Judging Freedom - Ukraine Russia War What_s Happening_ Scott Ritter

Episode Date: November 4, 2022

#Ukraine #ScottRitter #PutinSee 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. 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. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, November 4th, 2022. It's about 3.20 in the afternoon here in the East Coast of the United States. One of our viewers writes in, the judge is still running on his judicial clock, even though

he's retired. Sorry, we are a few minutes late, but we're here. We have one of our premier guests, as you can see. The regular viewers of Judging Freedom do not need to know who this is, but it is Scott Ritter, one of our regular go-to guys on Matters Military lately, of course, Ukraine. Scott, it's a pleasure. Welcome here. Thanks for having me. It's my fault that we're running late, so don't blame the judge. You're very kind. Always make the anchor look good. God bless you. Right now, I'm fighting with Chris, my half- shepherd, half beagle who wants to be outside running. Since we spoke last, numerous media outlets, not mainstream, not the networks, not the New York Times, not the Washington Post, but reliable internet outlets have reported that the United States military is on the ground in Ukraine. We don't know if they're in uniform or not. And the Pentagon has not denied it.

I think we can safely assume that this is a certainty that troops are on the ground. In fact, one of the Pentagon spokespersons said, I won't admit or deny that they're there. This is typical Pentagonese. You're familiar with this. But if they are there, if they are there, they are there to inspect American equipment. Now, when Joe Biden asked for $60 billion and Senator Rand Paul said, how about somebody to make sure the equipment works and make sure they're receiving it? The Senate refused to vote on that and it died in the vine. So here's a couple of questions. Are we on the ground? Are they in uniform? Are they inspecting equipment or are they doing a hell of a lot more? Well, first of all, to start that, even before this story came out, I think we've had this conversation before where I personally believe that we have had boots on the ground for some time now.

That both the CIA paramilitaries and joint special operations have been on the ground facilitating this logistical network that brings weapons into Ukraine. The reason why we've been successfully able to transfer weapons from Poland, from Romania across the border to the front line is because of American boots on the ground. So I think we've been there for some time. These are new boots. And what separates these two, and I always focus on words, language. They're not auditors. They're not part of the inspector general staff. These were on-site inspectors. of the inspector general staff these were on-site inspectors that's the specific terminology used on-site inspectors that has implication i i i'm an on-site inspector myself i helped write the book for on-site inspections and there's a certain

forensic aspect to it that means that they're not just there to run through a checklist of stuff. They're there to investigate, find out what happened to something, to reconstruct data. And the reason why they're doing it is that there's increasing concern that a lot of these weapons that we've provided Ukraine, especially the Javelin anti-tank missiles and the Stinger anti-air missiles, aren't being used against the Russians, but being taken and sold on the black market to criminal elements and potential terrorists in Europe. The German government has intercepted a terrorist or a criminal element that had a Stinger missile that was sent, that United States sent to Ukraine. So we know this isn't theory, this is reality. And, you know, after this coming election next week, everybody believes that the Republicans are at least going to take the House and they may take the Senate. What does this mean? That if Joe Biden wants to continue funneling tens of billions of dollars worth of American taxpayer money to Ukraine, he needs to do it before the Republicans take control of the Congress. That means during this lame duck session.

The problem is, if he asked for it and somebody asked the question, can you guarantee me that no javelins, no stingers are missing, that no weapons have made their way to the black? The Pentagon right now can't guarantee anything. So this is a preemptive strike by the Pentagon to get into Ukraine with these forensic on-site inspectors to find out what's happened. So at least at a bare minimum, the response can be, we can answer that question in closed session. It's classified. And when they get to closed session, they can say that there's some material unaccounted for. But we are convinced that the Ukrainians have solved this problem and it's not an issue going forward. Then Biden can secure his 6060 billion worth of assistance. So this is a preemptive strike by the Pentagon to be able to develop answers to potential questions from a lame duck Congress in support of a potential

$40 to $60 billion ask from Joe Biden and the lame duck system. Okay. You are a former inspector. You wrote the book on it. Do they wear uniforms? Do they carry guns? Are they fair game for Russian military? Does Vladimir Putin know that they're there and where they are? You know, I can't. I can't. There's every military deployment has force protection built into it.

Force protection can either be assertive, meaning that you have troops on the ground with guns. every military deployment has force protection built into it. Force protection can either be assertive, meaning that you have troops on the ground with guns, et cetera, or it can be through procedural things to lower your profile, et cetera. There's no amount of force protection that can be brought in with guns that are really going to secure these people. They're not on the front lines. They're not trying to engage the Russians, and you don't want to increase their profile. If you get too big of a footprint,

Russia will detect that. So I believe that these guys are going in low key, civilian clothes, and they're in civilian vehicles, and they're trying to minimize their profile so they can get the job done, but not raise the profile enough to be detected. I asked a uh a russian military analyst just this week that very question i said is it in russia's interest to kill americans i mean these guys are in there now um if if you find them at a warehouse are you going to kill them they said look if they're in a warehouse that has weapons that are attacking russia and we attack the warehouse while they're there, they're going to die.

You know, it doesn't mean that we're deliberately trying to kill Americans, but it's your fault that you're there, not our fault. It's your decision to be there. And you have big boy games, big boy prizes. If you want to be fooling around in Ukraine right now while the missiles are flying, there's a potential. But I personally don't believe the Russians are flying, there's a potential. But I personally don't believe the Russians are out to hunt down Americans and kill them. The Russians' job isn't to escalate tension between the United States and Russia. The Russians' job is to finish the task in Ukraine without going to war against the United States or NATO. Are these human beings on the ground more likely than not, A, military special forces, and B, CIA?

No, I think there's military special forces and CIA guys already there. These guys might— The new guys, the recently introduced ones, the ones the Pentagon said, if they're there. there yeah you you may have um leadership and uh and uh command and control uh affiliated with joint special operations because they are going to be communicating using whatever covert means established but the actual inspector is going to be somebody who's familiar with the weapon systems with the javelins um and they're also going to be intelligence people who can uh rapidly receive a story because they're going to be talking to Ukrainians. They're going to be looking for documentary evidence to back up the Ukrainian claims of accountability. So you need that kind of person, an intelligence analyst, a weapons specialist.

What happens if the Americans get attacked either by Russians intentionally or inadvertently or by the Ukrainians in some sort of a false flag and blaming the Russians? Nothing. I'm just being frank. The United States knows the risks. These aren't boots on the ground. They didn't seek to coordinate with the Russians. Normally, like in Syria, we had a deconfliction hotline where we would pick it up and say, hey, we're doing X, Y y and z in this area your guys are there let's not you know let's not in the russians go okay got it we we'll back off a little bit the russian would call up say we're doing a b and c over here you guys need to do that we de-conflict um maybe here's here's the thing i don't know if i were the americans to be honest

i would have established a deconfliction line with the russians and said we got a problem we have to send troops in not to invade not to reinforce but to solve an accounting problem and we want to make sure that we de-conflict that's the approach i would have taken and i wouldn't be surprised that that actually is happening but we don't know about it because it's a very politically sensitive thing asking permission of the russians to send americans into ukraine to look for missing weapons and if i were were the Russians, I would take that phone call, because the last thing anybody wants right now is dead Americans in Ukraine. That is not good for Russia. That's not good for America. All right. A couple of weeks ago, General Petraeus Andreas, put out sort of a trial balloon about NATO or select countries from NATO getting on the ground in Ukraine and helping the Ukrainians fight against the Russians. done that without running it up the flagpole first, meaning Tony Blinken, the Secretary of State, and Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, and maybe even the President, knew he was going

to offer this. Has anything come of that or stated differently? Can you tell us if the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, is preparing to put large numbers of American combat troops, not inspectors, not bean counters, not accountants, not intelligence, combat troops on the ground in Ukraine. Again, this is just my assessment because I don't have a hotline to the Pentagon, so they're not telling me anything, nor should they. I think Petraeus' actions, you know, we have two wars going on right now. We have an information war and we have a shooting war. The information war is very important. Right now, we are very concerned about the vulnerability of Ukraine to a Russian offensive

sometime this winter that could take, threaten Odessa. And that seems to be the center of any potential military action all the talk is putting troops into odessa blocking the russians from taking odessa etc odessa is key to ukraine's future economic survival it's also key to this food thing that's going on with the un where the food is being shipped out of odessa to feed a starving world um and so one way that you can hold the Russians in check is to float publicly the concept that if Russia were to threaten Odessa, that a non-NATO force, a coalition of the willing, so to speak, would intervene. And that just at least gives something for the Russians to think about. Because Russia has a force structure, this 300,000 men that they've built up,

that isn't designed to fight NATO head on. It's designed to defeat the Ukrainian army as it's currently configured. So now you throw a curveball into the mix and say, hey, there's a potential that this coalition of the willing will come in. The idea of saying that is to get the Russians to at least pause and say, gosh,

do we want to do that right now maybe we should focus on who was the coalition of the willing b romania poland and the u.s well i think germany was thrown in the mix but here's the thing it's not real it's it's not real i mean that's the that's the beauty of it is you constructed this fantasy thing um and you threw it out there but there's no substance to it because first of all what is the coalition uh one Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division backed up by a couple Romanian Brigades the Bulgarians aren't going to play uh is Poland going to send troops down is Germany going to come and do you really want German troops marching Poland again I don't

know but the point is the this force doesn't exist. And how does it exist in a non-NATO structure? NATO would have to agree to release these forces from NATO command. That would require a debate that isn't going to be done in secret. So let's say they were serious about doing this. Right now, NATO would be debating how to release German forces from NATO command structure, how to release American forces. All these forces that are in NATO right now under NATO command would have to be released

from NATO command. And the Russians are going to hear about that and go, all right, 500,000 more troops. So this is just fantasy on the part of Petraeus in the West. It's not real. It's not going to happen. There's no threat of it happening. Have the 300,000 Russian recruits, all or any part of them, entered Ukraine? Or are they still training somewhere?

These are the people that Vladimir Putin gathered either by conscription or by activating their equivalent of the National Guard sometime in the past month or two since he put the military or the country on mobilization. Chris, stop. The good thing I'm not named Chris. It's my dog. Time for him to go out. My dog's doing the same thing to my feet right now. Look, the bottom line, first of all, the 300,000 troops aren't conscripts they're uh they're reservists they're all people with prior military service and they've been selected because they have skill sets that are needed uh according to the russians um as of last week 87 000 of them have been deployed into the special military operations zone um they have been incorporated into existing units so uh the the divisions the regiments, the battalions that were already there

have been reinforced with these new troops. And this is very smart, by the way, because you don't want to pull out a combat-experienced unit. It has leadership, officer leadership, enlisted leadership, the troops who have survived war and now know how to survive, know how to fight. They know the enemy. They know the enemy, they know the terrain. If you pull them out and bring in a team of rookies, they got to relearn

all that again, and that's not good. So you keep the team, you reinforce them. So the Russians have actually become much stronger because they still have the experience, but now they've been brought up to full strength. But there's still around 220,000 Russians that are being formed into these reserve regiments, reserve divisions, that once they finish their training, and we talked about this in the past, I think their training will be done sometime at the end of this month, early next month. Then they will be sent in and they have options. They can go up north along the Russian-Ukrainian border and threaten an attack into Kharkiv from that direction. They can reinforce existing forces here, give them greater penetration capability. They can go to Belarus, threaten Kiev that way. But these troops are finalizing their preparations. When they do

finish, they'll be organized into fighting divisions, and these divisions will be deployed fully equipped to the front, and it's going to be a game changer for Russia. Well, a couple of our emailers have asked me why I failed to ask you the initial question that I always ask you. I failed because I forgot, but I'll ask it now. Can Russia lose this war? Yes. Any nation can lose any war at any time. All right. Is it likely that Russia, given your knowledge of all we've been talking about in the past 10 months, nine months? No, Russia has advantages across the board from the strategic economic game being played in Europe right now, to shutting down the electrical grid in Ukraine, to attriting the

Ukrainian forces. Ukraine's getting weaker. Ukraine's getting weaker. Russia's getting stronger. Russia ain't going to lose this war unless they make some huge mistakes. And Russians don't necessarily make huge mistakes. How important is the US Department of Defense for providing military aid on the ground in the form of combat troops. Is NATO or the Western European globalists, is the U.S. State Department, is the Pentagon? Can you answer that? Well, the Polish are very enthusiastic because they have between 10,000 and 30,000 troops already

on the ground in Ukraine fighting on the front lines. That's real. I mean, they're suffering casualties, but neither they the ukrainians nor the russians i mean the russians are talking about it but the russians are like if if you want to die come come we can't stop you europe's not enthusiastic about that because europe is concerned about poland pulling nato into this this conflict um there's no enthusiasm in europe right now to uh send non-polish troops uh into ukraine there's no enthusiasm in Europe right now to, uh, send a non-Polish troops, uh, into, into Ukraine. There's zero enthusiasm for a, um, no one has the structure, even the United States.

You know, we have the 101st airborne slight infantry with helicopters going into a heavy armor, heavy air defense environment. They won't last long. Um, the Polish troops are good, maybe can defend, but they're not good on the offensive in terms of the regular polish army coming in the polish troops that are going in right now are joining a ukrainian army that's been built from scratch by nato to carry out offensive operations but the romanians don't have a capable military the bulgarians don't want to play the british their

army can fit into a soccer stadium so much there there. So the fact of the matter is, NATO, even if they had the desire to get involved, they don't have the ability to get involved, and there is no desire to get involved. Is Vladimir Putin as stable long-term in his job as you have been saying in the, you believe him to be? Is he still popular with the Russian public? Does he care if he's popular with the Russian public? Is the war popular with the Russian public? Well, I don't think Vladimir Putin spends his days looking at popularity polls like American politicians do. I think he's very secure in his position. I think he's even more popular today than he was when this war started. I think the Russian people are rallying around him primarily because of the Russophobic nature of what's happening in the West.

The more we hate Russia, the more the Russians grow to believe that Putin's doing the right thing. I mean, we're having the exact opposite effect than we want. The generals respond to him. The defense industry is responding to him. His economy is stable, unlike Europe. So I think Putin is stronger today than he has been at any time. And I don't think he's under any threat at all internally or externally. Scott Ritter, always a pleasure, my man. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. 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.