Judging Freedom - U.S. gives Ukraine OK to drone strike Russia

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

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Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, December 12, 2022. It's about 2.35 in the afternoon. Our guest, of course, needs no introduction to the audience, Colonel Douglas McGregor, our regular go-to person on all matters military. Colonel, it's a pleasure. Welcome back to the show. I want to talk to you a little about an interview I did this morning with a fellow named Matthew Van Dyke, who's the founder and head of a group called Sons of Liberty International, which represents itself as being former U.S. military and former U.S. intel physically located in Ukraine and engaged in the business of, I guess the business, I guess they get paid. I never asked him that, but engaged in the business of explaining or training Ukrainian soldiers in the use of American military equipment.

Before I run a clip from him, do you know of these groups and are they prevalent in Ukraine? Well, I know there are several of them. The only one I know that actually has been engaged in any fighting is the so-called Mozart group. And they've apparently taken some rather heavy casualties. And I'm told they are now withdrawing from Ukraine. I saw the same thing, and I assume that the Mozart Group is a play on names, since I believe there's a Russian group called the Wagner Group, which is ex-Russian and Eastern European military fighting with the Russians. You know of them, I'm sure. Absolutely, yeah. Are they a sophisticated fighting force? Are they a private

militia? What are they? They are a very sophisticated professional military organization that is essentially for Russian hire. They are used in places and for purposes that the Russian military cannot be involved. And they've done extremely well. I mean, the work they've done around Bakhmut is extraordinarily impressive. Okay. Let me run a clip from Mr. Van Dyke. It was a bit of a sight to behold. This is just a few hours ago from wherever he was in Kiev. Okay. I feel that most people are overly optimistic about how

quickly this war will be over. They think that Kharkiv can be repeated. The northern offensive that went so well with the Russians rallying, I think that wasarkiv can be repeated. The northern offensive that went so well with the Russians routing, I think that was a one-off. A lot of those units were undermanned and had poor morale at the time. And once one routed, the rest routed. I don't think that'll be repeated. The withdrawal from Kyrgyzstan was very organized. Ukraine wasn't able to hit them much as they did the withdrawal. Shows that the Russians are planning for the long haul. I'm concerned that Ukraine won't push an offensive strong enough in the winter and give time for Russia to get back on its feet by spring. More

conscripts will be brought up. They have time to produce more ammunition. So that's the main concern, that rather than push now when they have all the advantages over the Russians, including warm weather gear and logistics and fuel and so on, that they'll delay too long. And we don't want Russia to get back on its feet. Now, that's about the most pro-Russian statement he's made in the past year that he's been on with us. He denies that he's changing his mind. He just says he's being realistic about what he observes. The only criticism of Russia that he made was that they don't have clothing to keep them warm in the winter, but obviously he can't gain, say, their manpower and the military force that's about to enter the country. What do you think? Well, he's not on the battlefield. He's

removed from the battlefield. He's removed from the battlefield. He's on a contract to do, quote, unquote, intelligence work. In all probability, he's going to stick with the narrative that is being developed by the CIA and MI6 in London, which is what I call the Ukrainian victory narrative. Except that now he has at least admitted that Ukraine has some difficulties. I don't see any advantages that he talked about. I haven't figured out what he's talking about there. And obviously, he's not disclosing the horrific losses they've taken. They're up to 15,000 dead a month now. How big is the Ukrainian army, Colonel? Do we know? Well, it was a few weeks ago about 194,000 effective soldiers.

And they've just been taking horrific casualties because of these counterattacks. Well, 15,000 a month will put them out of business in a year, even if it stays at $15,000. Oh, absolutely. There's not much left. In fact, I'm told the opposite of what he's hearing, that there are people saying to Russian general staff, look, what are you waiting for? They're really falling apart. They're on their last legs. They don't have any fuel.

They're running out of ammunition. They've lost a lot of their ammunition storage and ammo dumps have been destroyed. So look, you know, we're going to continue to hear the narrative until this whole thing folds. Now, as far as when does Russia strike again, as we mentioned before, when General Sorovikin feels that all of the conditions that he's established to be met for the offensive. That could happen any time. As far as lacking winter clothing, that's a new one. I haven't heard that one yet. That doesn't mean that they're not making more winter clothing. I have no idea.

But I think that's a bit of a stretch. The Russians are going to win. And when General Saravikin decides to strike, I would imagine it will be massive, maybe even monumental. Absolutely. This is no holds barred. This is gloves off. When they go, they go for broke. And the whole thing will be designed to end the war.

Now, the war may drag on for a couple of months simply because nobody's willing to step up and arrange a ceasefire. That may well happen on the Ukrainian side and with the United States. Again, Washington is never going to admit that it was wrong. It's never going to admit that it's caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, driven millions into exile, all in this silly notion that we could somehow another week in Russia. Nothing we can do about that, Judge. But no, when the axe falls, it'll be profound. Before I get to our next topic,

you did comment that Matt Van Dyke was not on the battlefield. Now, he claims to be on the battlefield. I don't know where he was at the moment he was recording today. He was somewhere in Kiev, I guess, because in the middle of the recording, he lost power. Couldn't see him, we could hear him. And then about 45 or 50 seconds afterward, power came back on. But he does say that they're in the battlefield and doing training. Why would the Ukrainian military accept training from American volunteers as opposed to American troops out of uniform? They're desperate. They'll accept whatever anybody offers. They have cash. Thanks to us,

we provided them with lots of cash that they can pay for all sorts of mercenaries, foreigners. They've invited anybody who wants to come and fight to fight. They're a desperate judge. They're in the end game. Over the weekend, and you pointed this out to me, and I'm deeply grateful for it, Colonel, as I am for all the work you do on the show, that the Pentagon, through anonymous sources, has acknowledged that it has

authorized the Ukrainians to strike using equipment they obtained from the United States into Russia. Now, I don't know why this wasn't a banner headline in the New York Times and the Washington Post and the New York Post and Fox News and CNN and everywhere. To me, this is reckless and is highly newsworthy. First of all, do you believe it's true? And second, if you believe it's true, how reckless is it? Well, the only system that I'm aware of that falls into this category, in the non-nuclear category, are the HIMARS missiles. The problem we have with the HIMARS missiles is we've almost run out of them. And, of course, the ATACMS, they're the ones that have the greater range as well as accuracy. We can only produce about 250 of these HIMARS missiles in a year.

We've tried in the past to ratchet up that production line. Hasn't worked very well. This is a very complex missile, and it takes hours of painstaking assembly. It's not something you hand to a robot. Let's put it that way, and they put it together. So if we say 10 to 13 missiles a month over the next 12 months, I rather suspect this war will be over before anything substantial arrives. Secondly, if they do have some ATACOMs on hand now, this is the Army's tactical missile system, which reaches out 150, 200 plus miles. If they do, and they have been told they can go ahead and use this against the Russians. What do they use it against?

Point targets, one or two, here or there, 100 miles inside Russia. And what is that likely to do to change the outcome of the war? I don't think it'll do anything. What it will do, of course, is strengthen the view that the border with Poland must be cut off from Ukraine. And that's why I'm a little surprised that we're being so enthusiastic about encouraging the Ukrainians to do this, because that would tell me that a couple of hundred thousand troops up in Belarus get ready. You're going to go south and you're going to cut this border off once and for all.

I think it becomes more important now than it has ever been before. All right. Tell me what you mean by cut the border off once and for all. I think it becomes more important now than it has ever been before. All right. Tell me what you mean by cut the border off. I mean, it's a common border between Ukraine and Poland. Do you mean preventing whatever troops are west of the border from going east? No, I'm talking about whatever shows up in Poland in terms of equipment or mercenaries, volunteers or something. Or Americans. Yeah, from crossing the border into Ukraine. So if you're a Russian commander, you look at the map, you say, I want to cut it off. And as I think we discussed the last time, there's a line that you can draw from the straight south from the Belarusian border to Zhytomyr, and from Zhytomyr over to Venica,

and from there over to Moldova. Essentially a straight line and then one line that goes to Moldova, and you have just disrupted any further supply to Ukrainian forces from Poland. Now, could they move closer to the Polish border? Of course they could. But I think they'll probably want to keep some distance from it just to avoid an unwanted confrontation with us. How does American equipment physically get onto Ukrainian soil? Through Poland? Yes, most of it comes through Poland. There's evidence that some other things have come from Romania, potentially through Slovakia and Moldova, but not much. The main spring is really Poland. And you have rail and roads there that are in good shape that can move this equipment a good distance,

after which it's offloaded, placed on trucks, or simply driven forward into eastern Ukraine? If we're allowing the Ukrainians to use whatever equipment they have from whatever source they get it, I suppose there's no way to stop them from using non-American weapons however they want. But if we're looking the other way or saying, go ahead, aim at Moscow, what's to prevent the general from aiming at American equipment in storage facilities in Poland? Well, he's been told not to do that. They have orders under no circumstances to confront us unless we attack them. I mean, Mr. Putin from the beginning has made it very clear he's not interested in widening this war.

The only way the war is widened is if we do it. So there's no danger of a confrontation unless we press the envelope. So the bottom line is this is dangerous though because at some point there's a potential for that confrontation

as the Russian troops move into Ukraine and the western side to cut off the movement from Poland, there's always a danger that somebody knocks into someone else somewhere in western Ukraine. All right. So a Russian fuel depot, 150 miles outside of Moscow explodes tomorrow morning. 25 Russians are killed, and I don't know how many millions of dollars worth of fuel is lost. They have plenty of fuel, but still this is a loss. And they're picking through the rubble, and they see Made in USA on it. What does Putin do, overtly or covertly, to respond to this? Well, Judge, two things. First of all, he already knows this. He knows what we're doing. It's not a secret. If anything, we've sent a signal to the Russians

that, frankly, we don't care what they do or what they offer. We are not going to cooperate and negotiate an end to this war. I mean, that's the conclusion that the Russians have reached. The only way this war ends is if they ended on the ground in Ukraine. That's why the offenses are inevitable. And we've shown no interest whatsoever in any other kind of approach. The second thing is the Russians have many, many ways to escalate against us horizontally. Now, what do I mean by that? Look at our open border to the south. Look at the Caribbean basin.

Look at Mexico, which has a long history of cooperating with the Russians when they were the Soviet Union, and before that with the Germans against us. Look at Venezuela. Look at the small states of Latin America. Their borders are porous. Organized crime is everywhere. The Russians had the opportunity to intervene there and provide people with arms that could be used against us,

with drugs that could be used against us, with diseases that could be used against us. We just go down the list. It's almost endless. It's really a menu. Just how much damage does someone want to do to us since our southern border is completely open? It's easy. So who and at what level in the American government would have made the decision to authorize strikes into Russia using American equipment? Would this have come from Langley? Would this have come from the Pentagon? Would this have come from the White House? Well, the decision ultimately would pass across the desk of the National Security Advisor, Mr. Sullivan, and he would either recommend approval or not. So I suspect that's where you have to begin your search to discover who's ultimately behind it. But remember that all of the people that are at the top of these bureaucracies have signed on for this unconditionally.

If anyone knows how utterly foolish, stupid and dangerous this is, it's Ambassador Burns, who previously was ambassador in Russia. This is the director of the CIA. Yes. And how much pushback is he mounting against these dumb decisions? Has he stood up, much as Milley did a couple of weeks ago, and said, you know, I think the Ukrainians have done all they can reasonably do. This is a good time to negotiate. Well, when you're dying in Ukraine 139 times faster than American soldiers died in Vietnam, it seems like it's a good idea to slow down and negotiate, does it not? Right, right. So they don't care.

Would anyone have offered to Jake Sullivan or Lloyd Austin or Tony Blinken or even the president the type of consequences that you've just offered to us, consequences that might be instigated by the Russians to retaliate for the use of American equipment invading their territorial sovereignty. I mean, when you think about it, American military equipment invading Russian sovereignty over something that doesn't affect the national security of the United States, Colonel. It's mind-boggling. Well, if we're concerned about that sort of thing, we'd be concerned about the dollar as the World Reserve currency.

We'd be concerned about our $31 trillion mounting sovereign national debt. We'd be concerned about the Chinese, the Japanese, and others dumping U.S. treasuries. I mean, there's a whole list of concerns that you can go through before you get to the one that I mentioned. I'm just saying that for the Russians, they can horizontally escalate. They can do things to us over which we have very little control because we have imposed this open border business on us. We're not adequately protecting our littoral waters. We're treating everybody who shows up here as a valid refugee for all intents and purposes. We don't know anything about the people. I mean, we could go on and on. I mean, we wouldn't know if there are Russian cruise missiles

sitting somewhere in northern Mexico near Guadalajara that have been given to the drug cartels for their use at the proper time. This is a Pandora's box that is open. And, you know, what do you do when something really bad like that happens? Well, it's too late. So as I hear what you're saying, and I don't mean to be personally critical of Jake Sullivan, but his last job in the government before the one he has now was chief of staff to Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state, a political decision, not a smart intel decision, is what produced this, okay, you can go ahead and bomb Russian territory. That the intel community, knowing what could come north from Mexico or anywhere south of Texas, would have argued fiercely against it. Yeah, but again, it's poor strategic thinking

because as far as I can tell, there is no strategy. Did anyone bother to tell the American people or anyone else when this ends, this war, we know what we would like Eastern Europe to look like. The only thing we've heard is we want Putin removed and we may dismember Russia so that it can no longer threaten anyone. That's a hell of an end state. It doesn't offer much to the Russians and there's

no reason why they should pay any attention to us. I think this is the biggest problem right now. People on the Hill don't understand that this is not a banana republic. This is Russia. It's a great power. They're not going to simply say, oh, I'm so sorry. You know, please let us withdraw our forces and let's have a good time. Right. How large is the force and what is their level of training as we understand it that is about to enter or is ready to enter Ukraine from Russia? Well, on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is a very poorly trained or almost untrained force, and 10 is the best you're ever going to see, I think it's probably close to an 8

at this point across the boards. They're training very hard. I watched some video footage recently of infantry assaults mounted by the Russians against the Ukrainians in Bakhmut, and the Russian assaults were devastating. The infantry was very well trained. They took no losses, and they utterly annihilated the Ukrainians that they were fighting, and the Ukrainians were not trained. And that's the biggest problem right now. Most of these Ukrainians are being forced into this. They don't have adequate training. Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks in the UK, and you're back and you're in the trench. Are you kidding me? What are you normally? I'm a shopkeeper, a farmer. This is ridiculous. Did you say five weeks in the UK? Yeah, well, we have- Are they being trained in England?

Some of them are. And some of them have been trained in Germany. Some of them have been trained, I'm told, in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This is the most that most European countries will offer at this stage. And I'm not even sure how much longer that will last. All right. You estimated the level of training from one to 10, 10 the best, one the worst at being around an eight. How large is this

assault group that's going to be available to the general any day now? Well, remember we, I think a few weeks ago, I published an article and said they'd accounted for about 540,000 men. And of that number, let's say 400, 450,000 are ready to go right now. And another 100, 150,000 will be ready to go by the end of December. It's entirely up to Sorovikin. And that's why I'm a little concerned about this business. I'm sure, by all means, if you can reach a target 100 miles from Moscow, go for it. Under those circumstances, I think Sorovikin is going to say, well, the first thing we need to do before we do anything else is cut off the border with Poland. Make sure nothing else comes across. In which case, you get that assault out of Belarusia right away. And judging from the conditions of Ukrainian forces in Donbass,

I don't think it would be very hard for the Russians to launch down there as well and overwhelm them. But again, I don't know what's in the mind of Sorovikin. I don't know what the guidance, the current guidance is. It's just that we're not doing anything that makes sense if your aim is to save as much of Ukraine as possible. What is the best that President Zelensky can hope for, short of a miracle? Oh, he has no hope of much of anything except maybe escaping to Poland, at least temporarily, when the time comes. If he waits until the Russians attack from the north into central Ukraine, west of Kyiv and east of the Polish border, I'd say his goose is probably cooked.

Colonel McGregor, always a pleasure, sir. Thank you very much for joining us. Okay, thank you. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.