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March 18, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
26:36
[ SPECIAL ] - LIVE - Patrick Lancaster - Kursk frontlines documenting Russian forces in Combat
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, March 18th, 2025.
Patrick Lancaster, the Patrick Lancaster, joins us now from, of all places, the Kursk region of Russia.
Patrick, I don't know how you do it, but you're still in one piece.
God bless you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for joining us.
You have been in Kursk.
in the Korsk region in probably the most dramatic time since the Ukrainian invasion.
Tell us what happened.
Tell us what you saw.
Tell us what you know.
Hi, Judge.
Thanks for having me again.
It's always great to be able to tell the world something that they're not going to see in other places because unfortunately, as we know, the Mainstream media doesn't really want to show all of the facts, just their half that support their narrative.
But I like to show the other parts, and we can do that together.
It's great.
So, yes, I've been here in the Kursk region on the front line, on and off, since Ukraine made the Incursion or invasion in August.
It came right away in August, documented the initial loss of territory.
From Russian forces up to over 1500 square kilometers, as we know.
But I documented right away Russia starting to take control of that territory.
Back in August.
And I went with the assault groups, the storm groups, as they call them, of Russian forces to document them literally the moment they took land and territory back from Ukrainian control.
And in addition to August, I came in January to show the progression because from August on, Russia started taking more and more territory back from Ukraine.
And now I'm back here.
I've been here for just over a week because...
A few days ago, Russian forces completed an operation that purportedly had been underway for several months where they literally went, hundreds of Russian soldiers went through gas pipes that were to move gas from one place to another and crawled through these pipes.
Under the Ukrainian defensive lines and collapsed the Ukrainian defenses when they basically just popped up behind, as they would call, enemy lines.
And they came out and just decimated the Ukrainian lines, which started a domino effect, and they just pushed Ukrainian forces back.
Almost completely out of the Kursk region at an extremely fast pace.
I've been here, as I said, for just over a week, and just every day they've been pushing more and more and more.
I've been in the city of Suzy, which was the basically stronghold of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region.
And I've documented how that's...
Fully under control by Russian forces and has been for several days.
I've gone through all of the other villages around this so-called former Ukrainian stronghold and documented just the atrocities and decimation of these civilian homes there.
And of course, back in January, I documented how Russian soldiers found several elderly people executed, you could say, by what...
For all intents and purposes, had to have been Ukrainian soldiers throwing grenades down into a bomb shelter that these elderly people were trying to seek shelter in during the active points of the battles.
Just found several killed civilians.
And of course, we can never forget the family who unfortunately...
Mother of this family, the wife of the husband I spoke to, she was shot by a Ukrainian soldier as they tried to escape on a...
August 5th from the encroaching Ukrainian forces, and he explained how the Ukrainian soldier saw his eyes and saw that he was a civilian and still opened fire on him and his family, killing his pregnant wife and injuring their two-year-old son.
But the situation, as I said, on the ground right now is Russia is just pushing Very fast to get Ukrainian forces out of Kursk.
There was a time when there was an encirclement of thousands of Ukrainians, and then there was a corridor that was broken, and many of them escaped, but still on a daily basis.
There are many Ukrainian soldiers getting captured, and of course, dying, unfortunately.
And this is...
The fact of the war now.
Now, even in areas of the city, Suzy and other areas, there's still small groups of suspected Ukrainian soldiers hiding in basements and things like this.
So these areas I'm going to are not completely clear yet, as they say, as the Russian soldiers say.
There's still a lot of danger from sabotage groups and other things.
Let me see if I can ask some...
Some precise questions.
Have you come across any foreign troops in Korsk fighting with the Ukrainians?
That is, non-Ukrainians, whether they're American, British, German, Latin American, whatever.
Yeah, that's a good question, Judge.
And yes, I have gotten many stories of...
Foreign troops fighting, particularly Americans, Polish, and others, from the Russian soldiers.
As far as seeing them with my own eyes, I've seen many, many dead Ukrainian soldiers that possibly could have been foreign, but we don't know.
I'm not going to go through their pockets and check.
For their passport.
But the roads are littered with dead soldiers.
And I've spoken to these Russian soldiers about this, and they pointed out that Putin has made a comment saying foreign mercenaries are not covered under the Geneva Convention.
And as far as the Russian soldiers are concerned, they're willing to take Ukrainians as POWs, but they're not interested in taking foreign fighters as POWs.
So we can assume that means the foreign fighters are going to get executed.
Well, they're correct.
The Russians are correct under the Geneva Conventions and under international law.
If you're fighting in a war zone and you're not wearing a uniform, you do not have the protections of the Geneva Convention.
One other thing I'd like to add on that specific subject, Judge, if you don't mind.
Go ahead.
As far as the foreign fighters, as many may know, many may not, is not long ago, I believe just under a month ago, there was a...
What Russia called a foreign mercenary, a soldier.
He said he was a volunteer, but from England.
And he was actually just sentenced to 19 years in prison for terrorism in the Kursk region.
He was captured by Russian forces and taken as a captive.
Went through a Russian trial in Russian courts and found guilty of terrorism and now is serving his 19-year sentence.
So it seems like Russia is not playing around with foreign fighters right now.
Wow.
Probably 19 years at hard labor.
Just a suggestion that I make from my rudimentary knowledge of the Russian penal system.
You sent us a clip, Patrick.
of rescued ethnic Russians held by Ukrainians in Kursk.
Now, before we run the clip, just tell us what we're about to see.
Who are these people?
Where did you find them?
And how did you interview them?
Well, I was with a group of soldiers in one of the bases just before we were going to go forward to the front line.
We were near Suzy, when Suzy was still not confirmed as being fully under control of Russian forces.
And I was with a special forces group of Russian soldiers called the Akhmat Special Forces.
And I was actually there with these soldiers, surprisingly.
Their general, the Russian lieutenant general, the general in charge of the Akhmat Special Forces, came into the room with these civilians that were...
Rescued by Russian forces in the city of Suzha, residents of Suzha, that had been living under, as they called it, Ukrainian occupation for the last seven months.
And they told several horrible stories.
I believe the clip we're going to see is where this woman explains how her and her husband's home was purposely burned on the Russian holiday, Police Day.
Because Russians have many holidays for different things.
Teacher's Day, and this happened to be Police Day.
And she said the Ukrainian soldier found his uniform and figured out that he was a retired...
Major from the Russian police and burned their home and displayed his uniform in front of the home.
Just to show what they did.
We're going to play the clip.
It looks like it might be in a basement and it looks like you're interviewing them.
And of course, Chris has translated everything.
Chris, Lancaster cut number one.
My daughter's calling.
She didn't know we were alive.
My dear, we're coming home.
We're coming home.
I didn't know whether you were alive for over a month.
We're okay.
I love you.
You've said Ukrainians burned your house deliberately, right?
Burned our house?
Certainly.
It was on purpose, because they found my husband's uniform.
He's a police officer, a retired major.
That was a crime for sure.
They found his uniform and burned the house on police day.
Did it happen multiple times?
Did you see the same happening again?
We were not in the house at the moment.
those are Russian people in
in Korsk, whose region was occupied by the invading Ukrainian soldiers since August.
It's now March.
They burnt this couple's house because they discovered that the male of the couple was a retired police major.
We're talking about a local police department.
Do I have that correct?
Is that common for the occupiers, the Ukrainians, to do that to the locals?
We have heard many stories from the civilians.
I've been spending a lot of time with the military forces who have been showing us the active battle and the active areas.
But another thing that we heard from other civilians is how the Ukrainian forces just came in and stole everything, looted everything.
Massive looting.
They said they even stole the children's toys.
And there were...
Every grocery store and product store in Kursk has been vandalized by Ukrainian forces.
They even posted videos online of them looting these stores.
They became almost somewhat of memes.
And I went to one of these stores and found a lot of white supremacist symbols, such as 1488.
I don't know if we want to get too much into exactly what that means, but I think many of the viewers can understand what that means.
If they don't, they can look it up, possibly.
Wow.
Here's another clip, Patrick, with a Russian bomb tech explaining his understanding of the history.
Chris Lancaster, number three.
I'm Patrick Lancaster.
Right now, we are with Russian forces not far from the Russian-Ukraine war front line.
What happened in 2014?
In 2014, seizure of power.
There was a coup in the country.
Yes, Maidan.
There was a bunch of nationalists, and I don't know how, but they managed to seize power.
And in 2014, this all started.
We helped set up roadblocks with just sticks and rifles.
We didn't let anybody in.
That's how it started.
And then it slowly began to develop.
And then it grew to a full-fledged conflict.
It's a civil war, let's say.
war.
Do you engage in conversations with Russian troops about their understanding of history?
If you talk to an American journalist, they'll say the war started three years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine.
If you talk to people that watch this program, people that understand history, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, They'll say the war started in 2014 when there was a coup in Ukraine.
That's the same understanding that this young man has that you just interviewed.
Question.
Do they share this understanding?
Can you generalize like that, Patrick?
Yes, Judge.
A lot of these soldiers, they view one of the major reasons of Russia coming into the war was to protect the people in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions who voted to break away from Ukraine in 2014 after what they call the coup in Kiev,
Maidan.
In the west of Ukraine, they called it a revolution, but the local population of Donetsk and Lugansk viewed that as the end of their Ukraine.
Even the ones that were Ukrainian patriots viewed that as the end of their Ukraine, because the elected government that they helped elect was removed from office with them having nothing to say about it.
So they were done after that, and they had prayed to be brought into Russia like Crimea was during that time.
But unfortunately for them, it...
Of course, no one expected us to be in the fourth year now, but this is a long war.
It's been going for 11 years now.
News of the moment is that President Putin agreed in a phone call with President Trump to halt Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities, but not to a full ceasefire,
as Trump had insisted upon.
They haven't, of course, spoken to President Zelensky yet.
I don't know that he has any say in this.
But does this surprise you that President Putin agreed for 30 days to stop striking Ukrainian energy facilities but to keep the war going until they have expelled the Ukrainians fully from Korsk and until they achieve their objectives in eastern Ukraine or what is now Russia?
Well, I think, you know, as the old saying goes, Zelnitsky and Trump are playing checkers and Putin's playing 4D chess.
He had to give something.
But anyone who's really into the situation here can understand that a full ceasefire was not going to come yet.
Last year, Putin said exactly what needed to happen for a full ceasefire.
Peace, for that matter.
And that's Ukrainian forces leaving Russia, what Russian law considers part of Russia.
And right now, there's five regions of what Russia considers Russia by Russian law that are, as Russia says, occupied by Ukrainian forces.
And that's Korsk, of course, and Zaporozhye, her son, Donetsk, and Lugansk.
And he made it clear that in...
Until there was no Ukrainian soldiers on those territories, peace was not going to come in the form of a long-term peace or a ceasefire.
So I personally expected something like this, but he had to give something.
I mean, he just couldn't totally stonewall the situation.
Part of the problem is that the Trump White House has been crowing for a week.
About how they were going to get a ceasefire out of this, and it's significantly short of what they were seeking.
President Trump, you know, deserves some credit for any bullet not fired.
It was one less person hit with the bullet.
So he'll take some credit for it, and deservedly so, but this is nowhere near what he was looking for.
As you may know, I was recently in Moscow.
Last week at this time I was flying home, but I had been in Moscow for five days.
And many of the people with whom I interacted revealed to me the prevalence of a very traditional Christianity amongst upper classes and even amongst blue-collar people.
I'm talking about Sergei Levrov himself.
I'm talking about Professor Alexander Dugan himself.
I'm talking about Constantine Malafeev and all the people around him.
When I went to the Russian Orthodox Mass on Sunday morning, standing room only from 30 minutes before the Mass started, some of the people with whom we dined, even though we dined sumptuously,
sat at the feasts on Friday and only drank water and tea because they fast totally from food on Fridays in Lent.
I give you this as a background because at first, I was a little startled at what this drone pilot said to you, but then I realized this is consistent with the suspicions about the Libertine West and consistent with the teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church.
So it's a little long, but it's fascinating.
He repeats himself, but it's fascinating.
Here is Patrick chatting with a Russian drone pilot, asking him why he's fighting.
Lancaster number four.
Because I'm fighting against Satan.
I'm fighting for my future, for my children, for my family, and for my people.
For my homeland.
So that we don't have all the perversions of the West, LGBT and others.
Who needs those things?
It should be so.
There is a man, and there is a woman.
What is that propaganda like they have there?
This is not normal.
and then.
I don't get it.
How they do that there?
A man dates a man?
I don't need such interest here.
It's not okay.
I just love my motherland, my country.
The government said that we have to go, so we go forward.
And we will always do so.
Defend the land, which is, since time began, immemorial Russian.
If somebody thinks they can kick us out, or impose upon us some of these so-called human rights, or say that he owns the land, then he is deeply mistaken.
You've said this is the Kharkov region where we are now, right?
Is this Ukraine?
No, Ukraine is Russia anyway.
Like Odessa is Russian as well, I think.
Ukraine has never existed as a state.
It's even called 404 like an error.
They just trusted the fate of the country to the clown.
But Europe, the United States and NATO said that Russia is the aggressor.
Russia is an aggressor?
Yes.
They always say that.
Who took Berlin?
Who took Berlin?
The Red Army took Berlin.
Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers.
Whose land was this?
Ours.
And it will always stay such.
And we will fight to the end.
What is he doing as he's chatting with you?
Is he assembling a drone?
Yeah, he's putting a thermobaric warhead on a FPV kamikaze drone, preparing to fly it onto a Ukrainian frontline command and control center.
And I think in another clip he explained what the thermobaric warhead does.
It sucks the oxygen out of the air and the victims die immediately.
Yeah, yeah.
Right after that clip, several Ukrainian soldiers were killed by that bomb.
Wow.
Have you found this level of patriotism, love of country, devotion to traditional Christianity elsewhere besides just this drone technician?
Yeah, well, it's...
It's very, very common in Russia.
I mean, the vast majority, upper 90s percents of people in Russia are Russian Orthodox, I would think.
And that's just my personal opinion.
I've looked at the actual stats, but basically everyone is Russian Orthodox here.
And they go to church.
As you said, they follow the traditions.
Respect God and their beliefs.
Patrick, you're doing the work of the angels yet again, and you're keeping your guardian angel busy, and he's protecting you, my dear man.
Thank you very much for reaching out to us with all of this.
Thank you for your time on the air today.
Obviously, this is live, but it'll be posted immediately for people all over the world to see your good work.
And to see a version of these events with which, even with Donald Trump in the White House, we still don't see in the Western media.
You almost stand alone, Patrick, and we're deeply grateful for your friendship and your professionalism.
Well, thank you very much for everything you do, Judge, and I hope at some point we can meet in person when fate wills it.
It would be my pleasure.
Thank you, Patrick.
All the best.
Stay well.
And coming up at 3 o 'clock this afternoon on all of this, on bombing the Houthis, on slaughtering more innocents in Gaza, on this partial ceasefire, who better?
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