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Dec. 12, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:42
[NEW GUEST] - Ian Proud - Former Britt Diplomat to Russia : Stealing From Russia to Fund Ukraine..
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, December 12th, 2024.
We welcome to our cameras and microphones a new guest, whom we hope will become a regular, Ian Proud.
Mr. Proud is a former British diplomat who was counselor to the British Embassy in Moscow from 2014.
Ian, always a pleasure.
I assume it'll be a pleasure.
You're new to us.
We're new to you, although I know your work.
Welcome here.
Many thanks.
The pleasure is all mine, Judge.
Thank you for inviting me on the show.
Let me start by asking you just some big picture background, if I could.
Why do the British and American governments hate the Russians?
You know, I think for the British in particular, not necessarily for the Americans, for the British, it goes right back to the 18th century.
You know, from our imperial redoubt in India, you know, we battled imperial Russia in Central Asia, you know, in the great game as people.
Right through to the First Crimean War and the Charge of the Light Brigade and all that sort of malarkey.
And I think that legacy has never really left the psyche of the upper classes in particular in the UK, those people who occupy the political elites.
Fast forward that to the 20th century, of course...
You know, we are reluctant allies with Soviet Russia, you know, communist Russia during World War II against, you know, the tyranny of Nazi Germany.
And once we've, you know, freed ourselves of Hitler, we then descend into a Cold War.
So that, you know, for us, a historical kind of enmity is joined by the Americans who joined with us in our kind of loathing of the...
From your understanding of the interaction, the geopolitical interaction of...
Why do you believe, or what informs your understanding, Ian, of American hatred for all things Russian?
Well, I think that goes back to the collapse of the Soviet Union and this sense that Russia had become a weakened state, which, of course, it was.
Russia genuinely was a weakened state.
But in one key respect, it wasn't weakened in terms of its possession of 6,000 nuclear missiles.
But nevertheless, you know, the US in particular, but also I think the UK sort of, you know, looked on Russia as in a different light.
It was no longer a peer competitor.
It was now a much reduced state that still had echoes of the communist system that encouraged people to believe that we could...
Peel away countries on the periphery of Russia, in the former Soviet, in the Warsaw Pact countries, to make them more like us.
And we see the legacy of that today with the attempts to bring Ukraine into NATO, what's happening in Georgia right now, what happened recently in Moldova with the elections.
The sense that, you know, the Russians are different from us, but actually people on the periphery of Russia want to be like us.
So let's, you know, in an almost Pentecostal way, try and convert them all to our ways.
How is former Prime Minister Boris Johnson viewed by the British public since it is now well known?
That he served as Joe Biden's emissary to President Zelensky, telling him to forget about the peace agreement that had been negotiated freely between Ukraine and Russia.
And don't worry, Mr. President, we have your back.
I mean, Johnson was a fool, did a foolhardy task, was subservient to the American president.
Do the British people see it that way?
Well, it's almost a schizophrenia about it.
British people mostly see him as a clown who kind of messed up the COVID response, who had parties during that time and was hastily kind of kicked out of his position as Prime Minister.
On his war record, he's almost channeling the kind of Churchill mentality, and people, I fear, are more forgiving of him, unfortunately for that, despite what he did, as you say, to scupper the Istanbul Agreement in March of 2022.
You know, the mainstream media in the UK is so bought into the kind of pro-war narrative that actually people forgive Boris Johnson for his kind of warmongering mentality, while thinking in every other aspect he was a really, really bad prime minister.
Why does it seem not to matter whether the Labour or Tories control Parliament, just as it doesn't seem to matter whether the President of the United States is a Liberal Democrat or a Conservative Republican,
and whether Democrats or Republicans dominate Congress?
There seems to be that same...
Neocon, forever war mentality.
I know you have Jeremy Corbyn and George Galloway, and we have Thomas Massey and AOC.
These are libertarians and progressives who are fiercely against war.
But for the most part of this part, neither government changes its foreign policy, no matter who is running it.
Do you agree with that?
And if so, why is that the case?
Well, I can talk principally from the UK side, and that's the case because of the power of the state itself, the institutions of the state, the people who work behind the scenes.
Now, in the UK, we've had so many prime ministers over the past 10 years, you know, seven different prime ministers, nine different foreign secretaries, Secretary of State equivalent in the US, that actually the state has become even stronger because the politicians are coming and going so quickly that actually the state,
the deep state, if you want to call it...
Let me just drop you here so we define our terms.
Can we define the deep state as those parts of the government, intelligence, law enforcement, military, central banking, administrative, regulatory powers, those parts that never change?
Yes, exactly that.
The blob, as some people call it.
The swamp, as Donald Trump in the past has called it.
Yes, yes, yes.
You have that as well on your side of the Atlantic Ocean.
We do.
It's alive and well, sadly.
And, I mean, if Sir Keir Starmer wanted to, could he start sounding like Emmanuel Macron?
Well, that's a bad example.
If he wanted to, could he start sounding like Viktor Orban?
Or would the deep state prevent him from doing so?
It's not that they directly prevent him saying you can't do this.
The problem is he gets all of his briefing from the deep state, all of his intelligence briefs, all of his advice on what he should do.
They all come from, you know, the deep state.
So, you know, he's unable to create his own ideas because...
The vast majority of advice he gets is from grey men and grey women who all say, well, you know, this is our approach and there's no other way about it, but that's what we have to do.
And because he doesn't have his own ideas, politicians tend to go along with that.
Before we get into too deeply in Syria, Chris, I'm looking for one of the cuts from...
Sowers, the former head of MI6, if you can find the one.
We don't have it.
Okay.
But that would be an example of somebody in the deep state, would it not?
The head of MI6, just like the head of CIA here.
Yes, of course.
And indeed, John Soares, the person that you mentioned, actually...
We spent time interchangeably between MI6 and the actual archive of the State Department, which we call the Foreign Office.
So he's been across all parts of the deep state.
Right, right.
Does MI6 and does the CIA, do MI6 and the CIA actively seek 24 /7 to undermine the government and the Kremlin?
Yes, absolutely.
Of course they do.
I mean, it's their core purpose.
That's why they've been given billions of dollars in resourcing.
That's why the resourcing has gone up since 2014 when the Ukraine crisis started, because the threat of Russia became elevated.
They needed more money to do their work.
I mean, that is the whole raison d 'etre.
That is our big strategic threat.
Not even think about China or Israel-Gaza.
They need more money, and if it isn't the threat, they get less money.
I mean, there's a basic bureaucratic logic to it.
And if MI6 spends money, is it as secret or, I should say, non-transparent as when the CIA spends money?
Yes, of course.
I mean, the king himself and the prime minister himself, just like over here, the president himself, does not know.
Yes, it is.
I mean, they know the total amount that we spend on MI6, one number, but how that's divvied up and where the brown paper envelopes go to, they don't, of course, know.
Okay.
Let's go to Ukraine, if we could.
Because your field is economics.
How bad off is the average Ukrainian middle-class family today in December 2024?
It's really badly off.
I mean, you know, an additional kind of...
Two million people have been plunged into poverty.
Three out of ten people are considered now to be objectively poor in Ukraine.
About a third of people regularly have skipped meals because they don't have enough money to provide for that.
This is the World Bank saying that, based in good old Washington, D.C. This is not me making the numbers up, by the way.
And if you add on top of that the fact that 80% of their...
Power infrastructure has been blown up by, you know, the relentless missile attacks.
Most of them will have a very, very cold winter as well because, believe you me, I've been to Kiev in the winter and it's a very, very cold place.
So, in addition to being poor, they're also going to be freezing cold and I should imagine many of them will die because of that, particularly the elderly, over this coming winter.
And they have a government that is not legal, it's not licit because President Zelensky cancelled elections and it's just a holdover.
Yeah, I mean, you know, Zelensky comes to D.C., he goes to European capitals, he comes to London, and he's treated like a hero, right?
Rounds of applause.
If the war ends and he has to go to elections, he will lose.
Ukraine's ambassador to London, Zaluzhny, will probably win those elections, according to Ukrainian opinion polls.
You know, what's the advantage to him in ending the war?
You know, if he carries on, he'll get more money.
He doesn't have to stand for election.
He won't have to find a new job.
So it's not in his interest to stop.
You mentioned a few minutes ago, Ian, the World Bank.
Is it true that the United States Treasury, without an appropriation from the Congress, has deposited funds in the World Bank to be a loan to Ukraine?
I mean, if that is true, who in their right mind would lend a nickel?
To the government of Ukraine.
Well, yes, it's true, and it just happened two days ago, is Janet Yellen.
She even got the journalists in to kind of watch her using her computer, you know, pressing the big button to send that 20 billion just across the road into the World Bank, you know, coffers for Ukraine as part of this kind of G7.
Now, who will loan?
You know, clearly, you know, the West will loan because we haven't given up on this idea of defeating Russia.
But the key point is it won't be enough anyway.
You know, Ukraine will still need another 70 billion over the next sort of few years.
And the only people that can give them that money is us, i.e.
you guys over in the US, us in the UK and our European friends.
So even that 20...
Now, the World Bank, as I understand it, and of course this is your field, it's not mine, is not permitted to fund or finance hostilities, correct?
So that $20 billion has to be used for what?
To pay the salaries of civil servants?
To pay the pensions of...
Of Ukrainian veterans to operate the government?
What do they do with it?
Yep, exactly that.
And rebuild power stations have been blown up because the money that had been set aside for power stations to protect them from missile attack had all been stolen by corrupt Ukrainian officials.
So it will also go into building power stations through Ukrainian corruption.
You know, have been blown up, sadly.
Dreadful situation, frankly.
Corruption in that country is quite off the charts.
Before we go a little deeper, my intrepid producer Chris has found the tape I was looking for.
Chris, let's run the surprise to everyone.
I want your opinion of this British civil servant.
Well, I think it was a surprise to everyone, Trevor.
It probably came as a surprise to Tahrir Hisham, the group you're calling HTS, which had been the main rebel group involved in this march on Damascus.
I don't think they expected to go so far so fast.
I think we're all surprised at how the regime forces have just completely collapsed, even those most loyal to the regime and closest to the regime.
So, yes, it is a surprise.
It's not a failure of intelligence.
It's a surprise to everyone.
Now, put aside the substance of what he said for a moment.
When he ran MI6, was he arguably one of the most powerful people in the British government?
Well, of course he was.
Yes, incredibly powerful.
And in a very, you know, clandestine way.
You know, the ability to wield that power out of public scrutiny.
And wield that power over the Prime Minister.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, you know, when I was in Moscow, Boris Johnson, when he was Foreign Secretary, your equivalent Secretary of State, you know, came, you know, to Moscow.
And, you know, the head of our sort of station, MI6 station, was sucking his teeth about whether he, you know, he should show Johnson any intelligence.
And he was agreed that he wouldn't.
And that was when our Foreign Secretary came to the British MC in Moscow, you know, in 2017.
Talk to us, please.
About this $300 billion, more or less, in European banks, either deposited by Russian businesses or by the Russian government itself, which has now been stolen by Western governments.
Can you give us the background on this, please?
It has been frozen.
Western governments are stealing, essentially, the kind of profit that's generating while it's sat there.
First of all, whose money is it?
Are these deposits of the Russian government?
It's Russia's foreign exchange reserves, basically.
And it's all deposited in one place, pretty much, in Belgium.
And as trade happens, billions and billions in trade happens, it all goes to this clearinghouse in Belgium.
And, of course, as soon as you stop the hamster wheel, it's sat there.
And it has been Saturday since the start of, you know, February 2022, just making profits.
And it's the profits that are being stolen at the moment.
So $300 billion used to clear foreign exchanges.
We all understand that.
But now frozen in a bank or in banks in Belgium.
Earning interest is sitting there and someone is stealing the earned interest.
Is that correct?
That's correct, yeah.
People like Janet Yellen and our equivalent are stealing the interest on that, yeah.
And what happens to that stolen money?
Is it given to Zelensky and company?
Well, it goes to repay this money that Janet Yellen's put into the World Bank two days ago and other loans like that.
Ah, okay.
But the problem is...
Janet Yellen takes $20 million...
From the American Treasury deposits it in the World Bank, the World Bank lends it to Zelensky, and then Janet Yellen and company, including her British counterpart, steal the interest on the Russian $300 billion to pay them back the loan.
Do I have this?
That's correct.
That's exactly correct.
I mean, if this were done by anyone other than the government...
This would be a classic crime of enormous magnitude, which would expose the perpetrators to 20 years in prison.
Yeah, it's quite scandalous.
And, you know, the thing is, when war stops, and hopefully it will stop very soon, the Russians will want that $300 billion back.
That money will stop earning interest.
Who's going to repay Janet Yellen's $20 billion loan then, when that happens?
Are there any litigations?
I should know this, but I don't.
Are there any litigations of which you are aware brought by the Russian government or brought by some intermediaries, innocent intermediaries harmed by this in order to unfreeze or prevent the theft of the interest generated by the frozen assets?
There's a huge amount of litigation around sanctions itself.
I don't know the specific caseworker on the actual frozen assets, but Russia has 20,000 different sanctions against it.
That's generated a massive litigation industry around people counterclaiming and trying to reverse those sanctions.
So yes, it's a huge, huge business.
What do the British people think of, to the extent that you can put your finger on the pulse of their thinking?
Is there a consensus amongst the British public about the war in Ukraine and the West's efforts to use Ukraine as a battering ram with which to remove President Putin from office?
Well, I think most British people, I suspect like most American people, are blissfully unaware because we're fed government propaganda, you know, wall to wall, that we're doing the right thing and eventually we'll win.
The media is a bit more balanced than the US.
You do get two sides of the argument, you know, John Mearsheimer and the very good folk like that.
You don't get that here.
It's almost like living in the Soviet Union.
State propaganda is so strong.
So ordinary people just read that and that's all they really know, sadly.
When I talk to ordinary people, they want to find out and say, well, is this really the right thing?
And I say, well, of course, no, it isn't.
So recently, after some embarrassing miscommunications in Washington, D.C., through which Sir Keir Stormer very diplomatically just smiled, President Biden and Sir Keir have pretty much come onto the same page,
allowing the Ukrainian military, with the aid of British and American technicians, because of the data used to set these missiles off as top secret.
To fire British Storm Shadow missiles and American Atakum missiles into Russia.
This has happened, as far as we know, three times now.
And recently, the Kremlin has said, enough is enough.
Is the British government prepared for blowback, quite literally, blowback from the Kremlin?
Well, I think it's worried about that because as soon as the Russians deployed the Sureshnik missile platform, hypersonic, in Dnieper-Petrovsk, suddenly the enthusiasm to kind of fire Atkins and the storm shadow deep into Russia subsided.
And we've hit a bit of an impasse.
I believe there's another Atkins attack yesterday making it number four.
Who would make that decision?
Who would make the decision to authorize that in the British government?
Would it be the Prime Minister himself?
Would it be the head of MI6?
Would it be a military person?
Well, in this case, it was the Prime Minister himself, and it was gleefully reported in the press that the Prime Minister had personally authorized this.
There's been no further reporting about it, it has to be said, since the Ereshnik firing.
Right.
Not surprisingly.
Right.
Ian, it's a pleasure interviewing you, my dear friend.
I hope we can squeeze another one of these in before...
It's a delight chatting with you.
Likewise, Judge.
It's been a real pleasure to meet you and I look forward to further conversations of this nature.
You bet.
Thank you very much for joining us.
Coming up, remaining today at 3 o 'clock is Matt Ho.
And of course, we are celebrating today.
Thanks to all of you, we did achieve our goal two weeks before Christmas of 500,000 subscriptions.
If you haven't seen the video celebrating it, you'll see it right at the beginning of Matt Ho's interview at 3 o 'clock this afternoon Eastern Time.
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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