Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano - Larry Johnson : Ukraine On Its Last Leg.

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Aug. 4, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano

24:47

Larry Johnson : Ukraine On Its Last Leg.

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	Hi, everyone.
	Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
	Today is Monday, August 4th, 2025.
	Larry Johnson will be with us in just a moment on, is Ukraine on its last legs?
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	Larry, welcome here, my dear friend.
	Before we start talking about the latest on Ukraine and the crazy numbers about which you've written extensively alleging Russian losses, I want to ask you about a few other things.
	This comment by General Donahue about which you and Ray and I spoke on Friday is fascinating to me.
	I want to play it again and then ask you a few questions.
	Chris, cut number five.
	If you look at Kaliningrad, you can argue back and forth, but it's about 47 miles wide, surrounded by NATO on all sides.
	There's absolutely no reason why that A2AD bubble to deter Russia, we cannot take that down from the ground in a timeframe that is unheard of and faster than we've ever been able to do.
	We've already planned that.
	We've already developed it.
	Is there any moral or legal basis for the United States military to take Kaleningrad?
	Does it pose the slightest threat whatsoever to American national security?
	Not yet.
	Unless we attack it, then all of a sudden our security will be threatened because we'll be getting hit with a nuclear strike.
	You know, you got to step back and recognize this territory, Kaliningrad, previously known as Konesburg, it was actually a capital of Prussia, you know, back in the 19th century.
	It was granted to the Soviet Union as part of the Potsdam Declaration at the end of World War II.
	And because it was isolated, if you will, that Russia was always granted the Soviet Union, and now Russia was granted access to it through a corridor.
	And it's been a base for part of Russia's naval fleet in the Baltic Ocean or the Baltic Sea, excuse me.
	So again, why is Donahue talking this way?
	That's the question.
	That is because, you know, we've got to look that at the same time Donahue was saying that, Donald Trump authorized the redeployment of gravity nuclear bombs.
	I think you and Scott talked about it last week.
	And those nuclear bombs are now, they'd been withdrawn in 2008.
	So now 17 years later, we're putting these bombs, these nuclear-capable weapons back into Europe, not just in Lakenfield in the UK, but in six other bases, NATO bases throughout Europe.
	So if you're the Russians, you're sitting there saying, okay, you've got this general who's in charge of the U.S. military forces in Europe.
	It's called U.S. UCOM.
	It's based in Stuttgart.
	And then on top of that, you've got now Trump redeploying nuclear weapons into bases in Europe.
	Now, the downside is they're gravity bombs.
	You're going to have to attach them to an airplane.
	But that means Russia's now got to take into account that any F-35 flying towards it might be carrying a nuclear weapon.
	And if they fail to shoot it down, then there's going to be a nuclear explosion in Russia.
	On top of that, then they're looking back over the last two months when there was this decapitation or this strike at strategic airfields throughout Russia, this spider web mission that was carried out with U.S. assistance and with the support of groups out of Azerbaijan, again, working closely with the CIA.
	So if you're Russia, you're sitting back and saying, these are not the actions of a country that's seeking peace with us.
	They've got to take into account and then couple that with Trump's increasingly erratic behavior.
	And he said, oh, we're deploying submarines, which, hey, you're necklehead.
	They're already deployed.
	Okay.
	And Russia's aware of that.
	In fact, in the last two days, Russia and China have been conducting a joint military exercise that's focused on anti-submarine warfare.
	So this is Trump is unnecessarily escalating the tensions with Russia.
	And maybe, you know, Wittcoff's mission to Moscow is to try to ratchet that down.
	We'll see.
	We haven't heard any contradiction or retreat or withdrawal or admonition or dilution, whatever you want to call it, from Hexeth or Trump.
	No, none.
	None.
	This is, and they're, again, they're couching it in terms of that, trying to portray that Medvedev, Dmitry Medvedev, the former president of Russia, now currently sort of running the national third version of the National Security Council, that he was making a threat to the United States.
	And he did no such thing.
	And in fact, he was responding to tweets by, you know, the little old lady from South Carolina known as Senator Lindsey Graham that Medvedev was just issuing a reminder that, hey, we have this thing called the dead hand, that if you Attack us.
	And people say, well, why would the Russians assume that we'd attack them?
	Well, the Russians have just watched the United States use diplomacy as a ruse, as a deception, to lull the Iranians into complacency so that Iran could be attacked with a decapitation strike.
	So Iran and Russia are very much aware that this is, you know, the United States is not to be trusted.
	The United States has not taken a single action that the Russians can point to and say, boy, those Americans, they're serious about peace.
	They're continuing to arm the Ukrainians.
	They're continuing to make threats.
	They're continuing to condemn Russia while not saying a word about Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians.
	They're not opening up travel.
	They're not opening up consulates.
	Trump and his administration are doing nothing but acting hostily with hostility towards Russia, not the opposite.
	Here's one of their neocon spokespersons over the weekend.
	I don't know her, but she'll aggravate your cut number seven.
	I'm glad Trump spoke up, but we haven't had a president say anything like this in more than 30 years.
	And I think also Trump may have seen some military intelligence indicating that this was a good time to make this move.
	Remember, Putin has been full of nuclear threats.
	There are also Chinese and Russian naval exercises going on right now in the Sea of Japan.
	So this comment on the boomers really slams the door on Putin's nuclear threats.
	You know, this goes way beyond Ukraine.
	Putin has modernized and expanded his nuclear force.
	They just launched a new nuclear sub of their own.
	China has one of its submarines participating in these naval exercises, and China's building up their nuclear forces.
	So, you know, Putin, in a way, here is heading towards a new Cold War.
	And in that case, we need to make sure our U.S. triad is really strong.
	We've got our Ohio class, of course, Columbia class being built now to replace those in the 2030s.
	But it's a serious situation for sure with Putin.
	President Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons against the United States.
	No, he's reminded what Russian military doctrine is: that if Russia is threatened with a nuclear attack, that Russia will use all weapons at its disposal.
	You know, the Russians are in a much stronger position today.
	And the United States is, you know, we're like that aging boxer that we keep thinking that we're 20 years old and could, you know, move quickly around the ring.
	Instead, you know, in a sense, we've become Muhammad Ali in the later stages of his life when he had Parkinson's disease, was overweight, and couldn't move.
	We still think that we're the greatest, but we're not, yet Trump and company continue to push this nonsense.
	Again, it's not Russia that's deploying troops to Mexico or Canada.
	It's the United States that's deploying troops to Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania.
	Those are, if you're the Russian intelligence analyst or the military analyst, you're saying it's the United States that's putting weapons systems on your border.
	Russia is not putting weapon systems on our border yet.
	But this is where the United States and Trump and his company are miscalculating, and they're not reading the room.
	They're not reading the fact that Russia is not this aggressive power.
	Yet we've got this ultra-Zionist propaganda machine pushing lies across the board.
	The American thinker just put this child of Jewish refusniks.
	The refusniks in the 1970s came out of the Soviet Union.
	They were a pro-Zionist crowd.
	And so this son has grown up and he's written this piece claiming that Russia is interested in nothing but perpetual war.
	And yet what he cites are Georgia, Syria, and now Ukraine.
	Well, I could explain if we had time.
	All three of those were Western provocations by NATO, forcing Russia to react.
	And apart from the fact that Russia emerged out of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has not been routinely attacking countries.
	Since 1991, the United States has attacked Iraq twice, Afghanistan for 21 years, Syria, Libya.
	I mean, let's go down the list.
	It's the United States that's this aggressor, not Russia, not China.
	Ray McGovern spoke earlier today about this interview given by this former handler for Mossad of Jeffrey Epstein, in which he claims for sure the Israelis were using Epstein's information to blackmail American officials.
	Is Donald Trump among them?
	It could be.
	But, you know, I think what is the more important news to come out because we're assuming that there's a monolith on the Israeli side about we're going to manipulate and control the United States for, you know, to support Israel.
	But even within Israel, there's a major split.
	550 former military and intelligence officials, the heads of Mossad, the heads of Shenbet, have come out in a letter to B.B. Netanyahu basically saying, you got to end this war in Gaza.
	So that's why I'm saying I don't think that there's just one Israeli view that we're going to blackmail Donald Trump so we can continue killing Palestinians.
	In fact, you've got a significant and, you know, these are not inconsequential people that are now saying, hey, this has got to stop because they recognize that if Israel continues on this path, Israel is going to become a permanent pariah and it will ultimately lead to the destruction of that country.
	Now, getting back to your question, is it possible that Trump and others are being blackmailed?
	Yeah, I don't dismiss that at all.
	But I think the broader issue that Trump may be protecting is the fact of Mossad's malevolent involvement in U.S. politics that would be exposed.
	It goes back years.
	You know, there's no denying the kinds of attacks that are levied at people right now like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson being accused of being anti-Semites simply because they oppose some of the Zionist crazies.
	Being opposed to Zionism doesn't mean that you're an anti-Semite, particularly when you can count a large number of Jews who are practicing and adhere to Judaism.
	They oppose Zionists.
	How close is the special military operation to achieving its objectives?
	I think very close.
	I think that's one of the factors That's led Trump to shift from 50 days to 10 to 12 days to now we're down to four or five days.
	He has no leverage.
	And so it looks like Witkov's going to arrive in Moscow on Thursday, the day that Trump's deadline ostensibly expires.
	But what's taking place on the battlefield with each passing day is key logistic.
	strategic points in Donetsk in particular.
	And Pokrovsk is one of those.
	Slavyansk is another.
	Krematorsk.
	They're coming under increased military pressure.
	Russia is now moving to cut off logistics lines.
	Russia has this, just in the last couple of days, twice bombed a bridge in Kherson.
	Kherson is a region that's in the southern part of Ukraine along the Donetsk, the Dnieper River.
	And by blowing up that bridge, they're now starting to take moves to cut the logistics lines.
	So once you start, once you take out the logistics lines, they can no longer feed and support the Ukrainian army.
	You know, several, I had been wondering this, and I know that I interviewed a Russian, retired Russian general, General Brushinsky, about why Russia had not taken out those critical bridges.
	It's not a large number, but up to this point, because if you take them out, then you cut off the logistics flow.
	There's a flow of new weapons, of new ammunition, of food.
	And you cut that off, the army withers.
	It dies.
	It's like cutting a plant off from its nutrients and from its water.
	And so it appears that Russia has now shifted into that and the territory that they are occupying is increasing dramatically, not partially.
	And then on top of that, you've got tremendous losses.
	And last Ukrainian legislator announced yesterday that they've got 400,000 deserters from the Ukrainian army.
	Oh, my goodness, 400,000 deserters.
	What did the general say about not attacking the bridges?
	Yeah, he left.
	When I asked him that question, he left.
	He says, you know, I've been wondering that myself.
	But then he came back and he says, you know, he thinks it was that the Russians didn't want to defeat the Ukrainians too quickly because they recognized this is not a war with Ukraine.
	This is a war with NATO.
	And so they saw it as a way to drain NATO by forcing NATO into a war of attrition, which is in fact what has happened.
	Because we've seen now that the ability of NATO, in particular that of the United States, to reproduce 155 millimeter shells, has fallen way short to build new artillery barrels for the howitzers.
	That's fallen short.
	They don't have enough air defense.
	They can't build enough patriots.
	They can't build enough FADs.
	So it's really exposed the thin lines of communication for NATO that if it was ever actually having to get involved with this war, deploy troops into the theater, NATO would be exhausted within two to three weeks.
	There's a proposal in the Senate to increase by 54 billion with a B, the 265 billion that we will have delivered to Ukraine by the time the last Biden tranche is completed, a tranche that Trump has continued at its original pace.
	Do you think it passes?
	Do you think there's an appetite in the Republican Congress to increase military aid to Ukraine?
	Yeah, actually, I think so.
	If when they see the looming defeat of Ukraine, then the desperation on the part of the United States will increase.
	I hope that sanity would prevail, that people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose voice has been very important, noting that these policies of continuing the war in Ukraine is alienating a large segment of Donald Trump's, what he thought was his base.
	And they're refusing to support him.
	And so I think, you know, unfortunately, there's a number of members of Congress that I'm told that have been getting millions of dollars paid to them through overseas bank accounts.
	That is money that has been siphoned off of the aid going to Ukraine.
	So there's a financial incentive for several of these individuals.
	That's called bribery.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Wow.
	Hey, we've got the best Congress money could buy, Judge.
	Yes, yes.
	This is Trump's war now, isn't it, Larry?
	Oh, absolutely.
	He could have, you know, all I had to do was say, okay, no more military aid, no more intelligence sharing.
	That's all done.
	We're going to put a stop to this now.
	And then told Zelensky, we're no longer going to deal with you because you're not a legitimate president.
	There must be elections in Ukraine and then go to Russia and make some gestures to show that we're serious, that, okay, we're going to pull back.
	All CIA military personnel currently in Ukraine, they're coming out.
	But no, we've done the, he's done the exact opposite.
	And all he does is he continues to lie.
	Trump lies about Russia's current military situation and blames Russia repeatedly for civilian casualties, not mentioning a single word about documented attacks by the Ukrainians on Russian civilians.
	So he's not even even-handed in his approach.
	So how much longer do you think the Ukraine military can hang on?
	Are they on their last legs?
	Yeah, no, they're on their last legs.
	I frankly think that, you know, as we get towards the end of the year, their situation is going to become more desperate.
	Look, it could collapse much sooner than that.
	You know, it's all a matter of how much pressure.
	The Russian generals are not, you know, they're thinking about this strategically, their general staff.
	And there were some indications last week that Putin was ready to declare war on Ukraine.
	And if he declares war on Ukraine, then that changes the situation.
	Up to this point, under the special military operation, political considerations have been taken into account and oftentimes will supersede what might appear to be a more logical military solution.
	That's why at the start of this, Russia could have, they could have, when you declare war, you mobilize your society, the society across the board, everything is oriented towards the war.
	Well, as you and I saw during our time in Moscow, that's not the case.
	It is a special military operation.
	It's something that's been done.
	Everybody else is going on with their lives.
	The entire country is not mobilized for that effort.
	Once you mobilize for that effort, then there are targets inside Ukraine that would be struck and destroyed that currently have not been struck and destroyed.
	And the general staff will basically be given free hand to move.
	As we saw at the start of this, when Russia went into Ukraine with only about 125,000 troops, and they were really at a three-to-one disadvantage in terms of the Ukrainians had three times the number of forces.
	Yet, Russia succeeded in its initial attempt, which was to bring Ukraine to the negotiating table, which it did.
	They were in Istanbul, and the Ukrainians even brought forward a proposal, as Foreign Minister Lavrov told you and me during our meeting with him in March, that this proposal came from the Ukrainians, and the Russians were willing to sign off on it.
	It was only then that Biden and Lloyd Austin, his Secretary of Defense, and Boris Johnson intervened and told Zelensky, you sign this, you're basically a dead man.
	You walk away, drop it.
	And they did.
	And so it was at that point that Russia, you know, as the war shifted, followed by the Ukrainian offensive in September, that Russia said to say, okay, we're going to go to a wartime, you know, a wartime strategy without it becoming a war.
	It's still a special military operation, but they mobilized 300,000 soldiers in September.
	They conscripted another 120,000 in November and December.
	And then Russia embarked upon building its army up into the force that we see today.
	Thank you, Larry.
	Much appreciated, my dear friend.
	Thanks for your thoughts on all these various topics.
	We'll see you at the end of the week with Ray McGovern.
	I'll be there.
	Thanks, Judge.
	Thank you, my friend.
	All the best.
	Coming up at two o'clock this afternoon, Command.
	I got to read this because the title is so long.
	Command Chief Master Sergeant, otherwise known as my friend Dennis Fritz, on how do the grunts, how do the troops feel about these bizarre military threats?

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