Judging Freedom - Ukraine... Think, Have We learned History_ Larry Johnson

Episode Date: May 10, 2023

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Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, May 10th, 2023. It's about three o'clock in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. Larry Johnson joins us now. Larry, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for coming back. Thanks, Judge. Always a pleasure. Thank you. What is the mood of the Russian people today, a week after the drones were exploded over the Kremlin

and a day after their national emotional commemoration of one of their greatest victories in history in which they repelled the Nazis. They remain committed to this battle. I think they recognize that there is an existential dimension to it. They now acknowledge, I think, fairly widely that this was just not some minor dispute, but that the United States and NATO are intent on dismantling Russia. And it is not an idle threat. So I think Putin's government made effective use of the propaganda from that drone strike or failed drone strike to tout it as an assassination attempt. I don't believe it was an assassination attempt, but the Russians certainly played that

to the hilt and it was part of their overall messaging. There still is just a lot of disinformation coming out on both sides, but primarily from the Ukrainian side that has created not only a fog of war, it's like a rain cloud that covers everything. It is very dense and dark. I want to talk to you in a minute about a big picture and how a border dispute has become existential and who's behind that. I believe it's NATO and I suspect you do as well. But before we get there, do we know any more about the drone strike? I mean, was it Ukrainians inside Russia? Can those drones really travel from Ukraine to Russia? Do the Ukrainians have drones with that accuracy that they could explode right above a specific building in the Kremlin?

Would the Russians have done that to themselves? What do you think? What are your sources telling you? Well, I don't think it was the Russians. I've not heard anybody raise a credible claim that it was a Russia inside operation. And yes, Ukraine does have drones that can fly 800 kilometers. And so Moscow is well within the range of that. In fact, yesterday, didn't get a lot of reporting in the news, but Russia claims to have shot down three Ukrainian drones that originated from Ukraine territory that were flying towards Moscow.

But they were intercepted, brought down. What was the Ukrainian purpose? I mean, did they intend for this to damage the building? Did they know Putin wasn't there? Were they really trying to kill him? Or are they just trying to show, hey, buddy, here's how close we can come to where you put your head at night once in a while? Yeah, I think it was more the symbolic gesture that we can get you there because they carried out other strikes in other areas of Russia over the previous three, four months. So just showing that you can go to the heart of Moscow and create a black eye for Putin. I think that's what it was. It was designed to try to stir up animus in Russia towards Putin for not being able to protect Moscow itself from Ukrainian attacks.

How reckless has it been for the United States of America, the federal government, to spur on NATO in such a manner as to turn a border dispute into an existential battle? Well, let's remember that before this became what we'd call a border dispute or the attempt by the Ukrainian government to destroy all things Russian that are within the boundaries of Ukraine, Russian-speaking populations, their ability to speak Russian. Before that, the United States had deployed missiles and launchers to Poland and Romania. Those are, and this was an issue that Putin raised in December of 2021 with the United States, with Joe Biden directly, that they viewed those as another existential threat to Russia because those missiles from those launchers, which could carry nuclear warheads, can be a Moscow in 10 minutes. It is, in a way, sort the Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse. So the United States has put those there and I think that is really the underlying issue behind this entire

special military operation. Russia is going to create a buffer, but at the end there's going to be a confrontation with the United States. Those missile systems must be removed from Romania or Poland, or Russia will remove them. Okay, so let's go back a few years. Ukraine has an election, a free popular election with serious candidates, not a comedian running for president. A guy wins. He wants to use the victory and the government to align Ukraine more with Russia than with the West, but no cutting out of the rest of the West, trading with the West. to stage a coup. Your former colleagues and their friends in the State Department and elsewhere spread enough dollars around to stage a coup. This popularly elected president is thrown out, a puppet is put in, President Zelensky is elected. Why, after all that, is the Ukraine government trying to suppress all things Russian in the areas of Ukraine that border Russia. Right. They are driven by a neo-Nazi ideology. It is no different from the

Nazism expressed in the Third Reich, symbolized by Adolf Hitler. It really is a form. They are advocating a form of genocide. And it's not because of one's religious affiliation. It is nothing. It is entirely caught up with what language do you speak? The reality, ethnically, Ukrainians and Russians are Slavic people. And we had, you know, prominent U you were prominent let me just stop you this is a bizarre ethnic cleansing because they are the same ethnicity correct is it a linguistic claim cleansing you speak russian therefore we have to get rid of you

or kill you yeah and and the irony there is uh zielinski the ukrainian president was born speaking russian he was not raised speaking ukrainian and even to this day his his ukrainian is described as you know pretty poor barely passable and yet they are espousing these policies to extirpate all things r, not just the language, the culture, the statues, the literacy, the art, the sports figures across the board. We've never really, not even the Germans during the Holocaust and the efforts to exterminate the Jews of Europe and of Eastern Europe, did they go to such extremes as what the Ukrainians are proposing? Has Russia ever failed to win a war when it felt its existence was threatened?

Ever? No. They lost to the Japanese, but the Japanese were not planning to take over the then Soviet Union or what was then Russia. So, but every other attempt, going back to Napoleon and then followed by Adolf Hitler, the Russians have a way, you know, they have a history of being invaded and fighting off the invaders. And it even goes back to the Mongol invasions in the mid-centuries. So this is something that we've got to take into account,

that we as Americans do not take into account, because we've never been faced with such a threat, and we can't really imagine the kind of reaction that Russia has. But the CIA must know what the Russian backbone is like when it's pushed against a wall. I hope, but I'm not sure. Now you're frightening me, Larry. How could they not know this?

Don't we pay them to know this? We don't have men like Ray McGovern back there at the agency. The nice thing about Ray in the day when he was in charge of election analysis is he depended upon to speak without regard to what the political winds were blowing in Washington. He was not catered to that. What we have seen is a complete transformation of the CIA into a political animal. I mean, we just had proof, testimony from one of the people that signed the letter claiming Hunter Ball's lab was disinformation, that they were personally contacted by the CIA to sign such a letter. Think of that. This was not just former CIA officials doing this.

This was the actual CIA personnel in the pre-publication office reaching out and encouraging these people to engage in law and interfering in an election. You are a former agent, officer, analyst for the CIA. You know the CIA charter. You know the prohibitions on being involved in law enforcement or surveillance or politics within the United States. Can you assure me that all of your colleagues know that? And many of them don't give a damn. Yeah. Oh, they know it, but they're not following it. And this stems from the leadership at the top. That's where this comes from. When I went into the agency, I was considered a conservative. I

was a Reagan voter. And yet I saw my job as having to tell an objective truth without regard to the political control in Washington at the time. In fact, I became accused of being anti-Reagan because my analysis did not flow, was not consistent with what the policy was being announced out of the Reagan White House at the time. So the CIA management expects the CIA agents and analysts, the people who risk their lives to get the information and then the brainiacs who analyze the information, correct me if I'm wrong, to subjugate truthful information, data, and evidence to the policy wishes of the administration in Washington, whether it's Ronald Reagan or Joe Biden? Yeah, I have not personally seen the intelligence product, but I have spoken with people who have. And what they tell me is there is the CIA product is reflecting, let's call it propaganda.

It is not providing objective analysis. There may be an occasional piece that does, but by and large, the messaging that's coming across is helping promote and further the viewpoint that Russia is losing, that Russia is running out of missiles, that Russia is running out of tanks, that morale in Russia is crashing, that Putin's unpopular, ignoring the reality of what's actually taking place on the ground. And that's dangerous because you've got to have that Dutch uncle who's going to sit you down, tell you the truth that nobody else would tell you. That was what I thought the CIA was supposed to

be, at least from the analytical side. Over a night on a website called Telegram that we all know about, there appeared what appears to be Ukrainian plans for the spring offensive, complete with maps and diagrams and charts and everything. How the hell does something like this get into public domain? Well, Russia, for starters, has, I am pretty certain, intelligence assets, agents working for it that are Ukrainian, that are both within the Ministry of Defense, they're in the general staff of the Ukrainian army, and are able to access such material and pass it to Russia. I believe, you know, Russia could have leaked it. There's also

the possibility of someone on the Ukrainian side leaking it on their own. Telegram is a pretty good indicator or way to monitor what's going on. It's not necessarily all true, but it certainly sort of gives you a front row seat to the different propaganda wars being played out by both sides. We also know from our mutual friend and colleague, Colonel Doug McGregor, General Zeluzny refuses to meet with the NATO general staff, citing a tense operational situation in Ukraine. I'm looking down because I'm reading bullet points from Colonel McGregor. Now, I'm assuming this is accurate. Why would General Zeluzny refuse to meet with the NATO general staff? They provide the lifeblood of his equipment and ammunition, don't they? operation in Donbass has been killed by a Russian bomb. So that could be one explanation that Zelushny's attention is being focused right now because his senior top commander has been killed.

In addition, Russia dramatically stepped up its bombing, its use of glide bombs, the 500-kilogram and 1,500-kilogram bombs, dropping them on western Bakhmut. Okay, so you went to my next question. How catastrophic, how destructive are 500- and 1,500-pound bombs? They seem like monsters to me. They are. These operate in terms of destructive capability, orders of magnitude beyond anything that the Russian missiles that have been launched in the past, including the Kinsale, the various hypersonic missiles. So it allows, it can basically, it will take down an entire building. It won't just punch a hole in it. It'll eliminate it.

How are they delivered? They're dropped from fixed wing aircraft. They are, they call them glide bombs because they've attached fins, if you will, or small wings to these projectiles. And then they can glide up to 60 kilometers. So the, the, the Russian air force is not required to be in station above a hot area. They can stay outside of the range of Ukrainian air defense systems that are left and deliver these. And they've been hitting not just in Bakhmut, but they've been hitting troop concentrations

that have been gathering on the west bank of the Dnieper, preparing to cross near Zaporizhia. So they've been doing quite a bit of damage with these. You mentioned Russian hypersonic missiles. These things go, correct me, Larry, between five and ten times the speed of sound. Correct. Is it possible for the Ukrainians to have shot one down as they boast something that goes that fast? No, no, they can't. It's not even, they couldn't shoot down a bullet, much less the hypersonic missiles.

They're traveling in excess of Mach 6, upwards of Mach 10. So these are, and Russia and China right now, the only ones who really have developed deployable systems. United States is still working on it, but has not yet accomplished that. So, you know, we lag behind technologically in that regard. So this is- So when the Ukrainians leak that they've shot one down, this is for the untutored, because the educated know that this is a physical impossibility. It's another version

of the ghost of Kiev. If you remember the fighter pilot that shot down all of the Russian aircraft that in reality never existed from a video game. Going back to Colonel McGregor's list, Kyrsan was struck overnight by Russian precision strikes against Ukrainian depots, leaving Ukrainian troops without transportation.

Likely? Highly likely. What we've seen, if you go back over the last five, six days, in the aftermath of the drone attack in Moscow, that Russia has stepped up its launching of missiles, drones, and these glide bombs. They've been carrying them out every day. In the past, they would launch one and then wait a week or two to have another big launch. That's not what's going on right now. They've had at least five days of sustained heavy bombing, heavy missile strikes, heavy drone strikes, and they're doing it throughout Ukraine.

It's not just confined to one location. Russia moves 17 caliber cruise missile ships into the Black Sea. What's that for? Yeah, so the hypersonic missile, the caliber, it's sea launched. And so they've got these tubes that are built into the decks of the ship. Those tubes open up and boom. It looks like the Tomahawk missiles that have been fired off of U.S. vessels. So, you know, Russia is, the reality is Russia is stepping up the offensive, not Ukraine. There are some crazy reports.

Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Ukraine launched a massive counteroffensive in Bakhmut and has pushed the Russians back and has taken territory that is there's zero confirmation of that i saw that i saw that in the in the wall street journal i i thought they wouldn't have fallen for that kind of propaganda but apparently uh they did uh russia will withdraw completely from the EU Conventional Armed Forces Treaty of 1990. What does that mean? Well, they had already, in a de facto manner, withdrawn. They were no longer supporting it. Now this is just putting the legal document and putting it in print that we're no longer going to be part of this control of conventional forces. It's another declaration and acknowledgement by Russia that they are in a war, not just with

Ukraine, but with NATO. As if to emphasize that point, the last of Colonel McGregor's points, Polish aircraft, Polish ISR, you can tell us in a minute what ISR is, aircraft intercepted by Russian fighters over the Black Sea and escorted away. What are Russian ISR, excuse me, what are Polish ISR fighter pilots doing over the Black Sea? Yeah, ISR stands for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance so it's aircraft that would be designed to pick up signal intelligence designed to take photographs uh you know any kind of information that could be gleaned by flying near the territory of russia so this this is just the russians again sending a reminder in the same way when you remember when russia took out the.S. drone that was flying close, and it was collecting intelligence as well.

So they're stepping up. They're not going to sit back and be passive. What are the chances of Ukraine mustering the so-called offensive now that we're right in the middle of spring, in the middle of May? I don't think they can do it for the simple reason they kept announcing they were going to do it, putting the Russians and the rest of the world on notice that they were going to do it, which means if you're going to do something like that, you got to bring together an assembly of personnel and equipment. So now that you've warned the Russians that you're coming,

guess what? The Russians have been monitoring where those gathering points are, and they've been bombing them, shellacking them. That's why I think Ukraine may very well have intended to carry out such an offensive, but the personnel that they have gathered for these operations are literally being slaughtered they're being destroyed Gary do we have president Zelensky's talk the one that seems like it's well produced he gives it in Ukraine and translated into English the one that's about fight now so that no one ever again enslaves other nations and destroys other countries and all those old evils that modern Russia is bringing back

will be defeated just as Nazism was defeated. We will not lose what we have gained. We will return everything captured by the enemy. We will rebuild what was destroyed. And together we will protect it all. We do not yet know the date of our victory, but we know that it will be a holiday for all of Ukraine, for all of Europe, for all of the entire free world. So to what end is that, Larry? That's just three days ago. Yeah, he needs to cut back on his cocaine use. It's obviously affecting his mental faculties. Look, the reality is that Russia has not been out invading other countries. Russia has not been carrying out expeditionary military adventures, with the exception of Syria, where it was invited to come in back in 2015, I believe, was in September, that to come in and help Syria fight off Islamic

rebels that were being funded and armed by the United States and by the United Kingdom. So this notion that Russia is this aggressive power is just, it's a lie. And do not forget that Zelensky, when he ran for president, ran on the promise that he would bring peace and reconciliation with Russia. And once in office, he did a complete 180. And in that 180-degree turn, he embraced people like the Azov Battalion, the neo-Nazis, active Nazis, and embraced the elimination and erasing Russian culture and Russian heritage. So the man is a liar. There's no other way to put it. And what he's saying is delusional. It's not going to happen. The opposite is going to happen. Russia will end up crushing the Ukrainian military and NATO in the process. And Zelensky, he'll be lucky to survive. If he survives, he'll be in exile.

Larry Johnson, always a pleasure, my dear friend, no matter what we talk about. Thank you so much. Thanks, Judge. Wow. If you liked what you saw, like, subscribe, tell a friend, tell a friend to like and subscribe. More as we, isn't Larry terrific? More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.