Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano - Prof. Gilbert Doctorow : Are Russians Losing Patience?

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Oct. 1, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano

22:01

Prof. Gilbert Doctorow : Are Russians Losing Patience?

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	Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom today is Wednesday, October 1st, 2025.
	Professor Gilbert Doctor will be with us in just a moment.
	Are the Russians losing patience with President Putin?
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	Professor Doctor, welcome here, my dear friend.
	Thank you.
	Excuse me for accommodating my schedule as you always do.
	Are you detecting uh rumblings of criticism of President Putin either for the failure to address uh NATO crossing of uh Russian red lines aggressively or the lethargic pace of the war in Ukraine?
	What I'm about to say comes out of my observation his last few days of Russian state television, which normally is very respectful of Mr. Putin.
	Uh, where someone like Vladimir Solovyov has one of the most popular talk shows and commentary shows said you uh said repeatedly, we do not uh pretend to offer advice on how to conduct the war to our supreme commander.
	Well, now he is.
	Well, his panelists are.
	They don't mention Mr. Putin as such, but they do speak about, as you just did a moment ago, the consequences of his very um restrained and to turn the other cheek policies with respect to NATO crossing Russia's lines.
	And in particular, uh Russia, they are riled up by Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance and Mr. Kellogg.
	My point is that this is not happening spontaneously in Russia.
	The open um presentation of extensive presentation of criticism, damaging criticism of Russia by Trump, by Vance, uh by Kellogg,
	uh is aired extensively on programs that are quite loyal to Putin, or have been, uh 60 Minutes, which is uh hosted by Duma member Yevgeny Popov, uh, who happens to be the protege of the um the head of Russia's state television news in general.
	And the missile of your program panelists who are speaking with great irritation about the lack of respect for Russia, the misinformation coming out, particularly, for example, remarks by Trump during his talk to the 800 assembled generals in Virginia,
	that the nuclear submarine, which the America dispatched as a kind of warning to Russia, was 25 years ahead of anything Russia has in technology.
	This type of demeaning remark is stirred up discussion in Russia, which was going on at a very low level for some time, for months and perhaps more than a year, but was not as intense and as focused as what I've heard in the last two days.
	Well, let me just ask you about the submarine.
	That statement is inaccurate, isn't it?
	Well, a lot of things that have been said by the administration are completely inaccurate.
	For example, uh Vance's remarks to a journalist in an interview yesterday, I think it was Fox News, that uh Russia's economy is crumbling, uh, that uh the advances of just a few hundred square kilometers in a month of fierce fighting demonstrate that the war is at a kind of stalemate that Russia cannot win, and so forth.
	These statements, which we would typically expect to hear from Kellogg, and still do, were now coming from Vance.
	And I just Vance is a very clever and well-informed man who reads everything.
	So it is not because the information he's receiving is incorrect.
	It is a taunt to Putin, just as his boss, uh Donald Trump is taunting Putin, and there's a reason for it.
	And it's not the reason that the major media uh believe that uh Trump is pushing uh Putin to come into uh the negotiations uh which uh Trump wants to uh mediate, the negotiations with Zelensky.
	No, no.
	I see the contrary.
	Uh if that were the case, if he were trying to um uh pressure Putin to accede to the demand of negotiating a peace settlement, um, then they wouldn't be insulting the Russians as they are.
	The insult is to rile them, and it hasn't it's having the effect they desire.
	Open discussion of whether the go slow, a war of attrition, is working or is not working.
	And now we hear people saying, more or less, that it's not working.
	Do you believe that uh Trump, Vance, Kellogg, um Gorka and company, are trying to get President Putin to accelerate the war so that it will be over so Trump can some in some perverse way take credit for its ending?
	Yes, he's looking for a peace settlement, but by Russia's total destruction of Ukraine.
	That is not what most people think about.
	No, no, that's not what most people would think as a peace settlement.
	But but let's get back, let's go down to basics.
	Can Trump intimidate Putin?
	I don't think so.
	Uh I agree with you.
	He cannot intimidate Putin, but he can upset the elites by this um embarrassing and accurate description of the way the war is being conducted.
	Um there you have it.
	But don't the elites understand the war is being conducted with methodical patience.
	The goal, one of the goals is to degrade the Ukrainian military military for the next generation so that the next generation doesn't have to deal with this.
	Uh yes and no.
	I think they're they are tired of this, and they are watching the Western reaction, which looks like a new escalatory phase.
	So that instead of uh ending in this culmination that so many of us have seen, myself included, in a matter of months, they are now seeing the possibility that going on a year or more.
	You know, we haven't heard from uh Former uh Russian president, I'm not sure what his title is today, um Dmitry Medvedev, who uh has articulated uh rather ferocious views uh in the past.
	I guess we should expect to hear from him soon.
	Oh, I think so, but I doubt that he will um be in the leading the charge against against Vladimir Putin.
	I don't know.
	But if I'm speaking as a former Sovietologist, what I'm seeing on the Russian media suggests that a coup a palace coup is being prepared against Vladimir Putin.
	The alternative that is that is almost unthinkable for a man who was elected with 82% of the vote, and who in your experience and mine, at least up till this point, has enjoyed enormous popularity.
	Agreed.
	But the popularity polls, which are accurate, I'm sure, which uh show him dropping from 80% to 79% approval ratings in the last week or so.
	Uh they're not they're only asking, do you believe do you believe uh that put that Putin is trustworthy, is a good leader and so forth?
	They are not asking, is he conducting the war correctly?
	And I believe that if that question were put to the uh political classes, they would say no.
	I'd say I'd say specifically the political classes, because if you look at the the working man in Russia, he would he doesn't think about in those terms.
	He sees that his salary went up by three times in the last year or two.
	He sees that uh he gets subsidized mortgages, that he gets a lot of assistance for families with children.
	And so the war has not had um any detrimental effect on his way of living.
	In fact, on the contrary, he's made him much wealthier.
	But the thinking classes, the the political classes are not a story.
	And I think they're very disturbed by the uh what they see on television, that the Americans in particular are speaking of them as a paper tiger.
	What do the uh political classes want the pres uh president Putin to do?
	Uh destroy Kings with a Rushniks in a couple of hours.
	I think you just put your finger on it.
	That's exactly what they'd like to see him do.
	And he's he's uh reluctant to uh do that.
	Uh by the way, does anyone in Russia still call this series of events in Ukraine a special military operation, or does everybody call it all out war?
	No, nobody says specifically it's all out war.
	But they have uh initially it was fairboting to speak of it as a war at all.
	Now for some time, more than a year, it's it is called by some people a war.
	Um officially it is still a special military operation.
	And in state television, that's what it's called.
	So the special military operation is slowly and methodically achieving its goals.
	I know that uh General Kellogg has very little standing over here, in my view, uh, has argued that uh if he were winning, meaning President Putin, he'd be moving um much faster.
	But he is slowly achieving his goals on the Ukrainian military is slowly being uh degraded.
	Is there any question but that Ukraine is destined to lose this, even in the minds of the most uh skeptical members of the political class?
	I think the the skeptical members of the political class are worried about what's going on in Europe right now.
	Uh that is the remilitarization, the preparation for a war with Russia.
	And the longer this special military operation goes on, the more threatening that is to Russia in a three-year time frame, which is like tomorrow.
	Um I see I gave one explanation as a Sovietologist, so to speak, of what is happening.
	That is that Mr. Putin is being prepared for to be shoved out of office.
	The other explanation, also uh which I also see as possible, is that Putin himself is preparing the public for changing his strategy from a war of attrition to a decapitation strike.
	How would uh Putin be uh removed from office legally?
	Is there some is there some procedure, or would it just be an illegal coup?
	And if the latter, I would imagine whoever's plotting it would be arrested for treason.
	Uh if it's if it succeeds right, right.
	Right, right, right.
	Remember that famous one line: treason never prospers.
	And what's the reason for if it prosper, none dare to call it treason?
	Yeah, I made it different, stated differently.
	When you strike at the king, you must kill him.
	I don't think legality is an issue here.
	Uh the if it happens, uh it will probably be proclaimed uh uh as essential and necessary change, maybe to be given some honorific post the way Medvedev was pushed upstairs.
	I don't think that he's going to face uh uh any personal uh physical risk or whatever.
	Nonetheless, uh it is it was formerly inconceivable, but now I changed my mind.
	That was it is not possible that I see on television is happening without approval from people on high.
	Have you seen this uh consistently and systematically or just recently?
	Uh hints of this have been going on for a long time, but it never was so intense, and they didn't well, there was no need to show the full uh full statement by Vance, which more or less trashed Russia.
	There was no need to do that.
	And um the fact that it was done was a statement.
	Uh the fact that it was allowed to happen was a statement.
	Where is the um senior military leadership on this?
	Do they understand the slow methodical pace which is costly to them?
	Or are they saying, hey boss, let's get this over within a week?
	This has been going on long enough.
	Do they talk to him that directly?
	I can't say.
	Um let me uh just go back a bit a year or so ago when someone like John Helmer was saying that the military are conspiring, the people and the general staff were conspiring against Vladimir Putin because they don't like the way the war is going.
	And I dismissed that out of hand.
	As far as the military goes, I would dismiss it out of hand today.
	But as regards the civilian uh elites, I think it's entirely possible that something like that is uh occurring uh in the minds of people around around Vladimir Putin.
	Does the um Kremlin control Russian television to the point where this stuff wouldn't be hinted at without the Kremlin's consent?
	That's my point exactly.
	Uh Kremlin being Mr. Putin's uh office, or the Kremlin in a wider sense of the the ruling elite.
	I think that um in general, Russian television is under very tight control.
	Uh there are a few trusted people.
	Uh uh, this is Kiselov, the the general manager of all Russian news broadcasting.
	Uh he he without he does not act with um uh whispers coming from above.
	And uh so that they would show these things in they didn't have to.
	There's no obligation to give so much coverage to these very damaging and insulting remarks coming from the states.
	How about uh my friend Dimitri Symes?
	I appear on that program quite a bit, and uh I am often questioned by his other guests whom he uh represents as being senior members of the Duma, and in one case a uh a very senior general.
	Um where is he on this?
	Oh, I don't know.
	I haven't listened to to Dimitri Symes for some time.
	It's not easy to frankly speaking.
	Uh it's very difficult to uh For me here in Brussels to catch this program, uh, the Great Game.
	Um, a year ago it was quite easy.
	Right now it isn't.
	So I don't know.
	Why is that?
	Are are there uh sanctions making it difficult for you to watch Russian certain Russian television programs?
	Oh, definitely.
	Um the um uh uh normal Russian broadcasting is is not is not uh accessible here in Western Europe.
	There are exceptions made, and some and some uh programs get around it by playing tricks on YouTube.
	That is the program is being carried by some unknown person who has his own channel.
	Uh but generally speaking, their coverage Russian news Russian programs are difficult to access.
	But I'd rather think take a step back and look at somebody else in the constellation at the top.
	Which leaves me wondering what is going on.
	Uh Sergei Lovrov, whom you respect greatly, and who has a an enormous uh uh group of admirers, but not only in Russia but outside Russia.
	Uh Sergein Lavrov said, in answer to a question a day ago, ah, if the Americans supply the um uh the uh what is it that we're going to supply now?
	The um changed the situation on the battlefield.
	I couldn't believe my ears.
	I could not believe that he was saying something so utterly foolish.
	Something is going on there as well.
	Uh around around Lavrov.
	All right.
	So where do you see all of this going?
	Should we wake up some morning and find out that the government buildings in Kiev are gone, or that Vladimir Putin is taking a vacation?
	I don't know.
	It can go either the the tea leaves suggest either eventuality as possible.
	We'll have to see how this progresses.
	Uh, but uh the there are a lot of people in Russia who've been calling for some time.
	Uh Mr. Karaganoff, who a year and a half ago was uh this is the political scientist who has a very large uh reputation in Russia and abroad who's saying that Russia should strike using tactical nuclear weapons somewhere in Western Europe to demonstrate that it is that it is a serious power.
	Well, uh the these people certainly are by uh are behind, would be behind uh the kind of palace coup that I that I'm suggesting.
	But there's no way at this point, we have to wait a little bit.
	Fascinating conversation, uh Professor Dr. Owen.
	You know, if something happens in one direction or another, I trust you'll reach us and we'll uh discuss it uh uh as close to real time uh as possible.
	Um, your observations to me are rather startling, and I've heard them nowhere else.
	I hope to uh to investigate this more seriously and with with better access to all sorts of information three weeks from now on the 20th of this month, I'll be going to uh Petersburg for three weeks.
	And uh this this kind of question I tend to pursue.
	Thank you, Professor Doctor.
	All the best, my friend.
	We'll see you again next week or sooner if the situation uh warrants.
	Okay.
	Of course.
	Uh coming up uh today, a full day for you at one o'clock this afternoon, Professor Glenn Diesen at two o'clock, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at three o'clock, Phil Giraldi at four o'clock, Professor Jeffrey Sachs,
	Professor Sachs will analyze Prime Minister Netanyahu's in Jerusalem and on his plane, repudiation of the agreement he claimed he joined in with President Trump in the Oval Office.

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