that plant from Ukrainian attacks. Now, what they have done is that they have removed the connectivity, as you point out, involving the transmission of power from these plants to Ukraine. That has been done, and that will continue to be done. And we ought to pause from and understand the cascading effects of these attacks. This affects everything, every part of life in Ukraine. You're not just talking about transportation and water, of course. You're also talking about rural life where you have herds of cattle, herds of sheep, vast farmlands. Now those animals and the farmland is lying fallow. The animals are dying. They're losing 20, 30 percent of their livestock, not because the Russians are

killing them, but because they can't feed them. They can't move them. They can't sell them. They can't care for them. So the cascading effects are destroying completely the Ukrainian economy. So Ukraine's output is about non-existent now. So December 1st is three days from now. There's already snow on the ground in the northern parts of Ukraine. Where do you see this going in the next four or five, six weeks, say between now and the first of the year? Well, the experts on these matters, and I'm not one of them that knows something about the weather and about the terrain in Ukraine. I've seen some of Ukraine, but not all of it. And the Ukrainian black earth topsoil varies from 4 to 12 to 15 feet deep. It depends on where you are.

That's why it's such a productive region. You have to freeze that because if it's not thoroughly frozen, you sink like a rock, whether you're in a truck or you're in a tank. It doesn't make any difference. It's not frozen yet. It's only just now dropped below freezing on a permanent basis. Up till this point, we've had freezing at night, but during the daytime, it's gone back up into the 40s or even 50 degrees. It has to drop below freezing and stay that way for at least two weeks. So if it's now below freezing and it stays that way, you can do the math. You're looking for something happening no earlier than the 10th,

probably no later than the 19th of December. And you're talking about concentrations of Russian troops all the way around the country. We've accounted now formally by look, these are the people that sit in front of your, in front of your monitors that control satellites. And the intelligence committee says that it's accounted for 540,000 Russian troops. Okay. And of that 540,000, we're talking about 5,000 armored fighting vehicles, of which at least 1,500 are tanks.

Probably another 1,000 self-propelled artillery, the rest infantry fighting vehicles. A thousand rockets, missiles, tactical ballistic missiles, your so-called drones, unmanned attack systems, a thousand of those systems. That doesn't even begin to address the hundreds of fixed-wing aircraft, hundreds of helicopters. The helicopters will move troops, obviously.

There will be some ground support. Hundreds of fixed-wing aircraft operating as close air support and also bombers now. We've begun to see the use of bombers, which is something we've done for years. They're now beginning to do it, and they all have precision munitions, which is what you aim at. What you've just described must be understood and known by President Zelensky, by Ukrainian intelligence, by American intelligence, by the State Department, by the Pentagon, and by the White House. Yes. And what are they going to do about it? Well, what they're trying

to do is they're trying to ship more equipment to the Ukrainians. The problem is the Ukrainian casualties have been horrendous, particularly over the last few months. There was an article today in the Eurone news. I'm told there's another one in the New York Times describing the very very heavy casualties. Of course the big lie that is always told to accompany the bad news is well the Russians have taken heavy casualties too. Nonsense. The Russians have not. And that's the difference. When you're you're killing your enemy at a 10 to 1 ratio which is about where it is right now in southern Ukraine with the Russians and Ukrainians, you're not hurting at all. And the Russians, again, aren't running out of anything.

Ukrainians are running out of everything. Ammunition, spare parts, fuel, you name it. They're soldiers. Most of the best troops are dead or wounded. And the people that they're shoving forward in the defensive positions are untrained reservists, they say, well, we sent 10,000 more troops to England for three weeks. Judge, you're not going to be able to train a man in three weeks to do much of anything, or even five weeks. You need time. And time is something Ukrainians no longer have.

So the whole thing is on the verge of collapse. Let's pretend you are back in the Pentagon, as you were for a portion of the Trump administration, and Secretary Austin, along with Secretary Lincoln, knock on your door. Colonel, what's your advice? What would you tell them? Get the hell out? I would show them the map and show them the identified concentrations

of Russian forces, along with a list of the capabilities, which are impressive in terms of firepower and maneuver. And I would also then bring up a truthful picture of Ukrainian fighting capabilities right now, which are very, very modest. And I would argue, given the terrible conditions that the population faces in Ukraine,

it's no surprise that the Ukrainian government is saying, leave. Even Klitschko, who is the mayor of Kyiv, has told the population, you really should leave. We're not going to have any power. We won't have water and fuel to heat. You not going to have any power. We won't have water and fuel to heat. You're going to have to go somewhere else and seek shelter. This is the capital city. And millions of these Ukrainians are going to pack it in and they're going to head west. So you're going to have another gigantic mass casualty event, if you will, on Europe's doorstep with millions of refugees pouring into Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania. And obviously, in many cases, these frontline states will simply herd them further west into

other countries because they can't take anymore. Back to my hypothetical door knocking. What can the American government say to President Zelensky to get him to the negotiating table? You're not getting anything else from us? First of all, Zelensky will do what you tell him. So if you tell Zelensky the game is up, it's time to come to terms with reality. This is an injustice, a monstrous injustice to the Ukrainian people to fight on at this point. We'll have to accept the fact that a negotiation is necessary. We're going to have to accept that concessions will be made, including territorial concessions. And if you do that, Ukrainians will go along with it. They won't like it, but they'll go along with it. Now,

there is a theory that Zelensky, if he goes along with something like this, will be killed by the radical nationalists. Well, I suppose that's possible. I can't prove that. I don't know. But the bottom line is that you should draw the obvious conclusions. You know, your position is untenable. It's effectively hopeless.

And, you know, you need to end this thing before matters get much, much worse. But there's no willingness to do that because the pain, even though we're suffering economically from some of the after effects of our sanctions that have done more damage to us and our lives than to Russia, the damage to us is modest. The people who are really suffering, though, are the Europeans. Their economies are in serious trouble right now. If anybody wants to turn on a business channel, they'll all tell you about it. And it's not just energy. Again, cascading effects. There are huge problems across the economic production spectrum, if you will. So

it makes sense to end this and accept the fact that you lost. You know, you bet that you could bully Russia. You bet that you could force them into a corner from which they couldn't escape. You bet that you could isolate them. You couldn't. And that was never possible to begin with. But if you tell Biden and his advisors and others in the administration to go forward and do that, they're going to tell you you're out of your mind. We're not going to admit that. Do you remember anyone in 1971, 72, 73, 74, 75 admitting, oh, you know, Vietnam was a terrible mistake. We should never have gone. People said that years later, but not at the time. Right, right.

Colonel, always a pleasure. Thank you very much. We'll hope to have you back again soon. All the best. Okay, thanks, Judge. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. We'll see you next time. think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.