Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 4/7/22 Dave DeCamp on Russia’s Pivot East and the Overt Western Information War

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

Dave DeCamp returned for another Antiwar Radio last Sunday to update us on the Russian war in Ukraine. DeCamp and Scott talk about the apparent Russian strategy of using operations in the North to draw Ukrainian forces away from the East. They discuss whether these claims appear accurate or if, as western media would have us believe, this is really the Russian excuse for suffering major military defeats at the hands of Ukrainian forces. They next discuss some revelations that came out last week about NATO leaders openly prioritizing vague power games over Ukrainian lives and about how the Biden Administration has admitted to releasing “low-confidence” intelligence in its information war efforts against the Kremlin. Lastly, they discuss Zelensky’s comments about the Azov Batallion on FOX, which the network later tried to hide.  Discussed on the show: “NATO says Ukraine to decide on peace deal with Russia — within limits” (Washington Post) “In a break with the past, U.S. is using intel to fight an info war with Russia, even when the intel isn't rock solid” (NBC News) Bret Baier asks Zelenskyy about Azov Batallion 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

For Pacifica Radio, April 10th, 2022. I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm editorial director of anti-war.com, and author of Enough Already. time to end the war on terror you can find my full interview archive more than 5,600 of them now

going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.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 antivore.com's news editor, Dave DeKemp,

welcome back to the show. How are you doing, sir? Good, Scott. Thanks for having me back. Very happy to have you here and very happy to have you writing at news.com there with Jason did.

and also now, pretty much full-time with Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter as well. And we're kind of sharing newswriters with other friendly organizations. But so you have been doing, you and the boys have been doing such a great job of keeping up with what's going on in the war in Ukraine. So can we start with the battlefield? Overall, I guess the word is, the Russians are withdrawing. from much of their positions in certain parts of the country and maybe not so much in others. Can you give us sort of an overview, if not too detailed of a study here? Yes, so the latest is that Russia has withdrawn completely from the north, from areas near Kiev and Cherniv.

And if you look at, you know, the maps now of the war in Ukraine, you know, the Russian forces are, they're only in eastern Ukraine in the Dombas and other areas just just outside of it. But so now their assault is pretty much totally focused on the Dombas, like they said. On March 25th, the Russian military announced that the, they said what they called the first stage of the invasion is over and that they're going to focus on the Dombas. So, you know, the Western and Ukrainian narrative is that Russia was defeated in the north there and that they retreated and then saying that they're going to focus on the Donbassas. They're just trying to save face. You know, Russia has definitely

taken some losses. Again, on March 25th was the last update. Russia's defense ministry said that they lost over 1,300 troops, which is a significant amount. And, you know, I've seen a lot of photos of burnt out Russian tanks, you know, on the streets of these northern, outside of these northern cities. But I, you know, Russia says that they never intended to take Kiev or other major cities in the north there and you know i i the reason i believe them is that they never really unleashed you know the full force of their air force they never they didn't really put these cities under siege the way they did maripal which is in the dombas and uh so yeah you know i think that they definitely have taken some some losses but it does doesn't look like their strategy was

ever to you know march into kiev they say it was to tie down the military wide while they were fighting in the east and to take out, you know, a significant chunk of Ukraine's armed forces and equipment. So, yeah, that's where we're at now, and the fighting is focused on the Dombas in the east there. There's still some limited strikes in other parts of the country, but right now that's where all the fighting is. Yeah. Now, so it wasn't really clear at the very beginning what the Russian objectives were going to be. So the question was, they're going to take the whole country, the eastern half of the country, or maybe just the Donbass, then it did look like maybe they're going to take the whole east of the country. But you're saying that in hindsight,

it seems that the Russians were really just dividing Ukrainian forces so they could, you know, essentially seize the greater Donbass region, especially in the south of the country, including the town of Maripole and, or the city, and then connecting to the Crimean Peninsula. I know the water resources in Crimea are very important there. And that makes sense to me, too. I never believed all the hype. I mean, they were saying from the beginning that Putin's generals had promised that they'd be drinking from Zelensky's skull in a day or in a week or something. But how would they know that? That's obviously such propaganda. And then they said, oh, well, Putin is so angry at all of his ministers for misleading him. Well, how do you know that? If you really do know that, then you're

burning your highest level source in the Kremlin just to claim that is just on a thought experiment it's obviously fake now the question is i guess dave is it right that now we need to figure out are they going to essentially cease all of the land in the greater dombas region which is a bigger land area than just the land that has been controlled by the separatists for the last few years there. And are there many Ukrainian army forces that far east in the country anymore anyway for them left to fight there? Yeah. To say what their objective is now, it does kind of seem like the greater Donvass, like you said. And yeah, I'm not sure of the numbers of Ukrainian forces on the ground there. But I know that they were saying they're going to try to send more now that

Russia pulled out of the north. But, like, another reason, you know, it's interesting because on February 24th, the day that Russia invaded, just talking about the objectives, you know, there's reports in the media that said the U.S., the Pentagon assesses that Kiev will fall in a few days, you know, if that's what Russia wanted to do. Now, their assessments have definitely been off. You know, we could look at Afghanistan, you know, how that withdrawal went. But, you know, the reason why they probably assess that is just because of the size of Russia's military and it's a country, you know, right next door. So I think that says something too. But yet, right now, it's really just focused on the east. And I think even, you know, there is negotiations going on and they seem

pretty intense. But I think no matter what happens, I think Russia is really, they're just going to try to take the Dombas. All right. Now, so let's talk about those negotiations. Obviously, America's Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, is absolutely worthless. Well, assuming that his job would be to represent the interests of the American people. But do I have it that Israeli Prime Minister Bennett and Turkish tyrant come president, Recep Erdogan, have actually been working pretty hard on trying to achieve a ceasefire here? Yeah, that's what it seems like. Bennett has been kind of mediating between the two and Turkey hosted the last, the latest,

in-person peace talks between the Russian-Ukrainian delegation, there was, you know, some progress made, it seemed like after Russia said that they were going to reduce their military operations near Kiev. I think, you know, that was kind of their plan anyway. They said that they did it as like good faith to facilitate negotiations. But, you know, Ukraine gave them like a draft peace deal. but the issue is that you know they you know the main gripe of russia is NATO is Ukraine's alignment with NATO

and Ukraine said that they would give up their their plans to join NATO but in return they want security guarantees that are similar to NATO's Article 5 which outlines that an attack on one NATO member is attack on them all you know it's the mutual defense clause and they want security guarantees like that from the U.S.

and Britain and other NATO countries, and also Israel and Turkey, and Russia says they have to be a guarantor as well. But I just, that seems like a complete non-starter to me. Obviously. I mean, that's what's at issue in the first place, right? Exactly. Yeah, so they want the NATO guarantees without being a NATO, so it doesn't really change anything. And by the way, you know, Biden, I found in a press conference, went from, I think, one week ago where Biden sort of blundered and stumbled at a press conference and

said, well, you know, I think Ukraine probably is going to have to give up some territory, you know, like Crimea and the Dombas. Oh, really? They are, huh? They're going to have to recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea and the so-called independence of the Dombas

under Russian, you know, pretended protection here, as they call it. Well, they could have made that deal back in the beginning of February, in the middle of February, and avert of this war. Same thing with Zelensky saying, yeah, I'll sign a neutrality deal. Well, neutrality, plus recognizing Russian sovereignty over Crimea and essentially being willing to give up the Donbass at that point, which had already been independent under,

you know, pseudo-Russian protection, sort of for the last eight years in a way, anyway. if that's not too much of a road a hoe for them now, how come they wouldn't just make this deal then? Yeah, I mean, and that the same goes for the whole NATO membership thing anyway, that the whole time leading up to the invasion, apparently they were telling Ukraine behind the scenes that you're not going to be joining NATO. And Biden also said probably- And in front of the scenes too, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. He said it's not going to happen anytime soon, which like if you're acknowledging it's not going to happen with in the next 10 years, and if making a promise that they won't join NATO to avoid a war, like, why not try it? I mean, I just think that says so much about how the Biden administration, you know, this is the result that they wanted, so they could implement the sanctions and fund an insurgency on Russia's thorset up there.

Yeah. It's anti-war radio. I'm talking with Dave DeCamp, news editor at anti-war.com. Now, talk to me a little bit on these same lines here. this Washington Post story, and they talked about the importance of this war to NATO. And this really kind of shocking quote, I guess it's a rough paraphrase of their sources. But in the words of the Washington Post reporter, well, what does it say? Go ahead. Well, yeah, the report, it said for some in NATO, it's better for the Ukrainians to keep fighting and dying than to achieve a peace that comes too early or at too high.

cost to Kiev and the rest of Europe, which, yeah, it's a pretty incredible quote line from the Washington Post report. Like you said, they didn't. I'm sorry, so go ahead and if you could break it down for us a little bit about what exactly they're talking about, about the cost to NATO and what's worth it to them in this context and all that. Yeah, so what I think it means, you know, that they would rather have Ukrainians fighting and dying than to achieve a piece that comes too early means, you know, where a ceasefire was negotiated now, the Estonian Prime Minister kind of hinted at this in an interview yesterday. She said pressure for a ceasefire too soon will mean that Russia gets to keep the territory it's occupying, which right now is really

just in the east there. So I think that's what, you know, there. And which, again, I just said the President of the United States himself has acknowledged it's going to go to Russia eventually anyway. All right, sorry, go ahead. Yeah. And I mean, you could say if they wanted that territory, if they really cared about that territory, I mean, the best way to have kept it as part of Ukraine was to fulfill the Minsk agreements that under those, you could say that maybe they were a little vague these deals. But under the Minsk Accords, the Dames would have remained part of Ukraine. They would have had to cede some level of autonomy, but it still would have been technically Ukrainian territory. But now, yeah, it seems like they really care very much about that. So it's kind of the narrative is that if we see this to Putin, he's going to regroup and then he's going to keep going. He's going to keep going west into the Baltics, into Poland, but which if you're going by the narrative, the mainstream narrative that they're pushing that Putin's an irrational madman who's bent on world domination and is just doing this because he's a big mean bully, then yeah, you could think that. I would have to assume that these leaders, these Baltic leaders and these NATO officials have to understand, you know, why this is happening.

It's very clearly laid out and they've all kind of known that Russia's red lines about Ukraine and NATO. So, yeah, I think it's just more about kind of they just want to keep Putin maybe tied down in Ukraine or just hurt Russia as. much as they can but yeah it's that's just what it seems like to me that's the thing right they can't even specify exactly what the cost would be to nato here other than what their credibility in defending a nation that's not part of the alliance and then as they even put it that's pretty cold i mean for the um washington post to put it that way you know obviously they're very closely reflecting the thinking of their sources that yep it's better to have a war in ukraine and that means that oh yeah the ukrainians yeah they will get exploded to death yeah that'll be part of it

but we'll be achieving some objectives which you know again are not very specific beyond you know being afraid to look weak or something like that i guess right yeah and they also act like it's about these principles and like it's symbolic like it goes back to there's a ned price quote that we talked about the last time i was on here the state department spokesman you know he said that the war in ukraine it's it's bigger than russian ukraine it's about a nation's right to choose how they align themselves like whatever that means um these are the things you know while ukrainians are being killed and fighting and dying and you know that they're talking about these just principles

that just don't make any sense so it does seem really cold. Sorry, hang on just one second. Hey guys, anybody who signs up to listen to this show by way of Patreon will be invited to join the Reddit group and I'm going to start posting stuff over there more. That's patreon.com slash Scott Horton's show. Thanks.

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You guys check it out. This is so cool. The great Mike Swanson's new book is finally out. He's been working on this thing for years. And I admit, I haven't read it yet. I'm going to get to it as soon as I can, but I know you guys are going to want to beat me to it. It's called Why the Vietnam War? Nuclear bombs and nation building in Southeast Asia, 1945 through 61. And as he explains on the back here, all of our popular culture and our retellings and our history and our movies are all about the height of the American war there in, say, 1964 through 1974.

But how do we get there? Why is this all Harry Truman's fault? find out in why the Vietnam War by the great Mike Swanson available now. Yeah, and it really does come down to, I hate this, but it really does come down to, doesn't it, that they don't want to admit that this is their fault at all. They can't even blame George Bush and say, well, George Bush is the one who promised to bring Ukraine into NATO.

He makes bad decisions sometimes. Or Donald Trump, why, he flew a bunch of bomber missions right off the Russian coast, and that's what provoked him. Why can't they just say that? Instead, they know it's their fault. So they have to just say, Putin woke up on the wrong side of the bed after 22 years and became, before he was mean, now he's the world's greatest madman. You know, I don't know. I hear him saying, well, he must have some kind of disease or something.

You know what I mean? They can't say, yeah, well, no, it was all of y'all's provocations. You know, I think we talked before, Dave, about the New York Times piece from December where they said, We're very carefully calibrating the amount of weapons that were pouring into Ukraine to be enough to deter Russia from invading, but not enough to provoke them to invade. Yeah, well, either they calibrated it up a few notches in order to provoke an invasion, or they're very poor at calibrating how many weapons to pour into a country in order to deter but not provoke. Either way, they admit in their own words there, essentially, that they're helping to cause the war to happen, you know? Yeah. And, you know, speaking of that report, and you mentioned earlier about how them saying Putin's advisors are lying to them or things like that. There's a pretty major story yesterday in NBC News. It quoted three U.S. officials, you know, unnamed sources that said that Biden administration, the U.S. has been putting out information based on intelligence, based on low-level intelligence, basically based on stuff that they don't they don't know if it's true it's a pretty incredible report you should

everybody should read it with their own eyes to believe it um and by the way let me let me stop you right there to say this previous one that we're talking about where again uh they say for some in nato it's better for the ukrainians to keep fighting and dying than to achieve a peace that comes too early or at too high cost to kiev and the rest of Europe, states the article. And that Washington Post article is called, if anybody's looking for it, it's from April the 5th. NATO says Ukraine to decide on peace deal with Russia within limits, as in imposed by the West. And this one that Dave's talking about now in NBC, also a remarkable story. In a break with the past, yeah, right, that's what it's called, though. In a break with the

past, U.S. is using Intel to fight an info war with Russia, even when the Intel isn't rock solid. So this is essentially them admitting that, yeah, we've been kind of BSing about a lot of these things. And then they cite those specific examples, right? This stuff about what they pretend to know about what's going on inside Putin's inner circle and this kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. So it opens, it talks about the chemical weapons claims. Over the past month, you know, President Biden himself has said that he thinks Russia was preparing to use chemical weapons. The White House said it.

Jensaki, I think Jake Sullivan mentioned it. And then this article, it says that they had no evidence that Russia had brought chemical weapons near Ukraine. They described it as a low-level confidence intelligence. But they shared it anyway. They shared it with the world. And, you know, they fed it to media outlets. And it also says, you know, if you've seen this claim that Russia asked China for military assistance in the war, it said one European official and two U.S. officials said that was not based on hard evidence, meaning that they didn't know if it was true at all. And that's just like kind of a strange one for them to lie about because there is all these reports. U.S. officials say Russia asked China for military aid in the war in Ukraine.

Saying it as a fact, something that they know isn't true. Just, you know, this proves that they've been lying. And it's really strange that they are admitting it. I don't get the strategy there. And yet, and also Putin's that there's the reports that said Putin's inner circle was misleading him about the war in Ukraine. They said that wasn't based on, it was more based on analysis than intelligence. So it's just something they were guessing pretty much. And also, you talk about the weapons that will provoke, that could potentially provoke Russia.

this is a great example of how they're deceptively putting this information out to kind of push their own narrative and fool people so there was a plan to send meg fighter jets Polish Meg fighter jets to Ukraine Poland didn't want to do it themselves so they told the US we'll give you the migs send them to Germany and then you can send them to Ukraine however you want and the Pentagon decided they didn't want to do it and and they said no and they said that they didn't want to do it because Russia would view it as escrow Well, this report said that they also determined that Russia would view them sending Stinger missile, you know, shoulder fire to any aircraft, Stinger missiles to Ukraine as escalatory, but they did it anyway. So it shows how they pick and choose what to share and how they're just using the media. I mean, these claims that they make get picked up by like every, you know, major media outlet that there is. It's an information war. And they say it's aimed at Putin and one official. said it, they're just doing it to get in Putin's head. You know, the idea is that they say

these things that they think Russia might be doing, and then they're saying they're doing it as deterrence. But I think it, uh, it's also an information war against, you know, the American people and it shows that you cannot trust anything this administration says. Yeah. And there's so much propaganda. And seriously, like this is going to affect Putin when they're just lying about things that he knows firsthand about. He's not going to think, oh, no, they know something I don't when he does know that what they're saying is not right. The whole thing is just completely crazy.

Anyway, anti-war radio, talking with Dave DeCamp, and there's so many things to talk about here. Now, I want to play this clip from Brett Baer from Fox News. Check this out, everybody. Brett Baer asked a good question, and then they edited the question and the answer out of the official record on the Fox News site, on their YouTube channel and whatever other thing, but it's on some lesser-known video channels. I want to have you clear something up for us, and this is these reports about the Azov Battalion

that is said to be Nazi-aff affiliated organization operating as a militia in your country, said to be committing their own atrocities. What should Americans know about that unit about those reports? So Azov was one of those many battalions. They are what they are. They were defending our country. And later, I want to explain to you. Everything from all the components of those volunteer battalions later

were incorporated into the military of Ukraine. Those Azov fighters are no longer self-established group. They are a component of the Ukrainian military. Back in 2014, there were situations when our volunteers were encircled, and some of them did violate laws, laws of Ukraine. And they actually were taken to court and got prison sentences. So law is above all. So a couple of notable things about that.

things about that. First of all, yeah, they are who they are. They're defending the country. Pretty straight up admission. No point denying it. And then he says, but don't worry, they've all been integrated into the military. Well, that makes me feel a lot better. Somehow that the Ukrainian military is completely infested with Nazis now, not that the military disarmed them and sent them all home. And then he says, and by the way, back then they went to jail for a little while, but the ones who were prosecuted. They got their convictions overturned and were released. And so I think, I see why Fox News censored their own story, their own star reporter and his great question and this horrible answer. Yeah, I don't know if you've seen, but there's been a lot of kind of Azov rehabilitation in the media.

Like CNN had an article, a few other outlets about Azov saying, oh, you know, they, yeah, they were Nazis when they first started, but they're not so much anymore. And it really stinks of, you know, the moderate rebels in Syria and the rehabilitation of HTS, the Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria. That I saw recently described, I meant I should have sent you this, I think it was AP, but they described Hayet-Tahrir al-Sham as a former Al-Qaeda affiliate. I mean, I think we've seen this before, but it kind of stuck out to me because that's the language now. And that seems to be what they're trying to do with Azov. You know, the New York

Times used to describe them as a neo-Nazi militia that's integrated into Ukraine's National Guard. And now they're described as a far-right group. And it seems like they're bigger, I mean, than I thought, because, you know, I thought they were mainly in the east and fighting a Mario pole, but there is after this alleged Boucha massacre, I mean, it seems like a lot of people were killed. We're not sure exactly the details of what happened. But the New York Times had pictures. It was actually right before the claims of the massacre. And the Ukrainian soldiers patrolling the streets of Boucha right after the Russians left were the Azov battalion over there, right outside of Kiev. And I know, I think they've been recruiting from Kiev. You know, they've been recruiting

like international volunteers. So, you know, as it goes in war, you know, the most extreme factions grow when you're killing people so it seems like Azov is growing and they're trying to whitewash in the you see the Western media trying to whitewash their history and you wonder how this is going to end up

you know you mentioned the Len lease program so that was last night on Wednesday night the Senate passed a bill that would revive it for Ukraine this World War II era program that we just sent tons of weapons to the Soviet Union to China and then to you know the UK and France and I was I was looking at the into you know how many weapons we gave to this

Soviet Union and it adjusted for inflation you know between 1941 and 1945 we gave the Soviets $180 billion in aid some of it was you know cotton and food but most of it was military aid so you know how did that end up working out for us and then you'd look at how is this going to work out flooding weapons into this country where there is this real you know nazi presence um you know a few years down the line where are we going to be yeah well fighting them of course yeah yeah and you know i think we've entered you know kind of a new era and there's not any going back for a while at least you know i just can't see whatever kind of if any kind of peace deal does happen you know it's not going to be enough for

Biden and the in the Europeans to lift sanctions on Russia you know this is what they want they want Russia to be isolated and totally cut off and it's you know you see Europe really going to do this you know they're preparing a coal ban because how much they're relying on Russian energy you know that was part of the reason why I didn't really think this would happen I didn't think they would really shoot themselves in the foot like that but they're doing it and you know they have all these plans to get off Russian oil and gas you know that'll take away while and if they do get cut cut off yeah let's see about that you know i think the i think the europeans are going to be uh still buying they're going to have to i sure hope that they do i sure hope

that they i sure hope that that's what's on the mind of the germans and it you know makes them seek to end this war as angela merkel if you remember the story back in 2015 she came to dc to meet with Obama and said, look here, Obama, I'm going to make a deal with the Russians and in this war. And he said, okay, ma'am, you know what I mean? It was, like, she paid him the respect to coming all the way to D.C. to notify him that she was going to go and work out a deal. And then he said, fine, and she went straight to Minsk. And, you know, let's hope that they can do something there. I'd hate to think that it's just up to the Biden administration to decide what to do here. Biden threatened war again today.

you know seemingly off the cuff if i have to go to war i'm going to bring you tough union guys with me he said to a bunch of union guys and then he said i mean it just to make sure that nobody thought that he was joking when he came up with that line off the cuff there geez this is the president united states you know i don't know man anyway if we're still live i'll talk to you next weekday thank you that sounds good scott all right you guys that's a great davidicam he is the news editor at anti-war.com and find them at news.com all day, every day, on top of all the bad news for you there. And this has been anti-war radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. Thanks very much for listening. Find my full interview archive at scothorton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton show.

And follow me on Twitter at Scott Horton's show. I'm here every Sunday morning from 830 to 9 on KPFK 90.7 FM in L.A. next week.