Judging Freedom - Ukraine War & Nukes Moving Around - Col Doug Macgregor

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

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🎵 Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, June 14th, 2023. It's three o'clock in the afternoon here on the East Coast of the United States. Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us today for his analysis on the latest in Ukraine and with NATO and even in Washington, D.C. 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. Give dad the perfect Father's Day gift this year. The Headrest Safe.

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 JUDGENAP and enjoy $50 off for a limited time at theheadrestsafe.com. Colonel McGregor joins us now. Colonel, always a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. What is your latest view from open sources and from your own sources about the cause of the explosion in the dam in eastern Ukraine about 10 days ago, and who suffered more because of it, the Russians or the Ukrainians? Well, the consensus appears to be that the Ukrainians did it, and I'm told that it actually was approved if you will

for demolition by Victoria Nuland which is kind of interesting uh I don't know uh and again you know you you have the intelligence officers I think they've probably said something similar yes but as far as who benefits well the Ukrainians certainly did not benefit from this at all. But I think it probably assisted the Russians because it created a situation where they had less to defend, obviously, and their left flank was effectively invulnerable to amphibious assault, even though I think that probably would have resulted in still more Ukrainian casualties. Would something of this magnitude, I guess, if Victoria Nuland was involved, I was going to ask you if Washington approved, that answers that question. If she was

involved, Washington would approve of something like this. Does she, who is not a military person, get in, as far as you know, get involved in the minutiae of military strategy? I have no way of knowing that, Judge. I'm just telling you what I was told by the sources that I trust. And it seems reasonable that if you're going to take a big action, any sort of big action, you're going to send your special operations forces into Russia, try to assassinate someone, fly drones into the Kremlin or something, you're probably going to ask your sponsors in Washington, what do you think? And that means that she's going to be involved. She's been involved in everything happening in Ukraine, really, I would say now for at least 14, 15 years, if not longer. The spring offensive is becoming a summer offensive.

What is your take? What is your understanding of its success or its failures thus far? And it's likely progression from this time forward. You know, there are a lot of interesting reports out there. And if you have time, and I don't think most people do, you begin to look at these reports of Ukrainian gains, you discover that in many cases, the areas where they are claiming that they made gains are nowhere near the battlefield. They're not even in the security zone. And a few times they'll point to some ruined buildings, two or three at a time inside the security zone. And that's this 15 to

25 kilometer stretch of territory beyond the main defensive belt that the Russians have constructed. So I would tell you there'd be no gains at all, because everything always hinged on the ability of the Ukrainian counteroffensive to reach the main defensive belt, crack it, move through it in order to reach something of importance like Belitopol. It hasn't happened. And we're now at least 11 days into what the Ukrainians said would be a two-week offensive. How much they've got left is anybody's guess. The last time I looked, there were supposedly still 12 brigades in reserve. Now, are those full-strength brigades? Or, you know, conceivably that could be 60,000 men if they're up to 5,000 each. Or are they 4,000?

Are they 3,000, 2,000? I don't know. But at this stage of the game, they have not yet committed those last remaining reserves. Would those last remaining reserves be the last remaining reserves period for the duration of the war or just for this offensive? But 60,000 men doesn't sound like a lot to me when you consider what Putin has. Well, I'm told the likely number is closer to 35 to 40,000. I don't think there's much left, frankly. And I think that's reflected in the headlines that you're getting out of Washington right now. The discussions

about, as we talked last time, frozen conflict, setting up some sort of halfway house. Washington knows that Ukraine is close to collapse. It very definitely is. The country is destroyed. The military has been weakened beyond imagination. You're talking about people that are being thrown into action without adequate artillery support, without adequate protection in the air and missile defense category. So when you don't have those kinds of protections and you send in troops, many of whom are green or inexperienced, you see one catastrophe after the next. And at the same time, as we pointed out before, the Russians have now become much, much better than they were a year and a half ago. I think

they're probably the best army in the world at this point. They're very competent, very well organized. They're now able to mine behind advancing Ukrainian troops by air delivery of mines from helicopters, from artillery. This thing has gone very badly for the Ukrainians. We don't know how many people they've lost, and they're not going to tell us the truth, Judge. I've never heard of this before, so forgive my ignorance. What is an air-delivered mine? Is that a mine that sort of self-digs it?

No, these are mines that can be delivered from an airplane, from a helicopter. I think the Russians like to use helicopters at low altitude flying. And, of course, you can also deliver them from artillery. We have artillery-delivered mines. However, these mines are self-actuating. In other words, they hit the ground in a certain pattern, which is designed in advance. Then they activate.

Now, that means that you can see them, but that doesn't make much difference if they're all around you. Right, right, right. What difference does it make? You still have to go through the mines. And breaching, I actually ran over a mine in my M1A1 tank in 1991, and it rocked the 70 ton tank. Fortunately for me, it was a Chinese box mine and the blast was not as intended. And that was because it had a tilt rod on it. It'd been in the desert so long, it shifted. So the blast was up, but away from the tank. So it blew off most of my right track. But the point is that you know when you've

got tens of thousands of these and they're potentially a million plus mines in front of these defenses once you're in it then you then you discover there's no way out of it you try to turn around and get out of it and you run into mines behind you that weren't there when you started this is catastrophic uh here's uh yevgeny progozhin it's rather uh measured talk by his standards um analyzing his or explaining his view of the success or lack thereof of the ukrainians and their offensive it's in russian with subtitles so for the benefit of our friends who are listening as opposed to watching this show, I will read the subtitles aloud.

The following is happening. Ukrainians begin an offensive. I'm saying all of this with the offensive. They do everything competently they're cutting off certain areas in the zaparizhia direction they're moving carefully calmly they lost a couple of leopards and bradley's these are normal combat losses. I'm not saying this to promote them, but to judge sensibly. For now, in my view, and according to the valuation of the military on the ground, not enough is being done to counter the enemy. Pretty optimistic, pretty pessimistic on his part, no?

Again, you know, Progoziev is an interesting character. I think he has aspirations that are political in nature. I also think he's close to Putin. And if he says something like this, I'm sure that Putin has approved it. Putin just spoke the other day, Judge. I don't know if you've read his remarks in English. Oh, I have. We have some clips of it for you. He was nothing short of brilliant in some of his analyses, but you know this far better than I, Colonel. Here he is with some remarkable candor is the way I'll describe it. And again, I'll read the subtitles.

During this time, they've lost over 160 tanks, over 300, 460 armored vehicles of various types. This is just what we see there are still losses that we do not see that are inflicted the Russian Federation has also been using high precision weapons attack large concentrations so there are actually more of these losses on the Ukrainian side

and so by my calculations it it's about 25, maybe 30 percent of the volume of equipment that was supplied from abroad. Here's about, it seems to me that if they can't objectively, they'll go along with it. But as far as I've seen from open sources, from Western sources, that's about what they seem to be saying here. So the offensive is on. These are the results to date of what I just said. Now, this is part of a three and a half hour interview, as you know, because you've read the transcript, or maybe you read it in the original Russian, as our friend Ray McGovern did. Well, God bless you.

Ray sent me a tape of him getting arrested in the Senate the other day. It was quite a hoot. We'll talk about that some other time. But be that as it may, I thought President Putin was remarkable. I can't imagine Joe Biden sitting down with America's leading journalists for three and a half hours. But be that as it may, what did you think about what he said on that clip? I think he gave you an accurate picture because that's largely what we're hearing. If anything, he understated the damage. And that's probably a good thing for him to do as the president of Russia. The point he's trying

to make is it's not over. And everything that he says subsequent to his discussion of the battle damage, which has been serious, revolves around how much more of this do we have to destroy, then we need to take stock of what we've destroyed. And based on that, we'll then consider what we want to do next. I mean, it's very obvious to me that from the beginning, he's always wanted to spare his troops unnecessary casualties. He's also been interested in avoiding unnecessary collateral damage. And he would like to have a settlement without pushing this to the very nth degree, if you will. But I think he knows that you're going to reach a point where they've destroyed so much, it doesn't make sense to sit still anymore. You might as well attack because there won't be any negotiation and get this over with. I think he's nearing that decision point, but not until he's convinced this offensive is over and he wants to see an accurate picture of just how much is being destroyed. Here he is again. This time he's talking about what happened in 2014. I hope Mrs. Nuland is listening. But listen, this was not the first coup.

And how did Yushchenko come to power in Ukraine? What? As a result of legitimate elections. Do you want me to show you how he came to power? We know that they came up with a third round of voting. What bloody third round? It's not provided by the Constitution. This was a coup. But at least it was passed in a relatively peaceful way and we communicated with them i went there they came to us no it came to a bloody coup

d'etat it has become obvious that we are not given any chance to build normal relations with our neighbors and with the fraternal Ukrainian people. That's pretty candid, Colonel. You know, I think he's telling the truth. Remember, when he first went in there, he went in with some assumptions that turned out to be fundamentally invalid, the most important of which was that someone in the West was willing to talk to him. There never was anyone. When the discussions got off the ground with the Ukrainians,

as soon as there was a hint from Zelensky and his representatives that there could be some sort of agreement, what happened? The rug was pulled out from underneath the whole thing. Washington does not want an agreement. Washington's goal remains unchanged. The problem is Washington's goal of destroying Russia, ruining its economy, demoralizing its population, creating unrest, etc., etc., has all failed. It's hopeless. It's not working. Washington is losing dramatically. That's unambiguously clear. So Putin is saying, look, we're going to see what's left, determine what is there. And then if we think it's time, we'll move and I'll let you know my decision. I think that just means he's going to sweep north

and then eventually over to Odessa. He's going to take what he said he would. He's going to seize the cities and the territory that is historically Russian. I don't think he wants to go much further. But if pushed, he will. We're going to take a break. When we come back, I'm going to ask the colonel, does Joe Biden really expect Ukraine to be in NATO? And what about the nukes that are in Belarus right after this? 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. Here's President Lukashenko, Colonel, just yesterday talking about nukes and the strength of them. Again, I'll be reading the subtitles. Belarus's Lukashenko said they've started taking delivery of Russian tactical nuclear weapons.

Quote, we have missiles and bombs that we have received from Russia, three times more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There, more than 80,000 people died instantly, a quarter of a million overall. That's from one strike, and this one is three times more powerful. I don't know. Up to a million people would die immediately if, God forbid, we used this weapon. The storage of nuclear weaponry is all over. We have lots of storage facilities. We really have a lot of them. We have already restored five or six of them. We will restore more. We will spread them out. We won't keep it all in one place. Okay, is this to be believed? Has President Putin shipped nuclear weaponry three times as powerful as what President Truman dropped in 1945 into

Belorussia. Well, I once asked a French officer who had participated in the development of the French nuclear force, said, how many nuclear warheads do you think we really need? And he immediately said, one. And I said, what do you mean one? He said, it's so terrible. That's really all you need. He said, I don't know why people keep building these arsenals and making them larger, because no one in their right mind would use it. I think that's the message from Lukashenko. Now, Lukashenko was a target for regime change. We did go in there, this is about a year ago, and try to stimulate revolutionary forces to remove him. It didn't work. And I think he's been very concerned about the potential for Lithuania in particular,

perhaps Latvia, both to sponsor or provide assembly areas for NATO forces, along with their own, to move into Byelorussia. Remember, there are only about 8 million people that live in Byelorussia. I mean, it's a large area, but there aren't very many people in it. And I think Putin finally agreed, all right, we'll put some tactical nuclear weapons forward to make it clear that, you know, you have access to these things to reassure it. Remember, we have tactical nuclear weapons on the ground in Germany. We have them at sea in the naval forces surface and submarine. We have them in Italy. We have them in Turkey. So it's not as though this is a startling development. Wasn't there to have been or weren't we to have expected or didn't we anticipate

a coup in Bielorussia a few weeks ago that was allegedly going to be supported by Polish troops? Well, I don't know if there was one expected a few weeks ago. We've been working on it off and on. This is this National Endowment for Democracy and our intelligence services this all failed it's there's no chance of that succeeding in bielorussia i think they've got their eye on serbia at this point but uh the bottom line is that this this is unfortunate but it was inevitable given our demonstrated intentions now the good news is that putin is not talking about using them and i don't see any evidence that he would unless we attacked him with nuclear weapons. That's pretty clear.

Is it realistic what he said, that they have a weapon three times more powerful than Nagasaki or Hiroshima? Well, again, it's the quality of the warhead. It's eminently possible. I don't know the tonnage. Normally, a low-yield nuclear warhead is below five kilotons. That's still an enormous detonation. I mentioned the Poles. Do you detect any loss of enthusiasm from Polish leadership, which a few months ago was talking about introducing troops on the ground in Ukraine?

Yeah, well, quite recently, the Polish president told everyone, you know, the Ukrainians are losing hundreds of men every day. The Russian steamroller is crushing Ukraine. Now, he's never said anything like that previously. The one Pole who has spoken about that honestly in the past is the Polish chief of staff, the four-star. And he was the one that pointed out, don't believe this nonsense that the Russians are not competent. The Russian soldiers are excellent. They're well-trained. And Ukraine is not winning. But now we have it from the president of Poland.

I hope that that dampens any enthusiasm for moving into Western Ukraine, which I think would be very dangerous. Will it dampen any enthusiasm amongst President Biden or Chancellor Scholz or the Prime Minister of Great Britain to push for Ukraine's, it's hard for me even to articulate this, but I have to ask you because this is the stuff we're reading, Ukraine's entry into NATO? Listen, I think it's very important that we discuss this. The New York Times carried a story this morning saying that there was a groundswell of support to bring Ukraine in quickly. Now, if you were looking once again for evidence that Ukraine is on the verge of collapse, this is excellent evidence. Stop and consider this for a minute. Why would you now want to

rush something that months ago you said could not occur for years? Remember the standard position was, well, you know, we weren't going to bring in Ukraine immediately anyway, because they're not ready. That was the argument last year. Now, suddenly, we have to bring in Ukraine. Why? Well, I think the reason is very clear. We're losing. Our position is eroding in Ukraine. The Ukrainian army is being devastated, exactly what the president of Poland said. This, of course, is what President Orban in Hungary warned would happen. It's happened. So if you know that you're losing and you don't want to admit that you've lost, if you're trying to regain face, in other words, recover somehow or another

publicly, unfortunately, there is a tendency historically to widen the war. It's worse. How do you do that? Bring in Ukraine. And the globalist allies in Berlin and other capitals in Western Europe in particular are all cheering this on because they're in the same boat as Biden. They're very much at risk of losing their positions in government across Europe. And this can be done without consulting the electorates. In other words, you just declare war over the head or over the heads of the people that elected you to power. Suddenly, I'm sorry, we're at war now.

Can it be done over the resistance of Viktor Orban, the president of Hungary, the one Western European leader who gets it? You know, I would think not, simply because under the treaty, he has veto power. All it takes is one member that says, no, I'm not going to support this. But we've seen so many things happen that are unprecedented, so many things, frankly, that violate our own United States Constitution on a routine basis. I mean, you know, we also see a lot of evidence now, it's been published, that they want to recall pilots, experienced pilots from the Air Force and the Navy to come back in and fly. They're offering them bonuses. But as part of this,

they've also been told there's a private firm that may be willing to hire you to fly for Ukraine. In other words, we're talking something like the Flying Tigers emerging for Ukraine. I mean, this is lunacy. This will bring us into war with Russia as well. This is not 1936. This is also unconstitutional. Only the Congress can do this, but that's never stopped this president or his predecessors in the past. Last question for you. Do you think that Putin will stop the military activity once Odessa is seized and sort of take stock with, well, here we are? You really want us to go forward anymore? I think he's predisposed to do that because from the very beginning, everything he's done has been very deliberate and very measured. I thought when he went in to begin with that he would spare nothing

and make his point early that, you know, Russia is going to devastate you. We're not going to put up with anything. I was wrong. He went in with a small force. It was very incremental. And he persisted with this negotiate and fight business until it became clear there was no hope for it. But I still think that what he wants to do is avoid a collision with NATO. That's why he has troops in Belorussia. That's not just these tactical nuclear weapons, but he has forces there. He has air defense forces there. He has artillery forces there. So that people in NATO know if you move into Western Poland, you will be at risk of attack from the north,

from Bielorussia. It's also a guarantee that if he crosses the river, and I think he will eventually, and take Odessa, there's a force up in Bielorussia that will attack into the rear of any NATO force that tries to rush in and prevent Odessa from falling into his hands. Remember, Odessa is not very far from Romania. We have forces in Romania, and now we seem to have persuaded the government of Moldova to let us move through the country, that is NATO forces at will. So, you know, he's got to look at all of these possibilities. And remember, also, the last time we talked, we talked about Progozhin, who mentioned the need for national mobilization. In the speech that he gave, he pointed to the acquisition of new troops.

If his numbers are right, and I think they probably are, they're at about 700,000 to 750,000 committed to the West, in other words, to Ukraine for potential use there. But if he is pushed, and we will not negotiate any sort of settlement, then he will have to go larger. He will have to have a larger force. He'll have to commit to a longer campaign. He's got enough ammunition, I'm told right now, for two years. So that's a lot of time, but I think he would probably add more to the force and then he would go all the way to the Polish border, which is the exact opposite of what we said we wanted to happen when this began. Right. How much longer do you think the military activity will go on before the Ukrainians realize this can't go on anymore?

I think the Ukrainians are already there. Morale is in the gutter. And I think they're running out of people that they can willfully commit. One wonders why no one yet in these capitals in the Western world and in Washington have not been brought up on charges of murder. Because if you look at the losses that are being taken today in Ukraine, it's inconceivable to me. I mean, you know from the moment that you cross the start line that you have no chance of success.

Now, there's a certain amount of bravery here and courage, I believe that, but I also know there are a lot of people being forced to do this. But the whole thing is just murder at this stage. Ukrainians are going to push the Russians out of Ukraine where they are. It's not going to happen. But we refuse to accept that because, again, as we started this discussion, Washington doesn't want to admit it's failed. It doesn't want to admit it was wrong.

Absolutely not. And the danger is, if nothing else works, you widen the war. And that's what we have to look for now from Washington. Colonel, a great conversation with you. Thank you so much for joining us. Sure. If you like what you saw, like and subscribe. Tell a friend.

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