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Aug. 29, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:18
Dr. Gilbert Doctorow: Putin Calm and Patient
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, August 29th, 2024.
Professor Gilbert Doctorow joins us now.
Professor Doctorow, always a pleasure, my dear friend.
I want to spend a fair amount of time with you analyzing the politics in Russia and the situation in Korsk.
But what is the attitude in Moscow, as you're able to glean it, either among the movers and shakers or among the population in general, over the persistent invasion and occupation by Ukrainian and other forces of the area around Kursk in Russia?
Look, unlike Anatole Levin,
So what I'm about to say is based on my reading of television shows and not of And a little bit of background contact with our family friends in St. Petersburg who have just come back from Crimea and were very happy to get across the bridge.
The mood among the people I know has never been pro-war enthusiasm, nothing of the sort.
They were sadly persuaded that this war was unavoidable and that the West is out.
To do Russia in.
So nothing, I think, has changed in their outlook.
As for the mood that's come out of the invasion of Kursk, I think the notable issue is a safety issue.
I think that that rides parallel with the experience of cities in the heartland of Russia that have, in the past week or two, undergone attack by Ukrainian drones.
The fact is that there is no city in European Russia that feels itself totally secure from this type of attack.
I think the kind of answer to your question is the high level of civic involvement in providing aid to those who have been evacuated in Kursk.
And this aid is vast.
Of course, the need is vast.
You're speaking about 200,000, possibly substantially more in the last few days since the other two neighboring oblasts or provinces of the Russian Federation adjoining to the north and to the south.
Of course, there's Bryansk and Belgrade.
They have also been subject to breaches of the border by Ukrainian troops.
Who would, if they had the opportunity, do in those provinces what they are now doing in Korsk?
That is my overall impression.
I don't say it is solidly based.
I can't because I have not put my boots on the ground in Russia.
Do you know what's going on in Korsk?
I mean, you mentioned 200,000 displaced Russians.
Are there Russians who have not left?
And what is the military doing?
Is it running a government?
Is it cleaning the streets?
Is it collecting the garbage?
Or is it just fortifying itself defensively?
Obelist, which is occupied by the Ukrainians, is anything but an urban environment.
These are farming communities.
Collect garbage?
Nobody collects garbage in a hamlet of 100 people.
So, as far as it's possible to understand, the Ukrainian troops, among whom there are a substantial number of mercenaries, foreign mercenaries, are running amok.
in these settlements and are shooting anything that moves.
There are some Russians who disobeyed the orders to evacuate, and some of them have been roughed up by Ukrainian forces passing through.
But there's a very little report of that.
The main issue was simply people who were compelled to leave their homes for the sake of their own, for their safety, and who are now in tent cities.
in Korsk City or who have been moved further afield into Central Russia.
Those people are featured every day on Russian television, which is a major part of the war coverage, how they're being handled.
And a lot of what they're receiving is volunteer work, volunteer care and shipment of blankets and of foodstuffs from ordinary Russian citizens.
That is the kind of answer to your question, do the Russians support their own who are under attack, or do they turn on Mr. Putin?
By the way, I'm deeply grateful for you joining us every week.
Can you discern?
From your scrutiny of Russian media, if there is notable pressure on President Putin to do something more aggressive in response to the invasion and occupation of Korsk?
There is, in the public arena, in the public space, of course there are people who are calling for more aggressive.
response by Russia to these provocations.
Whether they have any impact on Mr. Putin is most doubtful.
And as I have written in the last week or so, a firm answer to that was given by a man who was very close to the Kremlin, who was one of the top journalists in the country, and who interviewed Putin several times at length, that is, Vladimir Solovyov, who on the 18th of August said flat out that nobody can pressure Mr. Putin, nor does Mr. Putin succumb to his own emotions.
That he acts strictly in a rational way to what he perceives to be Russia's national interest.
And I think that rule remains.
People talk a lot, but as I've said at times, and some of your listeners may be disbelieving, Russia's a free country.
And nobody shuts them up unless they are calling for sedition.
Deputy Director of the American CIA said yesterday that their satellite photographs showed the Ukrainian and other people with them, forces in Korsk, building defenses, defensive mechanisms to defend against what they anticipate will be the coming onslaught.
In this respect, your observations of Korsk have proven to be quite accurate, whereas some other observations of what's happening in Korsk thought it would be over with already, and the invaders would be slaughtered and the villagers would be back to their homes.
Well, in your opening remarks, you said, as I agree fully, that there are Among the commentators and certainly invitees to your show, there are people who bring remarkable analytical skills and a great deal of relevant experience, primarily those in the military and in intelligence.
Among the intel people, people have different backgrounds.
Some of them, like Ray McGovern, were precisely the Soviet specialists, and they practice today the arts of Kremlinology that they used.
30, 40 years ago with great effect, and they're using those same talents today with effect.
By that I mean parsing the texts that are published, the texts of speeches by Putin, of Shoigu in the past, of Beirutov today, certainly of Lavrov.
These are issued in English, in translation, and they are accessible to people who are not Russian speakers.
In the case of Reh, he always was a student of Russia.
So this is not so relevant with respect to him, but to others who are doing the same thing, using the speeches of leading figures.
I would also like to point out that, as I've said in the past, Russians are not bunny rabbits, and their politicians are not truth seekers.
They're politicians.
And politicians tend to lie for reasons of state in Russia, as they do everywhere else.
Mr. Putin, and they speak with different sides of their mouth.
To different audiences, I mean particularly their domestic audience.
So Mr. Putin can be a real politician, which I believe he is, but he'll speak in nationalist terms when he's addressing his citizenry, because citizens don't like to hear real politics.
Is there a perception That this invasion was orchestrated, calculated, and conducted by NATO.
That is, that the West, led by the United States and Great Britain, actually invaded Russia.
And if there is that perception in the Kremlin, Professor, are there larger, potentially nuclear, implications to that impression?
Well, it's not an impression.
It's a certitude as far as the Russians are concerned.
The facts speak for themselves.
They have delivered the facts today in the session of the United Nations Security Council.
Their deputy representative was setting out the arguments that they have.
Mr. Lavrov has stated in the last couple of days precisely why they believe that the United States is behind.
The incursion, and I'll give you an additional reason that comes out of my following these experts on talk shows, and that is that not only, it's not just the CIA, it's the Pentagon.
The troops have been trained in NATO practice as the Ukrainians engaged in this are the elite.
Troops of Ukraine, they have all been trained extensively by NATO officers under following what was really US practices.
And they have been equipped with their weapons by the United States precisely to engage in this mission.
That is the Russian, here I will say, perception.
They're saying openly that the weapons being used against them in Kursk were shipped by the United States.
Right, right.
I mean, that is the reason why one of our regular guests, whose experience is both military and intelligence community, Larry Johnson, says outright the United States of America invaded Russia.
That's not an impression in Larry's view.
That is a fact.
Do you agree?
Is that statement safe to make?
Is that statement made or understood to be so in Moscow?
I think in Moscow it's perceived to be true.
But is that statement true?
I think, strictly speaking, no.
It has done everything possible, including providing real-time satellite reconnaissance information directly to the Ukrainian forces on the ground in Kursk.
It is deeply involved, but to say that it is a US invasion, I think, is an exaggeration.
There are some US troops there, but there are a lot more Poles.
And French there.
You said troops.
United States military in American military uniforms inside Russia, Professor?
That hasn't been proven.
What the Russians are saying is that there are NATO and American, meaning American, Polish, and French, those are the nationalities that are named, who are wearing uniforms of one kind or another, but who are called mercenaries.
But from the Russian standpoint, they include people in the United States, I asked you a few minutes ago about the broader and potentially nuclear implications of all this.
I want to get back to it and to lead off that part of our conversation.
You may have seen this.
It's two minutes long, but it's riveting.
It is Sergei Lavrov two days ago on August 27th accusing the United States of being the moral equivalent of children playing with matches.
Cut number 14. Americans have this direct association, these conversations, this talk of a world war.
They think that if this happens, it would only concern Europe, which is very important.
very showing thing that reflects the mentality of those geopolitical strategists in the US because they are confident that they will just be safe across the ocean.
And in this situation, one has to understand that we have our own doctrine, a doctrine of using nuclear weapons, among other things.
And we are now making adjustments to this doctrine and the American.
And, you know, these are Freudian sleep.
World War III is a bad thing because we do not want Europe to suffer.
That's the mentality of the Americans, mentality of masters that are sitting on the other bank across the ocean.
They are certain of their safety and security, and they are confident that there will be someone else.
To die for them, to do their dirty job for them, not only Ukrainians, but now Europeans as well.
So we heard these speculations regarding allowing to use not only the term shadows, but also American missiles, long-range missiles.
And in Washington, an anonymous source said that there is an ongoing effort, that they are looking into a request from Ukraine in a positive light.
I do not want to add anything to that.
The president has already spoken on this on many occasions, and we reaffirm this once again, that playing with fire, and they are like little kids who are playing games with matches.
It's a dangerous thing for adults who were trusted with nuclear weapons.
Senior most and respected most diplomat in the world today.
He is the dean of global diplomats.
I agree with you.
At the same time, let me just separate it straight as I see it.
Mr. Lavrov is Mr. Putin.
He is Mr. Putin with gentle words, diplomatic words.
Mr. Lavrov has been in office for 20 years.
Four years of those.
He served as the foreign minister to Dmitry Medvedev.
Not the Medvedev who you see today, who's a hawk and who's making up for the sins of the past.
But Mr. Medvedev, when he was president, was the smiling face of Russia.
The country never had a senior, the top executive.
Who was outgoing and friendly to the world as Mr. Medvedev was.
And Mr. Lavrov was a different Lavrov under Medvedev.
He took all of his marching orders and tried faithfully to implement the very accommodating foreign policy of Medvedev.
Now he has moved further and further to the right, shall we say, by right I mean hardline, as his president has moved to the hardline.
The whole Russian diplomatic corps is one A vertical unit, as the Russians like to say.
The Russian ambassadors have almost no leeway, no freedom to say anything.
They say what Mr. Lavrov allows them to say.
And Mr. Lavrov says what Mr. Putin allows them to say.
Let's get that straight.
So it's interesting to watch Mr. Lavrov, but you're really watching Mr. Putin.
Now to come to the big question, where does a nuclear threat come in and danger?
A nuclear threat is very hinted at.
It's much more clearly stated.
With the hardliner who is Mr. Lavrov's deputy, and that is Mr. Ryabkov.
Larry Johnson has several times made allusion to Ryabkov, and I salute that observation that Ryabkov really is the man to watch, because he was the one who set the terms in December of 2021 for the United States and NATO to renegotiate the architecture of security in Europe.
And he was a tough guy then.
Well, he's still around, and he made still tougher remarks than what we just heard from Mr. Avrof in virtually the same time.
Now, what is this all about?
There's something that's being missed in public discussion, what the Russians are thinking.
And I'd like to fill those dots in.
And they come to some events of the last months that seem to be confusing, if not inexplicable.
Let's go back to the destruction of those two radar stations.
Which you and I discussed when that happened.
These are radio stations in the south of Russia, which were early warning stations.
And nobody could make much sense of it.
Why in the devil would the Ukrainians, would drones knock out these stations when they had no relevance whatever to the war in Ukraine?
Well, that's what we thought then.
As of this week, we should rethink it all.
It has a lot of relevance to the presence of two aircraft carrier task forces now in the eastern Mediterranean.
Which the Financial Times, the New York Times and everybody else will tell you are there to keep Iran under control and to use against Iran if they go out of control in their still not launched revenge attack on Israel.
Well, why do we believe that the Pentagon says what it means?
Wouldn't it be reasonable to look at the configuration?
Those battleships, those aircraft carriers, can be used to send, what, 100 jets, nuclear armed, on a decapitating strike against Russia.
This is not my observation.
I'm repeating to you now what I heard on ocean television by a very authoritative person.
I don't want to fall into a trap of building a whole approach to the present global situation on the testimony of one man.
That would be rather foolhardy.
But that one man is rather an important man with experience extremely relevant to everything we're talking about.
I'm talking about a certain Mr. Klintsevich, who served 20 years in the Soviet and the Russian Armed Forces in the heavy-duty parachute division, who then served a term in the Duma, several terms in the Duma, who is now in the upper house of the Russian bicameral.
He was on the steering committee of Russia's governing party, United Russia.
So this is not just a chap on the street.
And he was giving a very pessimistic appraisal of the situation on the ground in Korsk.
This was about three, four, five days ago, while helping to interpret the very diplomatic and rather cloudy language.
That has been given on Russian television by people who say, yes, the situation in Kursk is tense.
Tense.
What they mean is there's fierce fighting going on and Russians are taking heavy casualties.
They don't say that.
That is what Mr. Klintsevich was broadly hinting at.
He also said something that people in the Pentagon would like to hear so they can put a star next to my name.
That the Russian perception of an expert like Princevich is that the Ukrainian forces, together with their advisors and assistants from NATO, are better prepared for this battle than the Russian forces are.
Yes, this is a Russian military expert saying that his men are at a disadvantage in terms of equipment and particularly command and control.
That won't surprise Pentagon experts.
It is relevant to discussion, and I don't see any of my peers saying that.
And what is President Putin going to do about this?
Bomb us.
This is why I put it all together.
Well, the implication in Foreign Minister Lavrov's statement is that we have recalibrated our nuclear protocols, meaning what?
That they might strike first, and they might strike the mainland U.S.?
That was precisely his point.
Your last statement was precisely his point.
Do not think, in the States, that you'll get off clean, that we're just going to bomb Europe, and Europe will bomb us, and we'll both disappear, and you'll be left to do what you want with China.
No, no.
We will go after you first.
That was his message.
Now, why did he say that?
If you backtrack to what I just said a moment ago, it makes sense.
If the Russians are thinking what Mr. Klinchevich said they are thinking.
That those aircraft carriers are there to strike Russia in a first strike, decapitating strike.
And Mr. Putin's people are now preparing a preventive strike on the United States.
Wow.
We'll leave it at that.
I had a lot more questions for you, but time is moving on.
These are fascinating conversations.
Professor Doctorow, your knowledge of the history, culture, and contemporary events is without peer.
And we are deeply, deeply grateful for the time you spend with us and already look forward to chatting with you next week.
Thanks again for allowing me to share some of these observations.
Of course.
Coming up later today, at 2 o 'clock Eastern, Dennis Kucinich.
Whatever happened?
To the party of anti-war.
At 3 o 'clock, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson.
At 3.45, the Intelligence Community Roundtable.
And at 4.30, the always worth waiting for, Aaron Mate.
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