Judging Freedom - Zelenskyy: Russian explosives planted on nuke plant roof | w/ Alastair Crooke, Fmr British Diplomat

Episode Date: July 5, 2023

Judge Napolitano and Former British Diplomat, Alastair Crooke have an in-depth discussion and analysis as tensions escalate regarding an alleged potential attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant intensify. President Zelenskyy has made a startling accusation, suggesting that Russia may have planted explosives on the facility's roof, further fueling concerns over the security of the nuclear power plant.In Makiivka, a town near Donetsk, a major Russian ammunition depot was reportedly destroyed in a HIMARS strike by Ukraine. Russia-installed officials claimed one civilian death and 36 injuries, but this is unverified. Ukraine's military stated that they had targeted and destroyed a Russian forces formation along with an ammunition depot. Video footage showed the destruction of the depot. Kyiv reported a successful counteroffensive against Putin's forces but acknowledged the challenge posed by Russian defenses and mine-laying tactics.#ukraine #russia #france #freedomSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi everyone, Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, July 5th, 2023. It's a few minutes after 11 o'clock in the morning here on the East Coast of the United States, a few minutes after five o'clock in the hills of Rome, from which our next guest, Alistair Crook, joins us. Alistair, where are you on the screen? There you are, my dear friend. Welcome to the show, and thank you for spending time with us. I want to talk about the nuclear power plant in Ukraine, And I want to talk about the latest involving Yevgeny Prigozhin. But before we do that, since you are such a monitor of all things European, and since this hasn't really stopped, it just seems to be getting worse.

What is happening in France as we speak? And is all of it derived from a police shooting of a 17 year old boy or is there more here than meets the eye? Well much more. Of course the riots that followed the shooting of the boy are the most obvious sort of manifestation of it, but it's much more serious because what we're seeing here is basically the end to the post-war era, to the order in the West, and that is very serious. Let me explain a little bit. What I mean by that was at the end of two wars, many in Europe wanted to have, if you like, a fairer society. The industrial society that preceded these two wars was feudal in many ways. It wasn't necessarily socialism and communism, as many Americans believe, although communism clearly

was present in Europe at the time. But there was a sense of wanting to have a fairer society, and that the less advantage should not be shut out, that all should be included in this. And this was a prevailing sentiment at that time. And what we're seeing now is that that was completely overturned. It was a first of all, it really started in the 80s, when we had the sort of extremists from the Chicago school coming and telling everyone that you know that you financialism, financialized, hyper-financialized, neoliberal society was the answer. And then leaders like Mrs. Thatcher just got rid of many of it. She was told quite simply by Chicago, look, forget about building ships and making cars.

Concentrate on the city of London and financial services. That's the future for it. And of course, that was associated not only by a neoliberal takeover, if you like, a neoconservative takeover, but by the attrition of all that sort of safety net that people had come to rely on for health, for education. And did the same thing happen in France, the attrition of the safety net? Are these rioters rioting because they want more stuff

from the government? Of course. I mean, you know, I'm not saying that it didn't go awry in many ways, but equally, what happened with that was by moving very much towards a consumer-based economy, we neglected the real economy and the jobs that it provided. The more it became, we capsized, the more it came to be an economy about what you buy and not what you make. Now, let me stop you for a moment.

The few other real jobs that were coming. Let me just interrupt you for a moment, Alistair, because when I first saw this clip that we're running now, I thought it was Ukraine. It's not. It's Paris. That's right. It's Paris burning like this. What is the government doing, if anything, to stop this?

It hasn't. It can't. And it is unable to stop it because this is the critical thing. It's losing control over the security forces. The police issued a statement. The police union issued a statement shortly after it started saying that we have to confront this. We have to crush the vermin. They called it that. They said we have to crush the vermin. They called it that. They said we have to crush the vermin, which, of course, was the immigrants that were basically at the root of the rioting.

Now it's changed, and now we're getting white vigilantes, French vigilantes, understandably wanting to protect their property, wanting to protect their shops, and they are going out to contest this. Military leaders have sent a letter to the president saying, unless you control this violence, unless you stop the rioting, we are going to do it for you. And it's a challenge to the government. And the answer, and the quick answer to what you said is, why is it so serious, is there is no answer to this. I mean, this is a problem. I mean, we had all those riots in Paris before, which were not about immigration necessarily, but they were about the economic system, which has been slowly deteriorating and slowly becoming more and more financialized and capsizing away from a real economy, which is the real economy which provides people with a job, a ability to live, to buy a house and a car. And well-paid jobs now in Europe are far and few between if you're not in a bank or in one of those

financialized elites. So how to get the economy back onto some sort of balance? You know, this was all seen in the 18th century. Friedrich List, the famous German economist who took issue with Adam Smith. He said, you know, if you end up with an economy that is only, which is predicated upon buying, i.e. a debt-based economy, if you do that, eventually you will constrain the real economy so that it is not able to support people, not able to support the people that want to have jobs. So our colleague and friend who appears on the show once a week, Colonel Douglas McGregor, though a military man, is like you, a historian.

And he predicts that President Macron will not serve his full six-year term, to which he was just re-elected last year. Do you share in that gloomy prediction? I share with the fact that he is being warned now both by the police and by senior. You remember the number of senior French generals wrote to the president some, I think about a year ago, saying if you don't do something we'll have civil war in France. The president ignored that and the president took action against the people that signed it. Now there's a new letter saying, if you don't do something about it this time, we are going to take over and we are going to sort this out. And so it is very serious. Can he survive this? I just want to add one thing, which I think is very important,

is everyone thinks, first of all, that the French are disposed to rioting. It's not just that. You will see soon that the conservative government in the UK is likely to suffer a catastrophic electoral failure. Why? Because of immigration. And the same issues that are in France are there. Why are we having the same changes taking place in France? That original social pact that came about after the war has gone and it went largely because of the shift towards neoliberalism, which was accompanied by attrition of the whole of the social services, the health services,

the educational system. And it led to, if you like, the plundering of the economy for financialized gain. And, you know, I'm not really, you know, this isn't a sort of a political point I'm trying to make for a particular economy. But, you know, this is the result, this is the facts on the ground, which are plunging Europe into a series. Where's the alternative? Not on the left, not from the communists.

Where is the alternative? Anyone who says something about the economy and the need to actually get back to something of a real economy as well is described as far-right extremists. One last observation sort sort of question, on France, and then we'll get to President Zelensky's latest diatribe. Is the solution in France authoritarianism on the right? Is it Marie Le Pen? Oh, I think, yeah, she's gained enormously. Unfortunately, of course, I mean, you know, what this is going to do is increase

the tensions with the immigrant community, particularly the North African community, which has been bad for years in France. And there are the same problems in other parts of Europe. But of course, it's going to go. Look, here in Italy, every weekend, we get the equivalent of a small town arriving on the islands off the south of Italy on Lampedusa or Palantiria. You get sometimes as much as 30,000 immigrants turning up on ships which are chartered to bring them in specifically illegally. And when you look at the videos, they're young men. They're young men. You don't see them. You used to have women and children amongst them, but you see them getting off and storming onto the beach. They break up the beach chairs, they smash things a bit, and then they take off up into the town. How does any country, we don't have spare sort of small towns sitting around in Europe that you can just put these people to. They go into a camp and then they become more bitter and more angry.

And many of these people, because I know this because I followed and was visiting Syria during the war there very often. Many of the people come from areas where there's been climate change, depleted the agriculture of those areas. They've been bankrupt. They came into the city. These were the fertile ground for ISIS. Many of these people are not, I'm saying, ISIS, but they're culturally attuned in that direction. Yes. It's not a pleasant problem that either the police or the authorities are facing. must all sit down and try and talk together. And, you know, I'm not sure. I mean, that may keep it for a few, a little while,

but it's the major problem facing Europe. And it's causing not only just that breakdown, but new patterns of voting, new alignments. I think the old alignments, right, left, are over. I think the class alignment is gone, in a way. We're talking about values now. People who stick with traditional values, family values, if you like, family values about saving the country and the family, and things are on one side. And then on the other side, you have, if you like, the zealots who are talking about a woke world and a green world that seems extreme to ordinary citizens of Europe.

You will be familiar with what I'm talking about. Of course. To the other crisis, major crisis facing Europe as we speak, which is, of course, the war in Ukraine. Here's President Zelensky yesterday with an English translator. Now we have information from our intelligence that the Russian troops have placed objects resembling explosives on the roof of several power units at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, perhaps to simulate an attack on the plant. Perhaps they have some other scenario. But in any case, the world sees, can't but see,

that the only source of danger to the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant is Russia and no one else. Does he expect us to believe that the Russians would destroy themselves by detonating a nuclear power plant? Or is this a false flag timed to influence the meeting of NATO foreign ministers next week, at which the prospect of Ukraine membership in NATO will be front and center? Absolutely the last. I mean, it's totally untrue. There has been nothing of that.

And the head of the atomic authority, Grossi, has said publicly in these last hours, and he said very clearly, listen, I've been there. It's not what I saw. We have people on the spot who are informing it. There are no weapons. There is no mining of the basement. There are no bombs placed on the power stations. By the way, the power stations are cold. They're not hot. It's only the cooling system that's really running at the moment. Of course, there's radioactive waste that is in the vicinity, but the station itself is pretty impermeable, too permeous to any attack on it, I mean, in terms of a rocket, because it's got a huge, thick concrete containment system. So I don't think it's likely. The Ukrainians did try and assault a couple of days ago, and it was immediately crushed by the Russians before

they crossed the river. Do you think the Ukrainians are reckless enough to assault this nuclear facility and then just come what may? I don't think they have the ability. I think it's partly bluff because they know what's coming at Vilnius, which is the NATO summit, which starts next week. They know that they're not going to be offered NATO membership. And this is their last throw of the dice, is to try and get NATO in Ukraine, or an Article 5 declaration against Russia. But I don't think there's any chance of

that. By the way, there were a number of European governments who approached Zelenskyy overnight in this recent period about what was happening at the Zaporizhzhia power plant. And they came away saying, you know, it's not going to happen. We're not going to have this. In other words, they're saying it was a bluff. And it's all about trying to push Europe into giving some sort of commitment of a short circuit entry for Ukraine into NATO, or that they would send NATO forces to control what's happening around the Zaporizzhye pipeline. I don't think, and, you know, Grossi, who is not very, I mean, you know, forthright politically, I mean, has been quite explicit in this case. He says, it's just not happening. I've been there.

There are no bombs. There's no attack. The Russians are in control. And it's operating perfectly. I mean, we're talking here about mostly the cooling system. All right. Switching gears now to Yevgeny Progozhin. In American football, when you have just a few seconds left in the game

and you're losing and you have the ball, the quarterback throws what is sometimes called a Hail Mary pass. He just throws it in the hopes that one of his receivers will be in the end zone and catches it. I suppose if he's Catholic, like Tom Brady, he would actually say a Hail Mary, but this is known in the media as a Hail Mary pass. Why do I give this background? Because you, my dear friend, in a brilliant article you just published in the past few days, perhaps so Americans wouldn't think about the significance of July 4th, 1776, but nevertheless you published it in the past few days, referred to Prokosian's antics as a Hail Mary pass.

If they were, who threw the ball? The West, the West threw this ball. They really did believe that they were going to see this ample evidence. They thought we were going to see a lot of killing, Russians be killing Russians, and that it was going to be civil war and they took this idea and they were so disappointed you know CNN were lined up for sort of 24-hour coverage they pulled in all the generals some of whom you might know, to be commentators when it went.

We had the ex-ambassador, like, Fall coming on, and Applebaum, everyone saying, well, you know, the civil war is coming. But, you know, I mean, I think I don't want to go down a rabbit hole, but, you know, it's very unlikely for me that the Russian intelligence did not know in advance, well in advance, of what was coming. And certainly, as you have reported, I think, on this, I mean, Congress were informed several days in advance, the British Prime Minister was informed, you know, watch out for this weekend. It's going to come and all our problems are solved because, you know, we don't have to worry about the Ukraine war anymore because Russia is going to be in flames with a civil war inside.

And they're reeling from it. I think they really are. The intel community in the West is reeling from this after the failure of the Ukrainian offensive. They just don't know what to do. And this is why, you know, this whole Vilnius thing is so much up in the air. They don't know what's the answer. And Europe now feels trapped, utterly trapped. Your succinct answer to my question of who threw the ball, the West, does that mean that was the West? Does that mean that CIA and MI6 facilitated, plotted, planned? In other words, more than just knowledge of this, they helped it along? Or did they just wish it success? Well, we don't, I mean, we can never know the full details of that. They're certainly not going to be that frank. But from all, I mean, from first of all, you know, all that, you know, Zelensky was saying, I mean, was setting him up for a pitch. I mean, it was very obvious. It was not the normal

things that a military commander would say. And he's been saying it for six months and he's never been reprimanded. He's never been criticized. He's never been removed for six months. And then, you know, as we saw with the leaks from Teixeira, he was supposed to be offering deployments to Kiev. And then in January, according to all the sources that I have seen, he was approached by Americans in Africa and asked if he would cooperate. On what terms? I don't know. What was the basis of it? I don't know whether they truly believed he had the capability to do this. I mean, I would hope they didn't

believe it, but possibly they did believe it. So he's in Belarus. Is he there because it's convenient for President Putin not to have him in Russia? Is he there because he's going to be interrogated and prosecuted? Or is he there to reestablish Wagner to provide more assistance for the Russian military, perhaps if they have to assault Kiev? Yeah, I think that, I mean, as far as I understand it, he's sort of actually toing and froing at the moment with Moscow. I don't know. But I think, I don't know what, I mean, that's going on at the moment. There's sort of having to sort out the legal aspects of Wagner and what they're going to do. But I think quite clearly Lukashenko is going to use them.

There are already substantial numbers of regular Russian troops in Belarus. And either they can be quite close to Kiev or if there's going to be, as seems likely, because there's been a large movement of Russian forces along the border with Kharkov province. And in either case, having Wagner there with their special skills, they don't have the full skills of an army, but with their special skills of storming cities, storming areas, they would probably be very useful indeed there. I don't think, by the way, there's any intention to storm Kiev, even with this big mobilization we have now. You know, to take a city of several million is

not easy. I mean, it takes huge mempa. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if they wouldn't just surround Kiev at some point and say, well, you know, what are you going to do now? Because there's a lot of forces there. They would be sort of bottled up and they could, I think they are not looking to have casualties. I think they're just waiting to see when the point comes, when the whole of the Kiev project implodes. How much longer do you think this will remain a hot war before it's either a stalemate or the Zelensky government flees Ukraine? I think probably, I don't know, sometime into August. I think it'll probably, I don't think it's in the Russian interest for it to go on another year, which might be the conclusion to that.

It's not going to be a stalemate because it's not in the Russian. It's certainly not. First of all, Lavrov has said they're not going to have a frozen conflict. Why should they? I mean, this is what happened after the Maidan coup. After the coup, it's then set up, you know, a big army to challenge the dissidents in the Donbass and Luhansk Republic and ultimately Russia. And NATO armed them and prepared them for this conflict. America says explicitly, will be the time where we give them more weapons, more training, more aircraft. You know, Russia will see this. Oh, no, we're just going back to the same old thing.

Once, you know, wash, rinse and repeat. Wash, rinse and repeat. Alistair Crook, always a pleasure, my dear friend. How the fans of this show appreciate your insight. I almost can't even articulate in words. Nothing short of brilliant. Thank you for all your time. We'll see you again soon. Thank you very much. later today, Tony Schaefer, Phil Giraldi, and Larry Johnson. Larry at 4.30 Eastern has a broadside, a broadside against his former employers, the Central Intelligence Agency. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. I'm out. you