Judging Freedom - Ukraine Slow Offensive_ Pentagon Accounting Error - w_SCOTT RITTER

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

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It's an implant that works inside your body to treat sleep apnea without a CPAP. That way you can breathe normally and rest more soundly. He sounds angry. Inspire is the only FDA approved sleep apnea treatment of its kind. It's helping tens of thousands of people finally get restful sleep. To learn more, visit InspireSleep.com. That's InspireSleep.com. Inspire, sleep apnea innovation. Inspire is not for everyone. Talk to your doctor to see if it's right for you and review important safety information at InspireSleep.com. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, June 21st, 2023. It's about 2.35 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Scott Ritter will be with us in just a minute, and he and I will view together with you two

four-star generals, former four-star generals, who claim Ukraine can and will win the war. One says they'll even get Crimea back right after this. When it comes to carrying valuables or even firearms in your vehicle, most people feel they have to choose between safety and convenience. A vehicle break-in occurs every 36 seconds in America. The Headrest Safe gives you the power to store cash, jewelry, medication, and yes, even your concealed carry firearm. You'll never have to worry about taking your valuables with you again keep them safe with the headrest safe use promo code judge nap and enjoy 50 off for a limited time at the headrest safe.com

where are you scott there we go welcome back my dear friend. A huge number of fans have been lining up and are happy that you're here. Thanks very much for your time with us. So how is the spring now summer offensive going for the Ukrainian military? It's an abysmal failure. I mean, they've lost upwards of 10,000 troops already, both on the line of contact and in the rear assembly areas. This offensive has no chance of succeeding. They have yet to penetrate or even make significant contact with the first line of Russian defenses, let alone the second or third line um you know they've bogged down in the initial uh obstacle barriers the minefields um they are being uh their attack is broken up by artillery and um and everything i told you was going to happen judge is happening here the the russian doctrinal defense is um the ukrainians are incapable of breaching it and what makes this even more criminal is that

any military professional knows this especially those who wear four stars on their uh shoulders who served in the u.s army they know the army doctrine for um you know a breaching assault they know that one of the first the very first requirement is suppression that means suppressing russian artillery air electronic warfare everything. The Ukrainians have suppressed nothing. Therefore, this is literally a suicide attack. Before we get to the two American four stars and their opinions, I think you know their opinions already. Given the textbook definition of what you need in order to conduct an offensive procedure, two to one, three to one, given the fact that not only do the Ukrainians not have two to one, three to one, it's one to ten, one to them versus ten for the Russians.

Can you characterize this decision to move forward with the spring offensive as militarily based or politically based? It's 100% politically based. This is literally Zelensky appeasing his NATO masters to create the perception of Ukrainian military prowess on the eve of a NATO summit where this entire Ukrainian, you know, commitment that NATO has made is going to be put on the table and discussed. And what NATO doesn't want to do, they, you know, they have a script they want to follow. But to even go through the motions of the script, they must be able to fool themselves and fool their respective constituencies into believing that continued investment into the Ukrainian machine has the potentialed and all you have is uh dead ukrainians destroyed equipment surrendered prisoners of war uh and russian forces not only successfully defending

but going over on the counter-attack uh capturing uh ukrainian cities capturing ukrainian towns um it's going to be impossible to to fake it You're going to have to admit that you've lost this war. And when I say you, not just Ukraine, but NATO, the collective West. The West, the West. Here's General Petraeus. Now, this is June 6th, so it's two weeks ago. Here's General Petraeus on who he thinks, no surprise, will prevail in the offensive. I think that the Ukrainians are very much ready for this. They'll be very distinctive because

they will be using, employing Western tanks, Western infantry fighting vehicles in large measure for the first time in this war, certainly in this number. I think the Russians will prove to be more brittle than the expectation is. Keep in mind, these units have been in combat for over a year, many of them. They have not been pulled offline to reconstitute by having forces replaced, equipment replaced and repaired, and then doing training before they go back. They just get individual replacements to fill the gap. They're not well-trained, they're not well-equipped, they're not well-led. And I think that these Ukrainian forces, which are well-trained, are well-equipped, are going to break through.

And then you might see a real dynamism to the battlefield that could give real opportunities to the Ukrainians to exploit. The master of the Iraq surge knows what he's talking about. Well, now we know why we lost the war in Iraq and we lost the war in Afghanistan, because everything that David Petraeus just said was wrong. Everything. Not one thing he said was right. Ukrainians are not well-trained. They're not well-led. You can't be well-led when you have 28-year-old, 25- and 28-year-old battalion commanders with less than one year of military experience. That's not well led. You're not well trained when you fall in on equipment for the first time in January, you begin training on it in February, and you're done by May. That's not well trained on anything, either the operation

of the equipment, this masterful US-made infantry fighting vehicle, the Bradley or the Leopard tank, or any of the Western-made artillery systems. Ukrainians don't know how to use them. They're not well-trained. They're poorly led. Their morale is poor. Meanwhile, the Russians, everything he said about the Russians is wrong. These troops have high morale, extraordinary levels of training. We're seeing it right now as they absorb the Ukrainian attacks, as they respond, counterattack locally. The Ukrainians haven't come close to the first line of defense yet. The Russians are well led, well trained, well equipped. Their morale is sky high right now. Everything Petraeus said is 100% wrong. I mean, normally when somebody humiliates themselves like that on national TV, they could graciously retire and go play golf or, you know, bridge or whatever else people do at that stage in their lives, but they shouldn't be going on national TV and promulgating such poor analysis. But remember, this is the man who gave us Afghanistan. Here he is again in the same interview. You can take a guess,

a mental guess, as to what he wants to see happen in Vilnius on July 11. And you can also take a guess on his opinion on F-16s. But there should be a very solid path to NATO membership that's provided at the Vilnius summit on 11 July. But in the meantime, the focus should be on enabling Ukraine to the greatest extent that we possibly can, so that the Ukrainians can prove to Putin that the Russians will not be able to out-suffer the Ukrainians. And also, we prove they won't be able to out-suffer the Europeans and the Americans as well. Does this include F-16 jets? Oh absolutely we should have made the decision to transition to the Western aircraft long ago again this is inevitable. What's inevitable is that the any F-16s that are provided to the Ukrainians if they are will be destroyed either on the ground or in

the air they'll have no impact on the battlefield whatsoever they can't again general petraeus is betraying um the fact that he's lying through his teeth i know he's an army officer but he was you know a commander who had worked with the air force and understands the limitations of the f-16 as a platform the logistical requirements the fact that the ukrainians will of the f-16 as a platform the logistical requirements the fact that the ukrainians will be getting f-16s that are beyond their expiration date being piloted by people who don't know how to fly them with insufficient training and sufficient weaponry it's a death trap and um atreus knows this uh why he's saying this is beyond me i guess he's just a just as poor a diplomat uh as he is uh a military commander he started that the second clip that we ran by saying the 11 july

meeting should begin ukraine's path to nato ukraine's path to nato you might as well just declare world war three now well what it means by path is there's, I believe there's seven things that Ukraine has to do to be a member of NATO according to their membership application plan, which was approved back in 2008. They've only accomplished two of those. And I mean, Joe Biden, the President of the United States has come out and said, there ain't no path to Ukraine being a member right now because while they've done two things, there's still corruption. There's still a lot of things we don't know about or we're not satisfied with. Plus, it's just, remember, it's a path towards membership. No one's asking Ukraine to be a member now except Ukraine.

NATO understands that you can't have Ukraine become a NATO member now. What they're talking about is a post-conflict world where, you know, the fantasy world where Ukraine prevails in the Russians' retreat and Ukraine gets everything it wants. How then do you transition in a post-conflict environment to Ukraine becoming a member as soon as possible? But again, this is total fantasy. Let me just reiterate what I've said all along. Ukraine is on the path of destruction. The course that they've taken in concert with their NATO allies will lead to Russia acquiring another 20 to 30% of Ukraine's territory. The demise, probably fatal demise of the Zelensky government and guaranteeing that whatever's left of Ukraine, once Russia wins decisively, will be a little rump state with no economic viability, no political viability.

It'll be a horrible tragedy for the people of Ukraine. Here's more fantasy from General Ben Hodges, retired four-star, former commander-in-chief of U.S. military forces in Europe. Well, I'll let you listen to what he says. Ukraine needs long range precision weapons. And I'm very frustrated that our administration has so far refused to provide the ATACOMs and other long range precision weapons, which would help Ukraine hit Russian targets in Crimea. Because at the end of the day, Crimea is the decisive terrain. As long as Russia occupies Crimea, Ukraine will never be safe, and Ukraine will never be able to rebuild its economy. So Crimea is the decisive terrain. And if the U.S. would provide these long-range weapons to Ukraine, then the Russians would have to begin to leave Crimea.

How crazy is that? Well, again, Ben Hodges is somebody who is totally devoid of reality. Look, Shoigu, the Minister of Defense of Russia, has responded to this. He says, if Ukraine uses existing weaponry, that is the Storm Shadow cruise missile provided by the British or the HIMARS provided by the United States to strike Crimea, that Russia will take out decision-making centers in Ukraine. This means that Russia basically will take the gloves off and Zelensky will die, Zelensky will die, everybody will die gloves off and Zelensky will die. Zelushny will die. Everybody will die.

All the decision makers will die. And then what is Ben Hodges going to do? I mean, Ukraine attack him doesn't change anything. Pro hint, General, there's no such thing as a magic weapon. You know, the Leopard was supposed to be a magic weapon. Highmars was supposed to be a magic weapon. Stormshadow is a magic weapon. F-16, you know, is going to be a magic weapon. Storm Shadow is a magic weapon. F-16,

you know, is going to be a magic weapon. Atakums will change everything. It changes nothing. The Russians are a mature military that has known of the existence of Atakums for years. The Russians have systems that are better than Atakums. Yeah, so you fire Atakums and you take out a target here, a there a target here all you do is escalate the conflict and the Russians will inflict far more damage on Ukraine than the attack him could ever accomplish and you're just guaranteeing that the Ukrainian government you claim to want to support will die uh you know a very violent death uh General Hodges like General Petraeus should just shut up and go away because they're not doing anybody any good. We're going to take a break. When we come back,

we will play for Scott and ask his comments about President Putin's comments and views on all of this right after the break. You want to feel safe in your vehicle. And for you, that means easy, rapid access to your firearm. But safety also means your items don't fall into the wrong hands. You don't have to choose between safety and convenience. The Headrest Safe keeps your firearm where you can access it, and no one else can. Just order your Headrest Safe, install it yourself when it arrives, and enjoy peace of mind. It starts at theheadrestsafe.com. Before we run the clips of President Putin and before we run a clip of the

chief of staff of President Zelensky, what is the state of the American stockpiles of weapons? How depleted are they? How much stuff that the Pentagon would want if, God forbid, they needed it to defend American territory is gone? I mean, for instance, artillery systems, we've created this situation where we'd have nothing left to give without consuming our stockpiles. So anything future for the Ukrainians or anybody else, by the way, would have to be fresh made. That's why we're seeing the end of drawdown and the beginning of new production, which means that what things we're promising the Ukrainians will only come months, if not years from now, because we have to build it from scratch and here's the problem it's one thing for a politician to say let's do this and have congress go let's do this but now the guy who builds it's going to go

not so fast guys you see this is i'm a private industry i'm a business i need contracts i need contracts that are. I'm not going to change everything, divert all resources to pump out a handful of items for Ukraine. It's going to bankrupt me. That's not how business works. You want this? I need long-term contracts. I need lots of stuff being built. And Congress is going, well, we're not there yet. We don't want to do that. And so all this stuff being promised isn't going to be built because defense contractors are saying we it's not financially, you know, our Lockheed Martin is not a state enterprise. All right. Have our stockpiles to which Lloyd Austin would refer in an emergency been depleted because of this? Well, first of all, they were depleted before this.

The United States stockpiles have been developed over the course of 20 years to support two things, low-intensity conflict in the Middle East and training. As again, General Cavoli has said when he spoke, he's the commander of Allied forces and American forces in Europe. When he spoke in Sweden in January, he said, the scope and scale of the violence that's taking place in Ukraine is beyond our imagination. That means that the United States and NATO have not prepared for this. And preparation includes things like stockpiling ammunition. We're out of ammo. We gave it all to the Ukrainians. We don't have any left and we can't produce it. We're out of artillery. We're out of HIMARS rockets. We don't

have enough air-to-air missiles for our aircraft. We don't have enough fuel. Remember, combat is very fuel intensive, and we don't have enough fuel stockpiled. How are we going to fly all these airplanes? How are we going to operate all these tanks? We haven't budgeted the fuel. It hasn't been acquired. We don't have the storage for it. We don't have anything. So this is just a fantasy that is out there that somehow the United States and NATO are going to be able to sustain this fight or get involved in this fight. We don't have anything. Here's the chief of staff of President Zelensky in an interview. The questions by the Wall Street Journal reporter are in English.

His answers are in Ukrainian. so I will read the subtitles. I didn't know, maybe you did, that there were peace negotiations in February of 2022. Here's what he has to say about it. You tried to negotiate some sort of truce or deal before the war, and that obviously didn't work. What lessons have you learned from that about how you deal with the Russians? I remember how the Russian delegation acted. Everything that they couldn't achieve through pressure during these many hours of negotiations, they attempted to achieve through military means on February 24, 2022.

Ukraine will never compromise our country's territorial integrity. As a result, there will be no negotiations with the Russians as long as their troops remain here. How unrealistic is that, Scott? The Russians are never going to leave Crimea or the Donbass. Well, remember, when the negotiations he's talking about prior to the conflict, the Donbass. Well, remember when he, when, when the negotiations he talking about prior to the conflict, the Donbass was still part of Ukraine and the only territory that Russia had taken control of, which it was Crimea, which everybody recognizes as Russian. They won't recognize

politically, but there's not a person out there that can articulate a cognizable claim that Crimea is Ukrainian. So he basically threw away an opportunity to give Ukraine everything they're seeking now. Think about that. What Ukraine wants today is Russian troops out of Zaporizhia, Kyrgyzstan, Donetsk, and Lugansk. There weren't any Russian troops in those territories while they were having this negotiation. Had Ukraine ceded to these negotiations, they'd get everything they're looking for today. Plus, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers wouldn't have died. A trillion dollars worth of infrastructure damage wouldn't have happened. Tens of millions of people wouldn't be displaced yermak is criminal you know is

criminally implicated in his statements he threw away an opportunity to peacefully uh you know bring prevent to prevent a conflict and today look at the ukrainian negotiating position he's basically ukraine's trying to get back to where they were prior to February 24. And it's never going to happen. They've lost 20%. They're going to lose another 30%. And it's all over. And, oh, by the way, Yermak, if a storm shadow strikes Crimea, you're dead man walking. You're not going to be alive.

You might as well flee the country now because you constitute what they call a decision-making center. And they will kill you. Here's President Putin late last week. You're you constitute what they call a decision making center and they will kill you. Here's President Putin late last week. Very, very calm with a translator to female voice translating about how the U.S. doesn't want to talk to him. And he's happy to talk to us if they will listen. As for the contacts, we don't have any contacts practically, but we didn't reject them. If there's a desire to enter into a dialogue with us, they are welcome. It's not us who stopped this dialogue. They moved this dialogue into the sphere of supplying

our weapons and armory. Okay okay we are going to burn all that they have supplied and then we'll see what we are going to do next mark he's right on the mark right the interesting thing about what he says is it's all accurate I mean unlike Petraeus unlike Hodges unlike Yermak unlike Lincoln Lincoln, Sullivan, Biden. Everything Vladimir Putin says, just spot on accurate. You may not like the guy. You may not like what he's saying. But don't tell me that what he's saying is a lie. They're in the process of destroying everything that NATO has provided Ukraine. They have always been willing to enter into negotiations. They

demonstrated that from day one. And the fact is, when America loses this conflict in Ukraine, and we will lose, Russia will be ready to sit down with us and negotiate some sort of equitable termination of conflict because Russia is the only, Vladimir Putin is the only adult in the room right now. I mean, that's just a statement. I can't resist playing another one. This is the same interview. President Putin saying the U.S. is trying to provoke us. The Kremlin, there are terrorist attacks organized by Kiev. And of course, all those drone drone attacks including the Kremlin. On the one hand the Biden administration is quite categorical in saying that they do not approve of such actions and they never

promoted their destruction of Nord Stream 1 and 2. Can you evaluate it and how are you going to deal with it? You know, everything you mentioned, these are the attempts to provoke us to some powerful counteractions, the attempt to hit and cause some damage to the Kremlin and all those assaults on the Belgorod region and villages near the border. All these are attempts to provoke us. So if we destroyed five Patriot complexes near Kiev, so what do you think? Can we destroy any building in Kiev? There are no limitations for us,

but we don't do it due to a number of considerations. What do you think? He's the calmest guy in the room. And he has every reason to be calm because he's in control. I mean, you know, it would have been, his calmness would have been more impressive had we seen it, and we did see it, a year ago. Because a year ago, there were a lot of factors that were unknown, like how strong, how resilient the Russian economy would be, what the political consequences of mobilization would be. They still didn't know what the ramifications of NATO's tens of billions of dollars of aid to Ukraine would be. So Putin was not in the same position that he was, and he was hesitant to go forward and have this kind of interaction.

Today, a year later, you're seeing the most relaxed man in the world. That is a man comfortable with every aspect of his existence. He has a sense of humor. His facts are there because he knows what this outcome will be. He is in charge. He is in the driver's seat. There's nothing the West can do short of a nuclear war, which would be the end of everybody. And he's already indicated that if that's the route they want to go, so be it. Everybody will be dead, but the Russians will go to heaven as martyrs. How do you deal with that mindset? But he is comfortable with the strength of Russia, with the posture of Russia. Nothing's going to ruffle this guy. Compare and contrast that with everybody else on the Western side. Look at the frustration of Hodges. I mean, that was a man

fidgeting in the seat. Look at Petraeus. He's scared deer in headlights as he's lined everybody. Look at Sullivan. Look at Blinken. Look at Biden. They are running scared. Biden can't get in front of his donors without panicking. The threat of a Russian nuclear attack is real, is real, he said. Well, did you look at Putin? Does he look like a man frothing at the mouth waiting to attack? What he said is, we're here, we're ready to negotiate after we destroy everything. We took out five Patriot systems in Kiev, he said. And he did. And he said, so we can take out anything we want to, but we choose not to. That's a man in total. Scott Ritter, thank you so much for joining us. Much appreciated. We'll talk to you again soon.

Thank you very much. If you like what you just saw, and I suspect you did. Like, subscribe, and share with a friend. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. You want to feel safe in your vehicle. With access to your firearm, that's both secure and convenient. The Headrest Safe keeps your firearm where you can access it and no one else can. It starts at theheadrestsafe.com. Thank you.