Judging Freedom - What_s the Deal with Bakhmut_ - Col Doug Macgregor

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, May 22, 2023. It's about 10 minutes after 10 o'clock in the morning here on the east coast of the United States. Apologies for our glitch and late start, but we've overcome it. Colonel McGregor is kind enough to join us now. Colonel, of course, always a pleasure. We have, you know, very significant news. The United States government is authorizing its allies in Europe to send U.S.-made, excuse me, F-16s to Ukraine. And, of course, Bakhmut has been fully captured by the Russians. Let's start with the F-16s, if we could. Why do you think President Biden changed his mind?

This is the second time he's done so, saying he wouldn't authorize something, and then he did. I think desperation is the easy answer. The worst things have gotten on the ground for the Ukrainians, and the worst case scenario becomes obvious that Ukraine could collapse the more willing we are to supply just about anything short of nuclear weapons. So the problem, of course, with the F-16 is I don't know who's going to fly them. So my great concern is that there'll be U.S. pilots who, quote unquote, volunteer to do so. And I think that would be very dangerous and ill-advised. But I don't see how else we do it.

The president announced, well, I'll let him, we'll listen to him. Here's President Biden from Hiroshima on the F-16s. The United States, together with our allies and partners, is going to begin training Ukrainian pilots in fourth-generation fighter aircraft, including F-16s, to strengthen Ukraine's air force as part of a long-term commitment to Ukraine's ability to defend itself. What does fourth- generation aircraft mean?

Well, your F-35 is fifth generation. In other words, it's a new generation of aircraft technology. Fourth is what most of the modern states of the world possess right now, particularly in Europe and Japan, Korea. So fourth is probably the best that we can provide. We can't provide, obviously, an F-35. That's a much more challenging piece of equipment, nor do I think we would. But the F-16 is certainly a match for almost anything the Russians put up in the air. But again, how does this work? We're going to train pilots. It takes months and months. Some people would argue years, but certainly months for someone to train effectively on a complex piece of equipment like the F-16. understand it, Colonel, the President of the United States authorizing Germany, which already

has American manufactured F-16s, to deliver those F-16s to Ukraine. Are they sold on a circumstance whereby they can't go to another country without the approval of the U.S. government? Yes. When we provide technology that's of a sensitive nature, whether it's Patriot missiles or fourth-generation aircraft, F-16s, F-15s, there are always conditions built into the contract that make it clear that if your plan is to simply sell this to someone else or pass it on to someone else, You can't do it without our permission. So is it likely that Ukraine pilots will be trained in time or, God forbid, American pilots will be there in time while there's still a military operation on? Or is it

likely by the time these F-16s arrive, or there are human beings there qualified to fly them, the war will be over? Well, I think it's all of the above. I don't think there are going to be any Ukrainian pilots available anytime soon. Remember that you need specific airfields with specifically designed runways for these aircraft you have to have some sort of logistical infrastructure ground crews people that are trained to maintain them I I don't see any of that happening in the short run so it could well be over before any of that arrives but in the meantime that doesn't exclude the possibility that we do in fact ask for quote-unquote volunteers who are willing to fly

these things on behalf of Ukraine and I would remind everybody just just to keep this in mind we have British soldiers or at least British citizens who've been captured by the Russians and right now they're going to go on trial in I think the one of the republics the Donetsk Republic and are going to be treated at least least initially, as mercenaries, not as legitimate combatants. So if these people show up in other than American uniform and they're shot down, which is very likely if they fly over integrated air defenses, then they'll be treated as mercenaries.

And there's nothing in the Geneva Convention that protects mercenaries and there there's nothing in the geneva convention that protects mercenaries correct without a uniform uh and an identifiable insignia and at least the appearance of command structure there is no uh there is no protection uh colonel um president Colonel President Zelensky, right before he left Hiroshima, said that Bakhmut had not been taken. Take a listen. Now our people are accomplishing a very important mission. They are now in Bakhmut. I will not share where exactly, but it witnesses that Bakhmut is not occupied by Russian Federation as of today. I guess between the time that he said that and his flight home to Kiev,

if that's where he's going, he hasn't been in Ukraine for a couple of weeks, Bakhmut had fallen. Does there appear to be any question in your mind that the Russians have finally, after an extraordinary battle, we'll get into what the losses were in your mind, but that the Russians have finally, after an extraordinary battle, we'll get into what the losses were in a minute, the Russians have finally taken this beleaguered and besieged city. Well, if you look at Bakhmut right now from the air, to be perfectly blunt, it looks a lot like Hiroshima. There isn't much left. And the area that was holding out on the edge of the town was a couple of, consisted of a

couple of concrete reinforced buildings that stood up remarkably well against, you know, Russian fire. The other problem the Russians had is the fear that there were Russian civilians in the basements because the Ukrainians had kept, forced Russian civilians into the basements. Remember, these people that are living in eastern Ukraine are really Russians. And the Ukrainians had always had trouble with Russian citizens there living in Ukraine during the war, effectively informing the Russians as to what they were doing. The Ukrainian forces had the habit of shoving civilians into the basement, keeping them under guard. And so there was a fear on the Russian side that if they went in and just obliterated the buildings,

that they would end up killing an unknown number of Russians in the basement that they obviously weren't interested in killing. So all of this combined to string out this battle much longer than should have been the case. 97, 98% of Bakhmut has been under Russian control now for months. This is the last portion. It's now clear. And I think it's not an exaggeration to suggest that in many ways, the Russian high command turned Bakhmut into the graveyard of the Ukrainian army. And years from now,

when we look back on this war, I think Bakhmut will occupy a special place as having been a turning point. Well, I was just going to ask you, why does Bakhmut matter? The city itself is gone. Is this going to be an enormous demoral, will this have an enormous demoralizing effect on the surviving Ukrainian soldiers and the Ukrainian high command? Well, the Ukrainians already had their problems with morale. I mean, you can't take the kind of beating that they have for months without your morale sinking. I pay tribute to them all the time for their courage, but you're also running out of soldiers. I think Bachmut became to Zelensky in many ways what Stalingrad became to Hitler. Remember, Stalingrad really did not have any strategic value at the point in time when the

Germans arrived there. The only thing of value there was an aviation manufacturing facility, big factory that built aircraft. That had been destroyed by the Luftwaffe. So there was really no reason to stay in Stalingrad when it became clear what the Soviets were going to do. But Hitler was obsessed with the place and felt that this was a grudge match of sorts with Stalin and with communism. And so he turned Stalingrad literally into a disaster. I think that's what Zelensky has done. And of course, Sorovikin back in the fall, in October, November, December timeframe,

was the one who said, fine, let's establish this as a trap. Let's invite as many Ukrainians in who want to come. So there was always an intention to leave a road out because that road could be used to resupply. And it worked. So thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have died there for nothing at this point. You have an article coming out soon for which I'm privileged to have an advance copy arguing that at least 50,000 Ukrainian soldiers died in this vain attempt to save this former city. Is that a confirmable number? It's an enormous number. Is it confirmed? Well, if you go back to the September-October time frame and forward from that and look at the

massive number of Ukrainian forces that have been sent into the place. I mean, you can go online and I think Larry Johnson is one example, but there are others who have published the lists of formations, Ukrainian army formations, regiments, battalions, battle groups, and so forth that have been fed into the place. And if you say that most of them went in there and say 50% strength, you run the numbers, you come up with close to 50,000 dead. If you say that they went in there at 75% or higher, you come up with an even larger number. I don't think we're going to have any confirmable numbers on a lot of things until this war is over. But I think it is not by any means unreasonable to stick with the 50,000 number, which seems to be widely used right now by those people examining specific units that have gone

into Bakhmut. Colonel, has General Zeluzhny, the commander of Ukrainian forces, been seen in public since the 1st of May? And are there any rumors about why he has not been seen? Well, we're getting things through various sources on the ground in Ukraine, seeping out to the Russians as well as to the West, suggesting, first of all, he wasn't killed after all, but that he was severely, severely wounded. And as a result, he's supposedly been through several operations to save his life. And those appear to have been successful, but we have no, once again, we have no way of knowing, absolutely no way of knowing whatsoever. And so Zeluzhny is either dead or he is, as they describe, recovering from his wounds.

But in any case, I doubt that we'll see him in command of anything in the future. He was just it's unlikely at this stage. Colonel, I want to play for you a clip from Jake Sullivan, the president's national security advisor, largely in my view, and I think you're as responsible for this debacle in Ukraine, attempting to explain how the Pentagon miscalculated $3 billion, it's almost laughable, I'm sorry. People die over this. I shouldn't laugh. Dollars worth of American military equipment. Here's Mr. Sullivan from Hiroshima two days ago. There was this very bizarre admission from the Pentagon this week of an accounting error that suggested that the U.S. has at least $3 billion that it didn't know it had.

That's a hell of an accounting error. Are you concerned about this accounting error? Well, one thing I just want to make clear, that is not money that went out the door and disappeared. That is not a waste of that $3 billion. It is simply a tally of how much military equipment we have given them. And the way that the Pentagon was counting it was, what's the replacement cost for the equipment we provide, rather than just the actual cost of that equipment? Once you make that adjustment, it turns out we have an additional $3 billion that we can spend to provide even more weapons to Ukraine. And at the end of the day, not one penny of U.S. dollars will have gone missing or have been misallocated. It will all be provided in the form of equipment to Ukraine on the battlefield.

I mean, is that believable or is that a ruse to spend $3 billion more because they know they're not going to get another nickel out of the Congress? Judge, we can't audit the Pentagon. Nobody can audit the Pentagon. There have been several efforts to audit what the Department of Defense is doing with money. It's failed routinely, and no one seems to be terribly concerned on the Hill. And remember, he's describing something that we've talked about before. He's talking about a replacement cost. In other words, he's saying, we found this money. It may have been an accounting error. It's hard to tell, but we found more money that we can send not to the Pentagon. Some of it will go there, but ultimately this will be laundered through the Pentagon to the defense industries and show up

again as donations on the Hill to congressmen and senators. I mean, this is the whole laundering process that goes on. When you look at the amount of cash involved, yes, we own the Ukrainian government. Without us, it would fall apart. We're paying salaries. We're paying for medical expenses. We're paying the army. So it's the 51st state in that sense. But those costs are relatively modest compared with the billions

that have gone into weapons. And he's simply saying we found this $3 billion, we're going to send more equipment over there because it turns out the replacement costs are lower than we anticipated. We have more to waste. Is anybody, I'll use an old-fashioned World War II era phrase, minding the store, is anybody keeping track of what remains for our own substance should, God forbid, it be needed in terms of defensive military equipment, high-end military equipment to which the American military is accustomed and on which it is trained. Well, if you stop and consider that your capacity for the production of Patriot missiles, for instance, on an annual basis is somewhere between 300 and 400 missiles a year.

That's important to understand that. And that you could go through that inventory in the space of a week in a real war, given the numbers of missiles that would be fired at our equipment, our ships at sea, troops ashore, aircraft, and so forth? I think the answer is probably no. We have put ourselves at unnecessary risk, and we continue to provoke the Russians at every turn. So, no, I think we have been incautious and cavalier with our own war stocks. But again, if you admit that, then you have to say we can't supply any more. And if you

can't supply any more, then you have to admit that Ukraine is going to fail. Well, Ukraine is going to fail. That's pretty obvious. No one disputes that, and this whole Bakhmut enterprise is demonstrating it. That article that came out in Politico over the weekend is clear, unambiguous evidence for the success of the Russians at Bakhmut. And what does it say? Suddenly there are discussions in the White House, behind the scenes, State Department, and elsewhere that perhaps what we really want, Judge, is a frozen conflict. Yes. We want to turn Ukraine into another Korea and have a demilitarized zone. If your client, proxy, whatever you want to call Ukraine is winning,

why would you suddenly express an interest in a frozen conflict? If you wanted unambiguous evidence for failure, that's it. Now, the next question is, if you're a Russian and you hear this, you laugh because the Russians are only now peaking. They've geared up. They're ready to complete the job. Why would they do business with us? Why would they listen to us?

Colonel, do you know if President Biden and Secretaries Blinken and Austin and Jake Sullivan are getting the type of advice that you freely give publicly on this channel? Are they hearing this side of things? anyone who walked into the oval office or into the conference rooms and the nsc staff and said the things that i do would be escorted off the grounds immediately this is an ideologically pure organization that has decided that it is winning a war or must win a war against russia in order to extend lgbtqrs and everything else to the rest of the world, and that our way is the only way. It's us or destruction. There can be no compromise. We are right. We are morally superior. The Russians are evil and deserve to be destroyed. I mean, if you don't take that position, you're out. I saw this during the interventions in the Balkans.

If you weren't willing to walk in the room with the various Clintonistas at that point who were advocating bombing Serbia, and you didn't sort of cheer it on, I've got to get these Serbs and teach them a lesson, we're going to force diversity on them and so forth.

If you didn't do that, you were out. You were out. The same thing is true now. Can we ever return to a diplomatic relationship with Russia when the American government has manifested such abject hatred for all things Russians? I mean, stated differently, doesn't diplomacy require mutual respect? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is a foundation for diplomacy.

And even though, obviously, people like you and I back during the Cold War were strong anti-communists, we recognized that there had to be some basis for mutual respect between us, even though we disagreed with each other strongly if we were going to come to any reasonable agreements on anything. And so you're right. And again, the ideologues that are running the show now who see themselves as morally superior, they remind me very much of the Bolsheviks in 1917, 18, and 19, who essentially described the world as something that deserved to be ravaged and conquered as soon as possible and raised armies for the purpose of doing it. Stalin steps

in later and gets rid of them because he knows it's impractical. But at the time, they were unyielding, uncompromising, and that's what we have in Washington. These people are completely uncompromising. These are people that are going to force everyone down a road that they've decided is appropriate domestically and overseas. I don't think it's going to work. I see it's going to collapse on them, but right now they're in charge. All right. So to wrap this up and before we conclude,

the myth of Ukrainian victory has been that that bubble has been burst I think so must be there must be some people in the government perhaps as you just articulated fearful of articulating this but at least they're thinking it there certainly are sort of wisps and hints of maybe a ceasefire where things are now. Taking all of this into account, what's next? Well, first of all, the frozen solution is a non-starter with the Russians because the Korea model means that NATO, especially the United States, will move its forces into Western Ukraine. So that's absolutely off the table. I think the Russians are going to wait until the mid, probably early to mid-June for this alleged Ukrainian

offensive. I mean, they're looking for it, and they've already begun to systematically attack areas where they see evidence for the assembly of troops and equipment. They fired 15 more of these hypersonic missiles at various ammunition storage points, equipment storage areas, rail yards. And I'm told that all but one of the targets has been completely destroyed. So they're doing everything in their power to make it very, very difficult, if not impossible, for the Ukrainians to mass any troops anywhere and launch an offensive. But I think they still expect the Ukrainians will try. And frankly, it's in their interest to let this happen because they will annihilate the Ukrainians who are trying to attack them. They'll do what they've done before. Remember, they've got this 20 to 25 kilometer security zone

out in front of their defenses, and the Ukrainians have to move through that. That's 12, 14, 15 miles they've got to get through before they even reach the defensive lines. So if you're a Russian, why not fall back? The ground in and of itself is of no value unless it helps you kill the enemy. They've been about demilitarizing Ukraine. That means destroy the Ukrainian armed forces. They will do whatever is in their power to achieve that aim. So that must happen. When they've decided they think they've done that, I think they'll move. And they'll move very deliberately. And they want Odessa. And they want Kharkov, simply because those are historic

Russian cities. That's where the population that's Russian lived. That's where people speak Russian. They don't want to govern people in Western Ukraine. And as I've said before, they will complete that, let's put it this way, reacquisition of territory that's historically their own. And then I think they will look to the Europeans and say, now, what are you going to do? Because frankly, I know the Russians and the Russians will say, if you're not going to come to some sort of arrangement and turn the rump Ukraine, whatever remains into neutral territory, then you leave us no choice. We have to go West. And they will go all the way to the

Polish and Romanian borders and the Moldovan borders if necessary. That's not something they necessarily want to do. I don't think it's a good thing for Europe for that to happen. Why would we or anybody in Europe want hundreds of thousands of Russian troops sitting on the eastern border of NATO? That was the stupidity behind the objection to neutrality for Ukraine. A neutral Ukraine worked brilliantly for everyone. Well, that opportunity has been missed thus far. So we'll have to wait and see what happens. And there's another possibility. We still have this lingering sentiment in Washington to strike out in support of Ukraine in some way. And I continue to worry about the use of American

air and ground forces and other NATO forces in Western Ukraine at the last minute to try to somehow or another rescue the destruction of Ukraine or rescue Ukraine from certain destruction. I'm afraid there are people thinking about that too. So if you can't get your frozen conflict, and that's off the table for the Russians, then what do you do? You consider intervention in some fashion. And that would be disastrous because that would put us at war with Russia. Colonel, thank you so much. Thanks for coming on early in the day and in the week. We all very much appreciate it. I am on my way to Switzerland.

I hope I'll be safe there. I'm going to be giving some lectures at the University of Zurich Law School, a great, great academic institution, and then back here on Memorial Day. And you guys will be seeing my face from various places in Switzerland. If you like what you see. I want to point out that I hate you because you get to make these trips and I don't. I would love to go to Switzerland.

I haven't been there in years. Gorgeous place. Maybe we'll all get to be there together. Thank you, Colonel. If you like what you saw, tell your friends and share. Oh, we broke 151,000 YouTube subscribers this weekend. Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart. Keep those numbers coming more as we get it from wherever I happen to be. Judge Napolitano for

judging freedom.