Judging Freedom - Ukraine War, At a Dangerous Threshold_ - Tony Shaffer

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, April 24, 2023. It's about 3.55 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States. Tony Schaefer joins us for his weekly, sometimes twice weekly, session with us. That's right. Colonel, it's a pleasure. Welcome back, Tony. Thank you, Judge. Good to be here. Thank you for having me again. Of course. Just a few minutes ago, I had not planned to ask you about this, but it just popped up. Just a few minutes ago, we learned that Russia, chairing the Security Council of the United Nations, sat down in New York City at the UN in an effort to talk about a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine. And the American, British, and Swiss counterparts on the Security Council would have nothing to do with it.

Instead, they blasted Russia and blasted Foreign Minister Lavrov personally. Our hypocritical convener today, the American ambassador said while staring in Foreign Minister Lavrov's eyes, invaded its neighbor, struck at the heart of the UN Charter. This illegal, unprovoked, and unnecessary war runs directly counter to our most shared principles that a war of aggression and territorial conquest is never, ever acceptable. And she went on and on from there, as did her counterpart from Great Britain and from Switzerland. Question, wouldn't this have been an opportunity to try and pin Foreign Minister Lavrov down to the terms and conditions of a ceasefire instead of a sort of a histrionic Joe Biden, Tony Blinken attack on all things Russian? Yeah, I think so. And here's why. At this point, Judge,

neither side is going to gain a decisive victory. It's just not in the cards that the Russians are going to wear down the Ukrainians. I feel for the soldiers on both sides of this, because I think like many wars, soldiers fight for what they believe to be correct, and often they are deceived. And I think soldiers on both sides are being deceived right now, and they're paying the price for it. Other than that, the Ukrainian people are paying the price for it. So one of the things I've said, and my colleagues, I think, back me up on this, is that if you're actually fighting to win on the Ukrainian side, you're not actually doing anything that the side. You're not supporting and providing the weapons necessary to do that.

You're just kind of dribbling things in. So to me, Judge, this response was more of the same relating to the fact that the European powers, for the most part, leadership in European powers. I don't think the polls in these countries reflect a pro-war stance, but the leaders in these countries seem to still be pushing for war and they are not ready to talk. And I think it's tragic. You're going to continue to see a tragic loss of life with no one inside because no one's willing to actually cross over and have a discussion on how to end it. In late March, but this was revealed over the weekend, President Zelensky said that Ukraine could not begin its renewed counteroffensive until Western nations sent more weapons, including artillery tanks and high mobility rocket artillery. Now, why would he make

a statement like that? Why would he announce an offensive and then announce it's being delayed? And what does he mean by offensive? Pushing Russia back or bombing Crimea? What is he talking about? No, the objective, everything I've read, I think General Hodges actually said it the other day in some sort of editorial. A U.S. Army retired general said that

the objective of the spring offensive is to push the Russians back to Crimea. It sounds like his speech was written by Victoria Nuland. I mean, so it's like literally the Ukraine and what army? Because the Ukrainian army by itself can't do that. It doesn't have the military capacity. Let me be clear on this because, again, I'm not pro-Russian. I'm not pro-Ukrainian. As I've said before, and people don't like it, but I say it all the time, if a yeast infection was fighting fungus, I wouldn't get in the middle of it. I don't care. That's kind of the way I look at it here. You have two sides. Both of these countries are cut from the Soviet cloth. Ukraine was part of the

Soviet Union. So they have the same corruption in Ukraine as they do in Russia. So the fact is that you have this leverage. And I think Zelensky said what he said, Judge, to try to leverage the West into giving more support for what he wants done, which is to continue and expand the war and try to get NATO more directly involved. That's what the Ukrainians are counting on, more and more direct NATO involvement to keep the war going. So does President Zelensky practice a form of diplomacy which can only be characterized as pathetic? He will announce publicly how weak they are and expect people to come running to his defense yes i i absolutely because it's the uh the the damsel in this distress and i've seen him wear high heels apparently i don't know i mean i don't know if he's a damsel or not but i'm just saying he's he's

kind of crying out saying we must do this offensive and if you don't support us we can't do it and by the way the russians are watching all this mean, unless there's something super secret that nobody knows about on the NATO or Ukrainian side, keeping announcing to the Russians that you're going to have an offensive doesn't exactly provide any tactical or operational surprise to them. And I think they're watching all of this and they're probably going to go into a defensive haunch. They're going to basically absorb whatever the spring offensive is and continue to reduce the effectiveness of the Ukrainian military. It almost sounds, Tony, as if the Ukrainian president is just preparing the public and the world for a crash landing. You know, that offensive that we were going to pull off, we're all ready. We just need ammunition. We have weapons, but no ammunition. I'm paraphrasing. Otherwise, I don't know why he would announce it and then cancel it

because they're waiting for Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron to send more ammunition. The Wall Street Journal in headlines this morning, weapons makers can't hire enough workers as Ukraine war drives demand. So there's a saying in our military circles, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics. I've been doing a kind of a review study of World War II. Judge, much of our success was done because of logistics. We understood how to put together and have effective weaponry, ammunition, all where it needed to be when we needed it. You're doing the opposite here. They're talking about all these tactics. They're talking about

doing all these things, but nobody, the tanks aren't showing up like they're supposed to. We've talked about previous episodes of our discussions. The Ukrainians aren't getting the artillery shells they need. Patriot missiles haven't shown up yet. There's all these deficits that we know about, and you can't overcome that. professional understanding of my own experience, plus my current review of World War II I'm going through as a professional kind of education exercise I'm doing. The logistical elements which are required for victory are not present on the battlefield of Ukraine at this point in time. Wow. Here is Dmitry Medvedev, the former president of Russia. Putin serves two terms.

The Russian constitution doesn't permit a third term at the time. President Medvedev is elected. They make Putin the prime minister that created the job for him. Then they changed the constitution. Now Putin's in his third consecutive, but fifth all over term. Right. Former president Medvedev is like Jake Sullivan. He's the head of the National

Security Council attacking Poland. The Poles are once again dreaming of restoring the interstate union with Ukraine and revival of the underdone empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, from sea to sea, having no intellectual powers for creating a viable image of a future and living up to its reputation of a country toppled over into the past. Poland is drawing inspiration from 400-year-old maps when parts of today's Ukraine still belong to it. Emboldened by the current circumstances, Poland has decided that the chance to absorb the remnants of Ukraine is to be taken now or never. The same President Medvedev who once said, if we need to, we will go as far west as the Polish border. So why this provocation? Is this bad cop to

Putin's good cop? Is this a trial balloon to see how the West reacts? What do you think? I think the Russians are aware that certain elements in Poland have ambitions to restore or establish long ago boundaries. The Chinese are doing it too. That's one of the things China said very clearly. Our law, we want to restore the boundaries of the Ming dynasty, yada, yada, yada. I think there's always going to be political elements in those countries which see the past as their future. It is what it is. It's a nationalistic fervor that these nations take on and it happens. I don't believe it's the majority perspective, especially with Poland. I think

Poland has some issues relating to the history during World War II, the fact that they were split apart by Germany and Russia, Nazis and all that. And I know that the Poles out of all the nations are the most willing to jump into the fight. Some have said that they may even have battalions already on the battlefields fighting against the Russians on behalf of Ukraine. That could be. But I think the Russians are trying to sound a warning that they are aware that something is brewing in Poland and they're willing to take military action if necessary to stop it. So the president of Poland about two months ago said the United States and the Polish military should lead an invasion of Crimea,

again channeling Victoria Nuland. Perhaps the president or former president Medvedev said this in response, but when Medvedev says this, is this Russian policy? If he's saying it, it must be policy because he's a policy guy. So yeah, I think it is. And I think it should be interpreted as a warning to us that, hey, we think this is what's going on. Remember, Judge, during the Cold War, the most dangerous times that we almost got into a hot war with the Russians was when they misinterpreted something we were doing. My friend, Dr. Peter Pry, wrote a book called War Scare, the late Peter Pry, War Scare 1983, where the Russians thought an exercise, Able Archer,

which was a command post exercise designed to test our readiness to use nuclear weapons, was actually going to launch nuclear weapons. They misinterpreted what we were doing, and they were ready to launch nuclear weapons. They misinterpreted what we were doing, and they were ready to launch on it. So I'm just saying that perception is reality, and we have to look at their perception. So if the Russians think that we're about to do something, they're going to act on their perception, not on what we're doing. And this is something we did learn during the Cold War that I think people currently in charge have forgotten. It's a very dangerous time right now.

Over the weekend, the New York Times and NBC News and a few others reported that the documents which were leaked by, the government says Jack Deshera, we don't know if Deshera did it on his own or if he was a stooge for somebody north of him on the totem pole, that the leaking began when the Russian military entered Ukraine in February of 22, not February of 23. So if this leak was the worst since the Pentagon Papers, what harm, what palpable harm was there? It was out there for 14 months before the Defense Department and the intelligence community even knew about it. So there's three things. First, if it was out that long, the Russians knew about it and they were probably acting on it. They wouldn't say anything about it. It's like, yeah, just keep putting it out there. Secondly, this talks to me about an insecurity that goes much deeper, if this is true.

I don't know if it's true or not, because they have not filled that void in between Tessera and the source of the information. I've talked to a number of folks, Judge, who worked at the level of those briefing slides being prepared. I've checked with friends who actually were involved in that. I've been in a room when those briefings were given. All that information is tightly controlled. With that said, it's also information that the Russians probably figured out on their own. And one of the things I learned as a counterintelligence special agent is that if you're going to do a real successful counterintelligence operation where you're basically providing an asset, classified information to pass to the bad guys to release out, you put out real stuff,

but you basically say, yeah, I can afford to let this go because people probably already know it. It's a risk versus gain thing. So that's the third factor here. This information to me is not something the Russians would not have been aware of, probably even on their own. And so we're trying to figure out who benefits from having let that information out to the world. Great question, Tony. That's what I was going to ask you in a different way. You're more succinct and direct than I am. But here's what I was going to say before you said who benefits. have been out there for 14 months lend more credence to the view articulated by Larry Johnson

and partially by you that this was a controlled leak and Teixeira was not the cause of the leak, he was the instrument of the leak. Based on my direct knowledge and having participated in what we call foreign counter intelligence uh operations uh to quote jim clapper and john brennan this meets the classic earmarks of a counterintelligence operation as they said about the hunter biden hard drive being russian disinformation this does this actually does meet the the hallmarks of an operation like that yes it does it looks it looks a lot like it to those of us who are professionals Russian disinformation. This actually does meet the hallmarks of an operation like that. Yes, it does. It looks a lot like it to those of us who are professionals. So who would have done this and why, without naming names, unless you have them,

and why would they have done it? What mentality would have done this? Is this a person in the administration who believes that the government is way off base and the public needs to know the truth? Is this an anti-Biden person? Is this a friend of Biden's trying to change his mind, trying to provide a soft landing instead of a crash landing? Why leak this? This had to come from a very high level. And I'm not convinced as some of the folks are alluding to or implying that oh it was on jwix which is the joint uh in uh intelligence worldwide network jwix it's it's a top secret system and they're alluding to it i've never heard confirmation so i don't think it was on there because judge those documents are not typically on an open uh network even though it's top secret it's, it's people who have the clearance

can technically just log in and go get stuff. I don't think that's true. So we really do, we are owed that answer because who leaked this, where these documents came from will provide you the basic answer you're asking. I can't give that to you. I don't know enough about how it got to Sarah, but I'm telling you right now, an airman first class who's a tech does not end up with chairman of the joint chiefs staff documents over a year being permitted to put them out there to his friends on the internet without someone opening that door. It just doesn't happen. And that's why he's locked up and the government wants to throw away the key. Yes. Because now there are elements in the government, A, that want to prosecute him because they think this is such a horrible crime, even

though they can't point to any harm that came about. B, they want to prosecute him because they want to have a fall guy. And C, they want to prosecute him. So, you know, everybody's focused on that prosecution and not on the maneuverings of whoever caused this to happen. Right. And it's a distraction of actually figuring out that we've been lied to. One of the things I've said in a number of interviews, I think with you as well, the real story is here is that this confirms we were lied to by the White House and the Pentagon over and over and people lied under oath. And yet that's not the story. Now, the story is this kid. And I get it. I get the kid needs to be a focus. But, Judge, we need to focus on the fact that these documents, which the government said they're so terrible that this is as bad as anything we've had in the last 20 years,

then how come they're not talking about the content if it's that bad? I mean, that's what we should be doing. The Secretary of Defense has not made any public statements since that interrogation by Senator Roger Wicker, which you and I viewed and you commented on, is more likely than not a lie, because we now know that at the time he expressed optimism about the Ukraine military and Ukraine defenses, he knew what was in those documents, which purport to be a consensus of him and his five senior most generals, all four stars, that the military, that the air defenses of Ukraine have been degraded, that the war is going badly and Ukraine is likely to lose. He knew that and he said the opposite of it under oath to the United States Congress in an effort to extract more funds out of the Congress.

I believe that's true. And that's another reason why I think that these documents they even put out there and just kind of led to kind of simmer and then be revealed now. Because again, Judge, the administration can say, yeah, we lied to you, but we need more money because things are bad. We lied to you. We wanted to cover up how bad it was. And now, sorry, we need more money. Because nobody seems to have changed their tune regarding we still need to get in there and support Ukraine no matter what. How much longer can Ukraine survive the war if, as the documents indicate, by June 1st, which is six weeks from now, its air defenses will be degraded to zero? Well, I think that's it. I mean, and they're expecting the Patriot missile batteries to show up. And I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday. It's like, imagine the shock and horror of the Pentagon when the Russians

take out one of our Patriot missile batteries, which is inevitable because they're going to take those things out pretty quick. The answer is, I don't know. And I don't think the Russians know either, because the Russians, I think, are indeed not trying to get their people killed. People are dying, no doubt. But I don't think the Russians are going to use human wave tactics. It's not going to be Stalingrad, where they actually send all these kids in there to die in mass. I think they're going to sit back and let the Ukrainians exhaust themselves. And by the way, the West is actually helping the Russians on this. And when you just dribble in material and weapons, it's like the Russians can knock it down just as you put it in. And so it's kind of like I don't know who thinks it's a good idea to just dribble the stuff in. But again, if the policy is to help the Ukrainians win,

they're not doing it. The U.S. is not doing it. Tell us about a Patriot missile battery. Is it mobile? Is it stationary? And what does it cost? Well, it's very expensive. And they are mobile, but not really.

I mean, to set up because of telemetry, because of all the different mechanisms required to get it adjusted and ready to fire you've got to set it up it takes hours to do that and uh so i'm telling you right now with today's technology judge they're gonna the russians will figure out within 20 minutes where one of these things are set up there's the they have radars they have what we call mason signatures they have a certain profile. Russians know all this.

I'm not telling you anything is classified. This is just the profile in a battle space. And so when one of these starts coming up, there are certain indicators it's about to come up. And the Russians will know from their electronic remote warfare monitoring. And then they're going to have drones. So they're going to see the thing coming up. And I'm telling you right now, within a few minutes of those things being up, they're going to have drones so they're going to see the thing coming up and I'm telling you right now within a few minutes of those things being up I'm they're going to take them out because they can do that and and then to great even further the the air defense Archer

Lake counter counter battery fire that the Ukrainians have I just don't think I don't think it's going to have that much of an effect on the battle space and to your point I think the Russians are just going to let them let them exhaust themselves. Why trouble yourself to go on the offensive if the enemy keeps coming to you and you just keep swatting them away? And that's the way I think they're going to do it. Tony Schaefer, always a pleasure, no matter what we're talking about, my dear friend. Thank you, sir. Always good to be on your expertise and thanks for your time. Thank you. Well, if you like that, I guess you did, but from your comments, like and subscribe

more as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Well, if you like that, I guess you did, but from your comments, like and subscribe. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.