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June 1, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:03
🔥🔥🔥 Larry Johnson : Ukraine Attacks 2500 Miles Inside Russia.
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, June 2nd, 2025.
Russia is attacked 2,500 miles inside its border with Ukraine, and Larry Johnson is here to explain.
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Larry Johnson, welcome here, my dear friend.
What is your understanding of the who, what, when, where, how of this drone attack on Russian civilian and military?
A Western intelligence operation planned and executed by the Ukrainians, but clearly the West was involved.
A Pyrrhic victory, a classic Pyrrhic victory, which means sort of a tactical win, but a strategic defeat for Ukraine.
And, you know, candidly, the exuberance and the giddiness being expressed in the West over the so-called devastation of the Russian Air Force is just, it's not only wrong, but it's ridiculous.
Yes.
How many times have you seen the phrase in the past eight or nine hours, Pearl Harbor, as if to compare what Ukraine did with Russian intelligence, about which more in a minute, with what happened on December 7th, 1941?
Yeah, well, actually, I think it's an appropriate analogy.
Not in terms, because remember...
What happened?
Japan got its ass kicked because the carriers were still intact.
And four or five months later, at the Battle of Midway, the United States wiped out four Japanese aircraft carriers.
So, you know, all these morons in the press, using that as a metaphor or an analogy, Obviously, they know nothing of history, but I think the parallel is correct in the fact that the attack of Pearl Harbor was described by Admiral Yamamoto as, we have awakened a sleeping giant.
Up to this point, Russia has been content to carry out the special military operation, which means this has not gone to a full-fledged war footing.
I think that's now going to change.
And I think Russia's going to move towards a war footing, which means targets that previously they ignored or kept off limits are now going to be on the target list.
And this is going to lead to greater devastation in the part of Ukraine.
Because, you know, candidly, they may have hit or damaged seven aircraft.
And, you know, I'm not trying to pretend that it was, you know, it meant absolutely nothing.
But what it did symbolize, These aircraft were vulnerable because Russia's abiding by the Storm 2 Treaty, which requires those bombers to be visible.
Now that the West is allowing them to be attacked.
And I'll note that Donald Trump and his administration, oh, we know nothing about this.
Well, that's called plausible deniability.
I guarantee you at least one, if not more, officers.
But then the Central Intelligence Agency knew about this and may have even been involved with the planning for it and the operation of it.
Isn't it inconceivable that John Ratcliffe, director of CIA, or Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, or Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security advisor, or President Trump himself did not know about this?
How credible are those denials?
Well, that's why it's called plausible deniability.
Yeah, sometimes you keep the principles in the dark so that they don't know about it because that's deliberately how they wanted it.
Don't tell me about this.
Just go get it done.
How confident are you of the fingerprints of CIA, MI6, and perhaps Mossad on this?
100%.
You know, just the operation of initiating, you know, turning the drones on.
Because think of the process.
You've got them, you know, hidden under this roof, so the roof has to open up.
That requires an external command.
Now, the reports are that they were using the Russian phone network.
Maybe.
But I think Starlink, Elon Musk's operation was involved with this as well.
You can't rule out satellite communications as a source of overhead imagery.
It was reported.
And I've seen no confirmation of it, that Pete Hegseth was watching the attack real time, which means he absolutely knew it was coming off.
And the Ukrainians had drones with other drones with video capability, which in part explains why you're seeing some of the drone footage that's out there.
But some of it has also been, you know, AI, you know, ginned up by artificial intelligence.
Well, here's the BBC version.
It's a little under two minutes.
Alistair Crook downplays it substantially.
And we've been chided for even relying on the BBC.
I'm not relying on it for accuracy, but this is what the West wants us to believe.
And I'll be happy to hear your thoughts, Larry.
Cut number one.
Far from Ukraine's borders, an attack of astonishing audacity.
Russian strategic bombers picked off one by one.
by a fleet of drones.
Ukraine calling this Operation Spider's Web, personally overseen by President Zelensky, one of Kyiv's boldest attacks so far, a reminder, despite Russia's overwhelming strength in numbers, that Ukraine is a resourceful, determined enemy.
Sources say this took a year and a half to prepare.
Dozens of drones smuggled into Russia, stored on wooden pallets, loaded onto trucks, driven to distant air bases, And launched remotely.
Swarms of drones picked up on social media from Siberia to the Arctic Circle.
At a petrol station north of Irkutsk, a glimpse of the operation in progress.
With smoke already rising behind, a drone emerges from the truck and heads off to join the attack.
Moments later, another.
And gunfire as police officers try to bring it down.
Ukraine claims to have done a staggering $7 billion worth of damage and knocked out a third of the planes Russia uses to deliver cruise missiles.
We know exactly who we are dealing with.
We will defend ourselves by every means available to us.
Available to Ukraine.
Available to Ukrainians.
Not for a single moment did we want this war.
We offered the Russians a ceasefire.
Earlier, a different kind of wreckage, this the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhia, after the country suffered another major drone and missile attack.
Elsewhere, 12 Ukrainian soldiers were killed at a training base, the head of Ukraine's land forces tendering his resignation.
What chance then for another round of peace talks set to take place in Istanbul?
Russian and Ukrainian delegations are expected to be there, but after 24 hours of mayhem, the omens for a breakthrough do not have.
Writers reported that they stopped talking after less than an hour.
But let me ask you about the accuracy.
Seven billion in losses, one-third of the Russian fleet.
Is that accurate, Larry?
No, no, it's not accurate.
And note that at least two of the planes that Russia is, other channels are reporting up to seven planes were destroyed.
Or damaged.
And not all of the air bases that Ukraine claims were actually hit because several of those air bases, their electronic warfare defense systems, you know, downed the attacking drones.
But, you know, look, this is another example of, again, Western-backed propaganda.
The coordination of this with the CIA.
This news report is just a case in point.
The CIA and MI6, through their information operations, information warfare, they put this information out in order to expand it.
Because what they're trying to do is convince, in part, Donald Trump, that, boy, Ukraine's got an excellent chance.
They can still pull this off, and Russia's weak.
Look, they can't stop it.
But ignoring everything that's taking place, particularly on the ground.
So this was a PR black eye for Russia, certainly.
But you don't win war on PR black eyes.
You win war on how many people you kill on the battlefield.
And on that front, Russia has a decisive advantage.
Were there civilian casualties?
Did these drones attack a domestic train line?
Well, there were civilian casualties caused by a couple of the trailers.
In one case, a driver had some suspicions like, this doesn't feel right.
And as he got up to examine it, it blew up and I think killed him.
But actually, the civilian casualties that were suffered over the weekend came.
You know, Russia's classifying this attack on the strategic air bases as a terrorist attack.
I don't put that as a terrorist attack.
They're a legitimate military target.
Ukraine found out a way to try to attack.
That's not terrorism.
The attack on the civilian passenger train in Bryansk, which was caused by detonating a bridge, bringing it down onto the train, as well as another bridge.
That was blown up in Kursk.
Those are acts of terrorism.
Those served no military purpose or the primary purpose, particularly with the one in Bryansk, was when the Ukrainians blew it, they waited until they saw that train coming so that when they detonated the bridge, that the bridge would cause damage to the train.
And they killed at least 12 people.
That was terrorism.
If Hegseth did watch this, And he knew about it ahead of time, obviously, if he was watching it.
Wouldn't he have had an obligation to inform the president?
Again, plausible deniability, Judge.
There's certain things you don't tell the president so the president can legitimately say, gee, I didn't know about that.
Will the Russians ever trust Donald Trump?
Here he is trying to negotiate with Vladimir Putin and his central intelligence agency is trying to blow up.
I don't think the Russians trust Donald Trump.
I think they understand Trump for what Trump is, and they're going to deal with him accordingly, but they're not going to take any of his promises to the bank.
You know, Trump already really discredited himself over the course of the last week, where, you know, still, he's not come out and denounced the Ukrainian attacks on these Russian bases, hasn't?
To my knowledge, he's not said a word about it.
The only thing we do know is that Lavrov and Secretary of State Rubio had a conversation yesterday.
So far, Russia's not released a readout of that conversation.
I would imagine Lavrov, and you and I know him, read Rubio the riot act.
Yeah, and Lavrov, you know, without yelling, without getting emotional.
But sending a very clear message.
I suggested that maybe Rubio, after the conversation, had to go change his underwear.
But they understand that here's Trump, who has been condemning Russia over the past week for Russia's previous strikes on May 24th and 25th inside Ukraine, without mentioning word one about the 1,400 Ukrainian attacks that preceded that.
In the week prior to May 24th.
So, you know, I think Russia recognized that Donald Trump's not an honest broker.
Donald Trump is not an objective guy in this process.
And I think they also understand Donald Trump faces many political constraints at home, but they would prefer to have a dialogue.
And look, the good news yesterday is at least Rubio and Lavrov talked.
That didn't happen under Biden.
Did the United States attack Russia?
If I was Russia, I'd say yes.
I'll take you back.
You're the judge.
So if you've got a guy sitting in front of you who has shot a woman on the street, and there's a guy in the audience who's...
Well, the guy in the audience would be arrested by the prosecutors and their agents immediately.
Yeah, exactly.
So it's that simple.
We are accessories to the crime.
Could you imagine, and you and I and our colleagues have talked about this, Until we're blue in the face.
If the situation were reversed, if somebody sent drones into the United States to attack American military installations and destroy a train on which civilians were riding, our response would be over the top.
Yeah, we'd be curious.
Well, you know, we even saw, like, after 9-11, we went out and attacked countries that didn't even have anything to do with 9-11, namely Iraq.
So, you know, we use these things as an excuse.
Russia is focused upon bringing an end to this, as they say, dealing with the root causes.
And as you correctly noted with the talks today in Istanbul, it concluded at the end of the hour.
The Russians, you know, Russians, even though I talked with Pepe Escobar earlier this morning, and he said, yeah, this – But Russia's not walking away from it.
Russia's not going to be the one saying, you know, screw you, we're going to kill you.
Russia's continuing to keep the high road, which I think is just driving the Ukrainians crazy.
Because Russia said, okay, now the next agreement we'll have is we'll agree to exchange bodies of soldiers.
We'll call on certain spots on the front line.
Two to three, they cease fire, so you can come collect your bodies.
What kind of pressure is there on President Putin to send, and I'm just going to use this phrase as a metaphor, Oreshniks to Kiev?
Oh, I think there's significant pressure.
This is what's also sort of puzzling, peculiar, and insane about the apparent Western strategy.
That seems that, man, if we only get rid of Putin, boy, things will be okay with Russia.
And it's like, are you kidding?
You want to deal with Medvedev?
What this illustrates, this latest incident, is that the public opinion in Russia is growing more supportive of harsher actions against Ukraine.
Not less.
more.
And Putin To his credit, he was trying to keep those emotions from guiding and controlling Russian decisions.
It sounds as though Zelensky and his colleagues did not consider the natural and probable consequences of this, one of which is what you just articulated, coalescing Russian, it was already coalesced, but reinforcing Russian politics.
I just wonder what you think President Putin will and should do.
They're very close to achieving, you and Ritter and McGovern and McGregor have told us, they're very close to achieving their goals on the ground.
Well, you've got to ask, what is the strategy?
You carry out certain actions to ultimately accomplish a goal.
Was the strategy in this to destroy Russia's strategic bomber force?
Well, in order to weaken Russia so that Russia would feel compelled to surrender?
Well, if that was the strategic goal, it failed.
In fact, you have to look at the opposite consequence.
It has now emboldened Russia to pursue the war in a more aggressive fashion to the detriment of Ukraine.
What you have here with Ukrainians is complete lack of strategic thought.
They are all focused on tactics.
They basically have the brain of a teenager.
The teenager is thinking only about immediate gratification, immediate pleasure, not thinking about, if I do X, it's going to lead to Y and Z, and what will be my preparations to deal with that outcome?
They are not taking steps to shore up their ability to stop the Russian advance of the ground.
And now they have basically energized the entire Russian population to a greater degree than was the case, say, two months ago about the need to destroy Ukraine.
And that's where this is headed.
Here's a great military strategist from South Carolina.
I can't even say this with a straight face.
Cut number two.
We saw credible evidence of a summer, early fall invasion, a new offensive by Putin.
He's playing the game at the peace table.
He's preparing for more war.
And I think the Senate is fed up with Putin.
The American people see Putin as unreasonable.
They see Ukraine is trying.
President Trump has made that distinction real.
So the Senate and the House of Representatives in the next two weeks will be moving forward with a sanction bill that's bone-crushing.
Yeah, you know, Lindsey's been wrong about every one of his predictions with respect to Ukraine and Russia.
I have it on solid authority that Lindsey is financially compromised vis-a-vis Ukraine, and that that is actually in the process of being investigated, which will help explain a lot why he is just so blindly insistent upon keeping this war growing.
I guess you keep it going.
If you're making money off of it, it's a good deal.
But the notion that the Senate I think the Senate likely will pass the sanctions.
It's not sanctions on Russia, it's sanctions on India and China.
And if they think that's going to make India and China crumple into a fetal position and say, oh yeah, we've got to surrender to the United States, it's just going to infuriate them more.
What Graham and his ilk do not understand is that this kind of actions by the United States are insistence upon being the hegemon.
Being the guy in charge is alienating the vast majority of the world's population and the countries that actually control natural resources.
So it's counterproductive.
Here's Senator Graham's traveling companion and new friend, the Liberal Democrat, Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut in the same interview.
Cut number three.
Putin is playing President Trump.
He's taking him for a sucker.
He is, in effect, stalling and stonewalling, prolonging the conversation so that he can mount this offensive and take control of more territory on the ground.
If I were President Trump, I'd be insulted and offended by this affront personally, as well as to the United States of America.
And America should be angry, deeply angry.
In fairness to the two of them, these interviews were given before the Ukrainian attack.
I don't know if they knew about it.
How could I possibly know?
I'm sure they were briefed on it while they were there.
Absolutely.
But, okay, America's angry.
What are you going to do about it, America?
Send them a sternly worded letter?
what America is doing is enabling the terrorism, facilitating the continued military activities of Ukraine, and basically ensuring that probably another four to So, you know, the United States is an accessory to murder.
Larry, I know you're traveling, but I hope we can hook you up with Ray McGovern by the end of the week.
Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you for the forcefulness and clarity.
Of the analysis you gave us today.
All the best, my friend.
Thank you, Judge.
Sure.
And coming up later today at 2 o 'clock this afternoon on all of this and some analysis on Gaza as well.
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