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Sept. 12, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
35:01
Dr. Gilbert Doctorow: Russian Politics and the Ukraine War
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, September 12, 2024.
Professor Gilbert Doctorow joins us from Brussels.
Professor Doctorow, always a pleasure, my dear friend, and thank you very much for your time and for the privilege of being able to pick your brain for our audience.
I generally want to speak to you about Russian politics, Kremlin attitude.
Towards recent events in the Russian-Ukraine conflict.
But I'd like to build up to that by asking you about some specific issues.
What is your understanding of the current state of affairs in Kursk?
Are the Ukrainian invaders surrounded?
Are they being mowed down?
Are they just occupying and not moving?
Well, my understanding is that surrounded, yes, of course they are surrounded.
They were surrounded on three sides when they went in.
But the fourth side was a critical one.
Do they have a question?
This is answered to a question you asked me from the very beginning, whether or not they're being resupplied.
And the Russians have first paid greatest attention to destroying the supply route, rotation possibilities, relief, additional soldiers.
They've destroyed that.
By concentrating their attacks, both air attack and artillery attack, on the frontier itself, the border from which they entered Korsk.
And so they've been pummeling that and making it impossible for the Ukrainians to maintain a satisfactory level of support.
But otherwise, we're speaking about 1,000 square kilometers, which is a reasonable amount of space for the number of soldiers engaged there, who are broken up.
by intention into small units, perhaps 11 platoons, simply to avoid being devastated by one or another of these glider bombs that can wipe out a platoon in one blow.
So they are spread out, they have ample cover in forests, and the Russians are slowly flushing them out, but it's a complicated task, and in some places there is ferocious fighting.
So let us not pretend That this is again a walk in the Rose Garden.
It isn't.
The Russians are taking their time because these chaps simply run short of supplies and time is on the side of the Russians.
Nonetheless, the figures of those killed or taken out of action with serious injuries are well over 10,000 according to Russian figures.
And if we consider that perhaps there were 12,000 to begin with, maybe as many as 20,000, this is a very substantial blow that the Ukrainians have experienced in Korsk.
Over the last weekend, the Financial Times held a very unusual public gathering in London, which featured on a stage exhibitions
And one of the questions put to the two of them was, what are your opinions about Korsk?
Their opinions are decidedly different from yours if one is to believe them, but I'd like you to...
This is September 7th, so it's just this past weekend.
Cut number nine, Chris.
Typically audacious and bold on the part of the Ukrainians to try and change the game.
In a way.
And I think they have, to a degree, changed the narrative around it.
The Kursk offensive is a significant tactical achievement.
It's not only been a boost in Ukrainian morale, it has exposed some of the vulnerabilities of Putin's Russia and of his military.
Is any of this worthy of belief, Professor Doctorow?
I think Moore qualified his answer better than Burns did.
It may be.
There wasn't any maybe in Mr. Burns' remarks, and I think they are really disgraceful.
When Burns came in, there were many people in the center of American politics, or leaning slightly to the Democratic side, who were very much encouraged.
The person with this experience, with this intelligence, who knew Russia as an ambassador, who had the courage to send back to Washington the bad news that net is net, and
extension of How about Sir Peter Moore?
Before you reply on the question from Sir Peter, I don't know, is that the way to address him?
But whatever, I respect his title.
Look at something, listen to something else he said.
Chris, cut number 10. And it's important to remember how this started, started in this phase with Putin mounting a war of aggression in February, 2022.
And two and a half years later, It continues to fail.
The Ukrainians will continue to fight.
We will continue to help them to fight.
And it's difficult.
This is really hogwash that he's preaching from London on international television.
Alright, it's hogwash, which has a very widespread family of disseminators in almost all of mainstream journalists.
And talking heads.
What I mean is, I bring to this discussion the professional experience or bias of an historian.
And historians are always looking at when did it start.
Because the whole narrative, in most cases, of any incident in history depends on when did it start.
And if it started in February 2022, then it's a war of regression.
If you take it back to 2014, you can take it back still further to 2008, then it's anything but a war of aggression.
It's anything but unprovoked.
So I leave it at that.
Within the limits of this prejudicial approach to the question at hand, when did it start?
He was saying the truth.
But that is a truth that is limited by those conditions.
If you want to look at the greater truth, you put it in proper historical perspective.
I don't mean going back 200 years.
I mean, just go back 10, 20 years.
And you understand that everything he's saying is outrageously false.
Sergey Lavrov referred to 2014 as a coup d 'etat.
And probably Victoria Nuland in her private moments would agree with him.
Yes.
Well, of course.
Lavrov, I might say, has been very much before the microphone these days, including earlier today when he was delivering a lengthy speech to the gathered Russian ambassadors in Moscow from the field, discussing with them the Ukraine situation.
And I think I just want to mention one little note here because it pairs on our further discussion today.
He was very calm.
He was very restrained.
Although he was outlining all of the policies by the United States which Russians object to and find at the root of all evil today in international relations.
Despite that, he was speaking about this question of releasing Ukraine from any constraints on use of the weapons systems that have been delivered till now.
And he spoke about it in a very matter-of-fact way, not jumping up and down, not threatening anything whatsoever, but simply to remind the gathered ambassadors that these are the issues under discussion as Moscow, as the Kremlin, formulates its response.
So I was impressed because in the background of what we know is going on with Mr. Blinken's visit, With Lamy to Kyiv and with the pending joint meeting they have with Biden on Friday, which is all about releasing the constraints on Ukrainian use of these arms, which the Russians made clear is a red line.
Notwithstanding all of that, his voice remained factual and unemotional.
To Secretary Blinken and Foreign Minister Lammy in Kyiv.
We have a nice clip for you of Foreign Minister Lavrov from the speech, I believe, to which you're referring.
Chris, cut number two.
But international law does not stipulate only that.
Territorial integrity is ensured only for those states whose governments represent all the people residing at a certain territory.
That was a unanimous decision by the General Assembly.
And the fact that the Nazis did not represent anyone in the eastern part of Ukraine and Novorossiya and in Crimea, of course, I don't think I need to prove that to anyone.
But more importantly, the UN Charter required to respect the human rights of anyone, regardless of race, gender, language and religion.
This is the gist of the conflict in Ukraine, because human rights, after the coup d'etat, Now Russian language is banned in all the fields of human activity, in education, in media, in art, in culture, and even in everyday life.
I think that's what you were talking about.
Rational, calm, sensible, and expressing...
That is correct.
It is indeed the speech.
And his remarks addressed to the attempts by Zelensky and his gang to suppress the Russian language, Russian culture, Russian identity of any of the Ukrainian citizens.
is the point he was making to his audience.
Nonetheless, I want to put this in a broader context.
Please.
The question of these human rights is relevant to all of the EU, including right here in Belgium where I'm speaking to you from.
We know that exactly the same issue, suppressing language use, making it impossible to teach.
In Russian, in the 40% of the Latvian population that is Russian-speaking.
Throughout the Baltics, this was an issue when they first joined in 2004, that they rode roughshod over the minority rights, including particularly the language rights of substantial percentages of the population who were Russian-speaking.
But looking farther afield within the EU, here in Belgium, We have, on the outskirts of Brussels, 200,000 French speakers who are living in Flemish territory, where only Flemish language is allowed, not just in the court of law, but even in shops, even in the street markets, not to mention the schools.
And this impinges on voting rights also, because you have to vote in Flemish.
Of 200, what is it all about?
It's about people who moved from the city center to the suburbs.
They were Brussels residents who, like in most big cities, wanted to find green fields for the children in the countryside.
So they moved to the countryside.
But here in Belgium, the language is attached to the land.
It is not attached to the man.
And that rule was investigated.
And we had of all people a Serbian who was a member of a delegation by the Venice Commission sent to Belgium to investigate the abuse of the language laws to disenfranchise and to discriminate against French speakers right in the outskirts of Brussels.
So this issue is a live one, a hot wire for the EU in general, and not only for the Ukraine.
Switching to a very recent event.
The Ukrainians sent 140 drones over Moscow four days ago.
139 were shot down or destroyed before they reached their targets.
One reached its target.
It was a residential building where a woman was killed, a civilian woman, and six civilians were injured in a suburb of Moscow.
How does this play in the Kremlin?
How does this play on the streets in Moscow?
Well, I think that the overriding generalization we can make about the Kremlin is 5 fois.
Cool minds, just as we saw a moment ago with Mr. Lavrov.
Of course they are bitter over this, but the bigger issue for the Kremlin and for Russian elites is that in a war, well, in a war, there are incidents, and they're inescapable.
We will mitigate them to the extent of our abilities and we will hasten our offensive to crush all those who now have still the possibility to execute such terrorist attacks which have only one intention and that is to create terror, horror, chaos in the civilian population and to turn them against the government.
That is the intent.
They understand all perfectly in Moscow.
Is there, well, yesterday, the British Foreign Minister and Secretary Blinken spent nearly a full day in Kiev.
They may still be there today, I don't know.
Maybe they're headed back to the U.S. because I believe, as you alluded earlier, Sir Keir Starmer, the British Prime Minister, is coming here tomorrow, and he may be on his way over now.
However, they were there with him all day yesterday, Secretary Blinken.
Address the press at the end of the day.
The Wall Street Journal and others in the West this morning reading between the lines believe that among their conversations was President Zelensky, former President Zelensky's, insistence that he be able to use British and American long-range missiles.
To attack deep inside of Russia, which would mean Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Is there a concern?
Is there a fear that Blinken might have given him or might soon give him the green light?
Well, let's look at the range of missiles and which missiles we're talking about.
To the best of my knowledge, there has been no agreement in the U.S. To make accessible to Kyiv the long-range missiles, the really long-range missiles, the 1,500 or 1,800-range missiles, which are JASM,
that is the acronym in the United States, which have the peculiarity that they are stealth missiles and that they have not yet been introduced into the war theater, and so Russians have no experience dealing with them.
And from the Russian standpoint, that is very big negative.
Because they could reach, as you say, very sensitive parts of Russia, including the capitals.
And it takes time before you learn how to shoot them down.
The Russians have some experience shooting down attackants, which are among the missiles that now will be released for general use by the Ukrainians.
And, of course, they have experienced some of the very successful in shooting down the stealth.
The Storm Shadow and the British and the French version Scalp So the range of the last two which is certainly what will be announced on Friday or soon thereafter as having been agreed in Washington between the British and the Americans Let me just stop you, Professor.
Did you say you expect an announcement out of Washington tomorrow that the British and the Americans will authorize the Ukrainians to strike deeper into Russia using British and American weaponry?
No, I think that will happen on Friday, but it could be postponed a bit.
Nonetheless, the Russians have already, including Mr. Lavrov, earlier in the speech that you showed today.
I've made reference to their interpretation of what is going on in Kiev and in Washington on Friday.
And their interpretation is that the Americans have given this permission.
But which missiles are we talking about and how far will they reach?
How would they be used?
The missiles we're talking about are certainly these two.
Three, with which the Russians have experience shooting them down or using electronic warfare to disable them.
And that is a storm shadow and scalp.
They have a range, to my knowledge, of 500 kilometers.
The original versions that were delivered to Ukraine, I think, had a more limited 300 kilometer range.
But let's assume it's 500.
You can't reach Moscow with 500 kilometers.
However, you can with the Jassim, which is what the Americans have not yet put into play.
Although it probably has been shipped to Ukraine already.
That could redo exactly what you were saying.
Touch Moscow and anywhere and St. Petersburg.
If that is the case.
From your understanding of the Kremlin's attitude about all of this and your ability to read the tea leaves, would the Kremlin view such an event?
The use of these long-term offensive weapons, the permission to use these long-term offensive weapons, and their probable use, since some of them can only be operated by American technicians, would the Kremlin view this as the United States and Great Britain waging war on Russia?
Well, Mr. Lavrov more or less said that earlier today.
And it wasn't a new thing.
They've been hinting at this for the last week or so.
I've written about this question and I'd like to backtrack a little bit on what I've been saying because I was predicting a very early apocalypse.
I think we may have a little bit more time to enjoy ourselves at the dinner table before we have to hide under the desk.
And why I say that?
I had a very interesting exchange of emails with With Ray McGovern yesterday, in which he insisted that Mr. Putin is not going to react in a dramatic way or in a manner that could cause a further escalation before November 5th.
And on reflection, I think Ray is right.
What we have been saying among ourselves, the Americans are trying to bait the Russians and to get them to do something drastic and dire that would justify I think the Russians have equally capable analysts who are saying the same thing,
and for that very reason, will not carry out their attack on the United States or in Western Europe before November 5th.
Secretary Blinken and Foreign Minister Lamé finished their whole afternoon and into the evening meeting yesterday with former President Zelensky.
I mean, am I being snarky by calling him former president?
I mean, he's no longer the president, even though he's acting with that power.
You're being formally very correct.
Okay.
Secretary Blinken made the, I think, audacious statement.
That no matter the outcome of the war, Ukraine will join NATO.
Please listen to this and tell me your reaction and what you think the Kremlin's reaction is cut number 22. It's important that the Ukrainian people continue to hear directly from us.
We remain fully committed to Ukraine's victory.
To not only ensuring that Ukraine can defend itself today, but can stand on its own feet strongly, militarily, economically, democratically, for many, many days ahead.
To securing the path the Ukrainian people have chosen toward greater integration in the Euro-Atlantic community, including the European Union and NATO.
you I mean, what do you think of this?
What is the value of America's chief diplomat poking the bear with a statement like that?
Well, I think you'd be very kind, very kind.
To Mr. Blinken to say he's delusional.
All right, be a little unkind.
Let's hear it.
John White's stupid.
He doesn't get it.
And again, I'd like to emphasize what I mean by stupid.
People with very high IQs can be dramatically stupid.
And he is a case, I'm sure, that he did very well in his SATs and performed very well in his college years and the rest of it.
It's irrelevant.
His level of judgment is so far off base that it is astonishing that this man occupies the position that he does.
What would the Kremlin reaction be, not publicly but internally?
What do you think Foreign Minister Lavrov said to President Putin when they heard a statement like this?
Well, the Russian elites, and I think the occupant of the Kremlin is among the Russian elites, they have a very low regard for their counterparts in Washington.
The intellectual level, the educational level, the experiential level, they discount it very highly.
They see a degradation in American political culture, which comes out in talk shows, but it certainly is.
It's a common currency among the Russian elites.
And what do they expect from Kamala Harris, assuming that she takes the White House?
They see her as Annalena Werbock 2.0.
What do you mean by that?
An empty vessel.
Over the weekend, last subject with you, Professor.
Victoria Nuland, the notorious neocon in American foreign policy, she advised everybody from Dick Cheney to Barack Obama, the person perceived to have orchestrated the coup in Ukraine in 2014, who mysteriously resigned her high-level position.
In the Department of State and joined her friend, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and her other non-friend Jeffrey Sachs, you can't make this up, on the Columbia University faculty, admitted that Kiev and Moscow had an agreement in Istanbul in 2022 and that she orchestrated the disruption of that agreement.
The instrument of the disruption was then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
President Putin, in his interview with my friend and former colleague, Tucker Carlson, showed his fingers apart an inch and a half to show that the agreement was an inch and a half thick and every page had been initialed by the negotiators.
And she revealed the reason for the disruption of this.
It was that it would have prohibited the United States from placing offensive weaponry in Ukraine.
What is the reaction to this in the Kremlin?
Well, I don't think there's any sense of surprise.
They knew who Victoria Nuland is from years ago.
She's been in this game for a long time.
What I would just like to add as a comment on this whole situation is that Newland, being in Columbia University as she is, and her fellow faculty member, Madam Hilt, Madam Clinton, they are a demonstration that in the United States there are no consequences.
This was the one good area of the debates that we had a couple of days ago, when Trump said that he fired people who didn't perform.
Well, firing is one thing.
The greater issue is that no one has been fired, no one has paid any consequences in the neocon camp that has dominated Washington for the last 30 years for the series of disasters that they agendered, that they supervised.
And she is one of those people.
She and her husband, who was the cheerleader for all the neocon programs from the start of the Iraq war, they never have paid a price.
They never have been called to justice.
And that is why we have this continuing disastrous foreign policy in the States.
Nobody paid for their errors, which cost the lives of millions.
In response to that, let me run a clip for you, which is Secretary Austin from six days ago, when a reporter asks him why the U.S. has not yet given the go-ahead for Ukraine to use long-range offensive weaponry reaching deep into Russia.
Cut number four, Chris.
President Zelensky has repeatedly requested for these long-range attacks inside Russia.
Even allies agree.
So what is stopping the United States from giving the gun?
I don't believe one specific capability will be decisive, and I stand by that comment.
I think Ukraine has a pretty significant capability of its own to address We know that the Russians have actually moved their aircraft that are using the glide bombers beyond
the range of ATACPs.
So this is an interesting argument, but again, I think For the foreseeable future, we're going to make sure that we remain focused on helping them do those things that enable them to be effective in defending their sovereign territory.
In his youth, he was an accomplished dancer.
I mean, that's not much of an answer, is it?
No, I think I give him credit for a better response and more cynical, of course.
response than I would have expected in my remarks on him two days ago.
I'm very glad to have heard this.
It's not just the Russians are saying what he was saying about the withdrawal of their aircraft beyond the reach of the offensive weapons now in the hands of the Ukraine.
However, the reason for this original position and the reason for the change in the position has nothing whatever to do.
With what he was saying in his answer.
It has everything to do with the dramatic showing of the Russians, both on the front line in Donbas in the last week or two, and still more.
Their achievement in Poltava and still more in the other towns, in Lvovliv in particular, where they brought their missiles.
In this case, it was a Kinzhal, directly through the American Patriot air defense system and three other European-provided defense systems.
They smashed up Lvov.
They smashed up the train carrying all this equipment that just arrived from Poland.
This, in the demonstration in Poltava, where 700 officers and advanced technicians In the use of electronic warfare and reconnaissance drones, the Saab top executives for that division were killed in this attack.
I think this elicited a change in US policy.
Again, it was a Russian response to an American escalation.
And now that the Russians have done what they've done, missed the change in position with respect to use of these.
Offensive missile systems within the Russian Federation, that is strictly another American escalation in response to the last Russian escalation.
So they keep on mounting the ladder, but it had nothing to do with what Mr. Zelensky wanted for the sake of Ukraine, just as all American provisions to Ukraine have had nothing to do with the welfare of Ukraine.
This is such deep and profound analysis.
One last question.
Has any of this, any of the threats and obfuscations of Secretaries Blinken and Austin diminished by one iota the slow, steady, inexorable march of the Russian military westward into Ukraine?
Oh, not at all.
All eyes are on Pokrovsk.
And the most remarkable thing about Pokrovsk, this is a city maybe 20, 30 kilometers from the front line today, but it is a transportation nexus.
And it is a critical point, rail and otherwise, for supplying the whole Ukrainian front lines in Donbass.
When the Russians conquer that, the Ukrainian hold on Donbass will be destroyed.
Therefore, it is remarkable that after maybe a year and a half, almost close to two years, where all Western media were disparaging every bit of sign of progress that the Russians were making, and this town which they took in northern, a meat grinder offensive that cost them dearly, had no real value.
Well, that's what they were saying about a succession of cities that were taken by the Russian forces.
And Bakhmut was the last of them.
However, what we're about to witness has been already described by Western media as being of decisive importance, and we all know that the Russians are going to take it.
Professor Gilbert Doctorow, a true pleasure and a privilege to be able to pick your brain on all these topics.
Much appreciated by the audience and by me, and I hope you'll come back again with us next week.
Well, thanks so much for the opportunity to discuss, shall we say, non-conformity.
Thank you, Professor.
All the best to you.
Bye-bye.
Sure.
Coming up later today at noon Eastern, Ambassador Charles Freeman at 3 o 'clock Eastern, Professor John Mearsheimer at 4 o 'clock Eastern, the always worth waiting for.
Max Blumenthal.
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