Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/24/22 Dave Decamp on Russia’s War in Ukraine and Washington’s Reaction

Episode Date: March 28, 2022

Dave DeCamp joined Scott on Antiwar Radio yesterday to discuss the Russian war in Ukraine. DeCamp gives a brief rundown of the Russian campaign so far and details where the bulk of the fighting is happening now, as the war enters its second month. Scott and DeCamp then dissect the reaction in Washington, where the Biden Administration is clearly prioritizing the arming of an insurgency over any sort of negotiations. But despite Biden’s foot-dragging, talks between Russia and Ukraine have been taking place. DeCamp fills us in on Russia’s demands and how Ukraine is reacting.   Discussed on the show: https://news.antiwar.com/  Dave DeCamp is the assistant news editor of Antiwar.com. Follow him on Twitter @decampdave. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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For Pacifica Radio, March 27, 2022, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, y'all. Welcome to the show. It is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm the editorial director of anti-war.com, and I'm the author of Enough Already. Time to end the war on terrorism. You can find my full interview archive, for the 5,600 of them now, going back to 2003, at Scotthorton.org, and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. And you can follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. All right. Introducing our guest, it's anti-war.com news editor, Dave DeCamp. Welcome back to the show, sir. How are you doing? I'm good, Scott. Thanks for having me back on. Thank you very much for joining us.

Now, we're about one month into the war here, and we have a lot to catch up on. So, first of all, can you give us sort of a thumbnail sketch of your understanding of the war in East Ukraine as it sits now? the Russians are where and have gotten how far, and then we'll get into the politics of the thing in a minute, I guess. Yeah, so if you look at, you know, the maps of the Russian invasion that, you know, you've seen in the media, it's clear that Russia is focusing. It's assault just on eastern Ukraine. You know, they've launched strikes in Western Ukraine, but it's clearly focused on, you know, east of the Denipa River. And with a big focus on Maripal, the city on the Sea of A's off. You know, that's what we hear a lot about in the news.

It's pretty much under siege by Russia. There's a lot of strikes there. And that's the stronghold of the Azov Battalion, which is one of the openly, you know, neo-Nazi militias that's part of the Ukrainian National Guard now. You know, and this is in the Dombas. So, you know, Putin, part of his justification for the invasion was that he was going to de-Nazify Ukraine, whatever that means. It's not clear exactly. but, you know, we kind of expected the assault in the areas where they're with A's off and other, you know, far right. That term has kind of lost its meaning these days, but, you know,

the, you know, ultra-nationalists and the Nazi groups. So we expected the attack of Maripal to be kind of more brutal, and it seems like it is. And then there's been strikes in Kiev. There hasn't been a full assault on the city, even though, you know, we've seen all this news about this big convoy of tanks that was headed that way. It seems like that might have just been like a distraction or maybe a way to draw out Ukrainian forces. On the northeast in Kharkiv, there's been strikes there. They've taken Kersen, which is a city, it's a port city on the Denver River that connects to the Black Sea. But I think that right now they're still somewhat contested. But yeah, that's basically, you know, my understanding of it. We've talked before and

And, you know, what we're doing in the news section, anti-war.com, we're not totally focusing on all the battle stuff because it's so dynamic and it's tough to know what to believe. There's a lot of propaganda. You know, Ukraine has an interest in exaggerating civilian casualties. Again, there's, you know, groups like Azov that, you know, they might be interested in staging things. You know, they want NATO and U.S. intervention. So we kind of are focusing more in the aspect of covering the, you know, how the U.S. and NATO are

responding and the assistance to Ukraine that's fueling the war even more. But yeah, from what I see, and you know, we see this, every U.S. official and just about every major media outlet that Russia is having a much harder time than they expected. Ukraine's putting up a fierce resistance. But I'm not sure if that's really true. Again, it's hard to know. But from what we can see here, it's a pretty limited campaign. They haven't unleashed the full strength of their air force. And they're not indiscriminately bombing these cities. They're setting up these civilian corridors, people can get out. You know, to me, just my understanding of it from what I've seen, it seems like, you know,

Putin has no intention right now of taking out the government in Kiev, of taking out Zelensky and conquering Ukraine. I just don't see that that is the plan for now. They're in negotiations with Ukraine. But something that came up this week, actually, from Will Arkin in Newsweek, who you've interviewed before. He actually quoted a senior analyst in the Defense Intelligence Agency. the Pentagon's intelligence agency, basically saying what I said, you know, that it's clear that

the destruction could be a lot worse, what Russia is doing right now, is pretty limited. They're not indiscriminately bombing. Of course, civilians are dying because that's the nature of war. If they're going to strike any targets in cities, whether they're government or military buildings, you know, civilians are going to be killed. That's what happens. But it still seems to be pretty limited. And Arkin put this in pretty good perspective.

So in the first 24 days of the invasion, he said Russia flew less sorties and dropped and deployed less weapons than the U.S. did in the first day of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. So that really says a lot, I think. And right now, again, civilian casualties, it's tough to know. And Russia, they have an interest in downplaying how many of their soldiers have been killed. I know the U.N. number, they're saying 1,000 civilians have been killed, but Russia hasn't put out their casualty numbers in a while. I think they did in the first week or two. They said they lost about 500 soldiers, so we don't know where we're at now. But you see all these claims, you know, NATO said like 7 to 15,000 Russian soldiers have died, but I don't think that that's true.

But these are all things, you know, we're going to learn eventually. And just right now there's just so much information out there that it's tough to kind of figure out exactly. situation on the ground there yeah they want us to believe that 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in what major set piece battle did they lose entire divisions and we didn't hear about it yeah that's yeah that's my question too I don't know that's just silly anyway it is pretty bad it sounds about right when you say a thousand civilians verified killed so far in the onslaught. I mean, that sounds like it's probably about right. And you mentioned about the lack of air power being called in by the Russians here. And what it says, I'm not sure what it

says. Is that a public relations decision on the part of Vladimir Putin to not call in heavy bombers to take out Ukrainian fixed positions in the east of the country? I guess he thought it would be easy anyway without doing that. And for the public relations hit, he would take for the obviously higher casualties that would have happened there at the very beginning yeah i mean well if you look at it and also this is another interesting aspect of it um the pentagon has has said this that you know the majority of the russian strikes are being launched from russian either from planes in russian airspace or from missiles inside russia so and and they kind of are portraying this as like oh ukraine has tougher air defenses than they thought and we're giving them all these

Stinger missiles and stuff. So the skies over Ukraine are dangerous for the Russians. But I don't think that's really it. I think we are seeing this limited campaign. And I'm just guessing here, but I think it's because of the negotiations and what Russia's demands are right now, which is not regime change. So the demands that, you know, they've made public are that they want Ukraine to recognize Crimea as Russian territory, kind of to give up on the idea that it'll ever be returned to Ukraine. They want to, they want them to recognize the independence of the Donetsk and Lujansk republics in the Donbass where there's been a war going on for eight years since the U.S. Baku in 2014, they declared independence and the war started there. And again, they want, you know, the denatification, which we don't know exactly what the specifics are for that. And they want them to demilitarize or shrink their military to some extent.

And of course, you know, one of the most important ones is for Ukraine to be neutral. and kind of give up on its intent to ever join NATO. So, you know, if those are the demands, and the reason that I believe that that's what Russia is pushing, because we've seen reports come out of the negotiations now. It's kind of interesting. Naftali Bennett, the Israeli prime minister, has kind of, is trying to be a mediator in this whole thing.

And he flew and met with Putin, and he's been talking to Zelensky and Putin. And Israeli officials, in a few media outlets, I saw this report in the Jerusalem Post, I think the Times of Israel, Axios, quoted Israeli officials, you know, unnamed sources saying that the deal that Putin has put forward is like tough for Zelensky to accept, but it's not as, you know, harsh as they thought it would be. And it allows Ukraine to maintain its sovereignty. So if that's true, then I think that explains while we're seeing the limited campaign, because they're just not looking to conquer the country. And they probably don't want to make, I mean, you know, this is already probably too late at this point, but they probably don't want a lot of the, you know, Russian-speaking people in the eastern part of Ukraine to kind of turn on, to, you know, rally around Kiev and Zelensky. But, you know, when you're under siege like some people are, then that's probably already happened. But yeah, I really think

it's that. It just comes down to that Russia seems like they would rather settle this through negotiations right now, at least. Yeah. Well, which is one way of putting it. I mean, And they are occupying the other guy's territory and holding a gun to their head. Oh, yeah, absolutely. As you say, their demands are completely realistic and reasonable neutrality. Of course, I saw someone on the Twitters today saying, yeah, well, that's what Henry Kissinger said a few years ago. We ought to strike a deal that defines the Ukrainian's position as neutral like Austria was during the Cold War. So, in other words, based on an exact model that we have from previous history, a couple of countries west of there back during the last Cold War, but anyway, and then Crimea, which, of course, has always belonged to Russia and has, again, for the last, you know, almost decade, and clearly that ship has sailed. I mean, give me a brick.

And then the Donbass, again, the so-called independence of these regions under Russian. so-called protection is a fate accompli. There's nothing anybody can do about that now. And that's really been true also for the last eight years. So as far as just recognizing the fact of that, you know what? Maybe Biden shouldn't have overthrown the government there in 2014 and we wouldn't have this problem. But that's that. And as far as the Nazis, I mean, if they're going to insist that the Ukrainian government disarmed the Azov battalion and right sector, and Adar and the other Nazi group, C-14, the other Nazi groups there, they're going to have a civil war on their hands.

And those guys are about a fifth of the military or something at this point. So that'll be interesting to see. And then as far as the demilitarization, I don't think they're going to be able to get the Ukrainians to agree, to disarm or to cease accepting Western weapons. I don't know about that. I don't think you can get the Americans to stop Senate. them weapons. So anyway, and that's where we get up against the cause of this problem,

really being, just going back a few weeks, the Americans' refusal to deal with the Russians in any kind of rational way, and their insistence that the Ukrainians also refuse to negotiate. And you see all these trial balloons where Zelensky says, yeah, maybe we shouldn't join NATO after all. If they're not going to come to our rescue, what good are they? Well, geez, he could have said that a few weeks ago, except that the Biden government was telling him to not say that, to just hang in there. Maybe you'll join one day still, or whatever it was. What do you think is the explanation for that? For what Zelensky's saying about NATO, I mean... Or about the Americans encouraging him to take this intransigent stance. Yeah. Well, I mean,

it really does seem like that the U.S., you know, is kind of hell bent on funding a proxy war on funding an insurgency, you know, against Russia to kind of just hurt Putin. Because, you know, at this point, you know, one of the reasons why I didn't think, you know, this was going to happen. I think the last time I was on your show, I was kind of downplaying the whole thing back in January was that, you know, I thought if the real, if there was a real chance of this war that the U.S. would have at least given Russia enough concessions to stop it or try to stop. But the whole time, they refused to entertain the idea of giving Russia a written guarantee that Ukraine won't ever join NATO. And now, you know, a month into this, you know, horrific war, they're still, it does, they're still not showing any sign of kind of pushing Ukraine to say, don't join NATO. Instead, what they're doing is sending them just a ton of weapons. I mean, Biden just announced an $800 million arms package for Ukraine.

then it includes the Stinger missiles, the javelin anti-tank missiles, and the armed drones, switchblade drones, I think they're called. They're kind of smaller, like Kamikaze drones. They're working to get them all this Soviet-era missile defense, you know, kind of more advanced stuff than just the shoulder-fired missiles. Hey, y'all, Scott here. Let me tell you about Roberts and Roberts, Brokerage, Inc. Who knew?

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or check them out at rrbi.co. That's rrbi.co. You'll be glad you did. Reading about this in the New York Times, it's amazing the way that they say, hey, look, we couldn't give them planes. Because, of course, a plane could get to Moscow, and the Russians might see that as a real threat.

And they even say in there, even just the New York Times reporter, just reports this flat fact correctly. All this makes America a belligerent in the war. This is all an active war against Russia. But, you know, the CIA has determined that if they calibrate the level of support to just highly sophisticated shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles by the

thousands, that, nah, they won't do anything. As long as we don't give them planes, the Ukrainians, to fly against the Russians, then we're pretty sure we can do anything short of that. And then, well, what's their gamble? They're gambling with all of our lives. And they talk about this like they're playing chess with Saddam Hussein, who really can't do a damn thing, you know? Yeah, it's weird the way that they kind of laid out what they think are red lines.

You know, sending them fighter jets is more being involved in the war than, you know, sending them thousands and thousands of these shoulder-fired missiles and the drones. And they're giving them sharing intelligence, like, you know, real-time targeting. intelligence that some reports say. So, I mean, how more involved in the war can you be than if you intervene directly? And listen, you know what? I saw, I'm sure these are your links that I followed here at news.antaiwar.com, Dave, but I saw where in the New York Times, there were a question about the arms that were sending, and in NBC talking about the intelligence sharing, in both cases, the question being just how complicit in the war does this make us and does this legally

make us co-belligerence and could it lead to a war with Russia? And in all those cases, they answer yes to all the former questions, but at the end they say, nah, we'll just keep it low enough level that it doesn't have consequences for us. Which, by the way, is exactly what they said in December about all the weapons they were sending in then, they said in the New York Times, that it's carefully calibrated to deter Russia from invading, but it's never enough to actually provoke them into invading. And here we are now. So they go, well, it's enough to make them die, but it's definitely not enough to make them kill us back. Yeah, that was another thing in the there's a recent report from yahoo news that the cia was training ukrainians in the donbass

on the front line of the war since 2014 uh right back dorfman in yahoo news yeah cia paramilitary groups and in there was kind of how they had this conversation like what is too far with russia and they one official i think it was a trump era official said that oh we think russia speaks the language of proxy wars like we have a precedent and I guess are referring to Afghanistan and support for the mujahideen. And Syria too, where we supported the Mujahideen against them as well. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, they determined that that wasn't enough to provoke Russia. And here we are today. And all of this intervention, the CIA being there, I'm sure, and the weapons, just all of it. And of course, the backing the coup really is the main factor in Russia invading.

So, you know, they were wrong then. So what are they, how are they going to play it right this time by sending all these weapons? Like what if Russia decides to bomb a shipment of NATO weapons that's going into Ukraine from Poland, like right on the border or something? I mean, when and then when does it cross a line? And then when does that cross the line for the U.S. and NATO to get involved, even though Biden and Stoltenberg, the head of NATO, they've said repeatedly that they're not going to send troops into Ukraine to fight Russia. They're not going to fight Russia directly. But if you keep going down this road, like at what point is there going to be enough of a spark to really start something here? Well, and that just goes to show, too, that in their mind, Ukraine is not a vital interest.

I mean, if the Russians were rolling tanks across Germany right now, we would be at nuclear war. Nobody thinks America's going to give up Germany to Russian domination. Not like that could happen in another hundred years. But anyway, no one thinks that America would let it. that happen. But Ukraine? Yeah, we'll send you some shoulder-fired missiles. So in other words, they admit right there up front that this is not something that they're willing to spend one American life on, but there's no ceiling on the number of Ukrainian lives that they're willing to spend on this same mission. Yeah. And, you know, going back to kind of the diplomacy part of it

and the negotiations, yesterday there was a report in the Washington Post that Millie, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, have tried to set up calls with Russia's defense minister and the head of the Russian armed forces and that they declined multiple times. But in that report, it also said, Anthony Blinken, who's supposed to be America's top diplomat, hasn't even tried to talk to Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, since the invasion started. Isn't this, I'm sorry, but there's so much going on, Dave. I have to say, this might be the greatest scandal in American history.

And what do you mean the Secretary of State is not on the phone with the Russian foreign minister at all during this war? No, I know. Things got higher heights of tension during the Cold War. But this is the most extreme criminal negligence. I mean, this is like George Bush twiddling his thumbs on September the 10th right here. How could Blinken not be in Geneva? it. And how could that, is it because TV didn't decide for us? How is this not the narrative of all 300 million Americans, blink into Geneva or resign? That's it. How are we having any other

conversation than that right now in this country? Yeah, it seems like people, Americans don't understand kind of the risk here of what this can turn into. People don't seem to be afraid of nuclear war anymore. But, you know, and again, That was another reason why I didn't, I was doubtful that this would really turn into a full-blown war like this was because, uh, leading up to the invasion, Blinken and Lavrov, and Wendy Sherman and Lavrov's deputy, they were all talking like almost constantly. It felt like every week in Biden and Putin. So I thought somewhere in there, there was like some backdoor deals. And the current director of the CIA, William Burns, was the author of the Niet means, yet memo to Conno Lisa Rice where he explains to her the facts of life on February 1st, 2008 that, boy, that

Sergey Lavrov was serious when I met with him today. We're pushing our luck in Ukraine. So that was reasonably that, yeah, he might help guide Joe Biden through this. Isn't that his job? Apparently not. Apparently his job is try to recreate 1980s Afghanistan again.

Yeah, that's what it seems like. And they keep saying that, and that's the important part here, right, is James Strativus, who would have been Secretary of Hillary Clinton had won, the former Admiral and former Supreme Allied commander of NATO, who was saying outright. He says, I love this quote.

He says, look, we don't know the first thing about how to defeat an insurgency. I admit that. But we sure know how to back one, like we did in Afghanistan and in Syria. So one, can you believe they got the word Afghanistan in their mouth

after we're just leaving only half a year ago? after 20 years bogged down there dealing with the blowback from the last time they did this they only lost the Afghan war six months ago Dave and they're talking about yeah

we should do that again I mean to them to them but don't worry it won't blow back on us not like it did last time and in Syria they want to invoke Syria with I think a bare minimum of half a million dead

the rise of the bin Ladenite caliphate and Iraq War 3 to destroy it again this absolute catastrophe on the order of Iraq War 2 and they go yeah we could do that we're so smart and good at that those guys on

the Obama team now back in power I mean I don't know what to say they're at least as evil as Vladimir Putin or any of America's enemies anywhere in the world they're monsters our government yeah especially you know when you consider that they're not willing to fight for Ukraine,

but they're just willing to, you know, flood them with weapons. Why, if they're not willing to actually defend Ukraine, why aren't they, you know, kind of pushing for a diplomatic solution instead of just fueling the war? There's clearly that motivation behind it is to, you know, bleed Russia.

Well, and of course, they're in no position to fight for Ukraine. I mean, what are they going to do? They're going to transfer our army to far eastern Europe through Germany and Slovakia to go feel, a land, an armored division or 10 to keep Russia out of their own little Canada there?

Are they going to sail all our Navy through the Bosporus straight up into the Black Sea and we're going to have a big naval battle with the Black Sea fleet? But we're going to avoid breaking out H-bombs during all of this. It's completely crazy. America's in no position to defend Ukraine whatsoever.

Yeah. I think one thing that's important And for people to, your listeners, I'm sure understand this, but I feel like we have to tell more people is that, you know, the no-fly zone that Zelensky is pushing and some hawks like Adam Kinsinger and in the U.S. are calling for, you know, that means war with Russia. Like, there's no way around it. And to enforce a no-fly zone, over Ukraine, they have to shoot down Russian planes and bomb, you know, surface-to-air missiles that are inside Russia. it's war with Russia it's World War III could be nuclear Armageddon and they're disguising that you know there's been like protests for a no fly zone I saw one with my own eyes in Austin yeah yeah oh wow and listen I mean I know I see this too I mean people just think it's a magic wish

yeah that's absolutely right and these guys act like yeah no don't worry the world will just do what I say or something yeah yeah I think we really have to hammer that point going into people. There were some polls done, you know, do you support a no-fly zone over Ukraine? I forget the percentage, but I think it was CBS News that did this one. It was just over 50% of Americans said, yeah, we do. And then when they told them what it meant, the number dropped down, like in the 30s, which is still too high. But there was another AP poll today that said Americans think Biden needs to be tougher on Russia, which, you know, what does that mean? How much tougher can he get besides going to war you know with these sanctions they're they're trying to you know

intentionally trying to destroy russia's economy which isn't going to stop putin from bombing ukraine you know he's all factored all these all this stuff into his decision to invade he knew he was going to face these sanctions you know they're preparing for it yeah they're definitely taking a big hit right now but they've been prepared and it's not putin in his inner circle that's going to suffer it's regular like regular people in russia it's americans you know who are facing record high inflation and gas prices. It's people all over the world. It's people in countries like Yemen that are, you know, rely on, you know, food imports from places like Ukraine and Russia to survive, you know, live another day. And these are all the people that are going to

suffer because of, you know, Biden is choosing this path. Yeah. And now listen, I'm sorry to finish up here, Dave. Can you please talk a little bit about the press conference with Ned Price from the State Department that you covered the other day, where he's essentially gloating about America's unwillingness to negotiate an early end to this war. Yeah, yeah. So this was earlier this week, Ned Price was asked about the negotiations that the U.S. is pushing Zelensky. And, you know, he said something like Zelensky has made it clear that he's open to a diplomatic solution, but as long as it doesn't compromise the core principles at the heart of this war. And he said, He went on to say that the war is bigger than Russia and Ukraine.

It's about universal principles that a country can choose how it aligns itself. Basically, saying that this war is about the fact that Ukraine, the door to NATO is going to be open to Ukraine, even though they're not really ever going to join. And then this is another line from Price and Jensaki and all these spokespeople. This is the line coming from the Biden administration. When they are asked, are you involved in the negotiations? Are you looking for a diplomatic solution? They say, oh, the role we can play, you know, the most effectively is by sending more weapons into Ukraine and sanctioning Russia to hurt their economy to give Ukraine, you know, leverage. And so that tells me that, no, they're not involved at all.

They could be, it signals that they're discouraging Zelensky. And part of all these new weapons that they keep promising, you know, they just promise, I think more today, I have to catch up on everything. but, I mean, it just keeps coming. That's right. And listen, people just do your homework type in Ukraine arms and then insurgency and see how much this is about not defeating Russia in war, but bogging them down and extending one. It's as ruthless as it gets. And I'm sorry, we're out of time. That is the great Dave DeCamp.

He is news editor at anti-war.com. Thank you, Dave. Thanks, Scott. all right you guys and that has been anti-war radio for this morning i'm your host scott horton thanks very much for listening look me up at antivore.com at scotthorton.org and at youtube.com slash scott horton show and i'm here every sunday morning from 830 to 9 on kpfk 90.7 fm in LA see you next week