Judge Andrew Napolitano and 'Judging Freedom'

I take pleasure in offering below the link to my just aired debut on the ‘Judging Freedom’ youtube.com channel of Judge Andrew Napolitano.

This U.S. based political analysis show has a global audience numbering in the millions and is an excellent platform for in-depth discussion of leading issues in the international and domestic U.S. spheres. Our chat focused on the Ukraine war and, in particular, the proposal now being put forward by Antony Blinken, Emanuel Macron, David Cameron and Jens Stoltenberg to give the Ukrainians full freedom to decide how to use the long range missiles and other advanced attack hardware now being delivered to them by the USA and allied NATO countries to further their self-defense by striking deep into the territory of the Russian Federation.

Transcript below by a reader

Judge Andrew Napolitano 0:32
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, May 30th, 2024. Dr. Gilbert Doctorow joins us from Belgium. Dr. Doctorow is an independent scholar and world-recognized expert on all things Russian. Professor Doctorow, it's a pleasure, my dear friend. We have run clips of you happily on our show, but this is the first time that we're able to interview you, an interview that we've longed for, and we deeply appreciate your time and your thoughts.

Gilbert Doctorow 1:08
Well, thanks so much for the invitation. It's very kind of you.

Napolitano:
Of course. Yesterday, not far from where you are now in Brussels, NATO leaders decided to promise to give President Zelensky's government a billion dollars. Time Magazine reported it. Chris, if you want to pop that up in a headline: "Belgium commits $1 billion to Ukraine amid Zelensky's whirlwind European tour." Apparently, President Zelensky is traveling around Europe, was in Belgium yesterday, but not today. What motivates NATO to give a billion dollars in what is now so obviously a lost cause?

Doctorow: 1:52
You say it's a lost cause, but the military leadership in NATO does not want to believe that. They're still living in a bubble, and they are hopeful that with these incoming deliveries of weapons and of money that Mr. Zelensky can hold on long enough so that they can prop him up to go past the U.S. elections and perhaps even for Ukraine to stay on as a sovereign country with or without Mr. Zelensky at its helm.

Napolitano: 2:25
Well, how stable or unstable is the Ukrainian government as we speak? I mean, he's not even legally the president any longer, is he? He's not even legally the head of state or the head of the government any longer.

Doctorow:
The Ukrainian government, Mr. Zelensky at its head, are there as long as the United States wants it to be there, and not a minute longer. The Russians have been dealing with this issue with considerable attention in the last few days. And I have to explain [glitch] that my particular added value, I hope, is to be watching closely what the Russians are saying among themselves, since I am a Russian speaker and follow closely their domestic television.

And they are saying that Mr. Zelensky is being held on in office by the United States, which is perfectly aware of his illegitimacy, given that his presidential term expired, precisely so that they can lay on him all of the unpopular measures, including, first and foremost, the reduction of age for mobilization, for call-up to military service. This is enormously unpopular, it is being pushed through by Zelensky and the people around him, and it will be a great burden on his historical legacy, along with other unpopular measures relating to the military effort that the United States wants to pin on his chest before he is booted out.

Napolitano: 4:03
Can the United States bring about regime change in Ukraine whenever it wants?

Doctorow:
I believe so. Of course, it's difficult to say with any certainty. There is a certain agency within Ukraine. But it is highly likely that at any moment of the United States calling, they will be able to produce one or more credible candidates to take over from Zelensky.

Napolitano: 4:31
How much longer can the Ukraine military last, resisting the Russians with their strategic advantages?

Doctorow:
Well, the strategic advantages were there almost from the beginning. Just like saying that because of the United States' failure to approve, Congress's failure to approve the appropriations that Biden asked for months ago, the Ukrainians are suffering a great disadvantage in their available artillery shells and so on. They were suffering a disadvantage from day one of the military operation back in February 2022. We speak about a 10-to-1 Russian advantage today; there was a 10-to-1 advantage then.

5:14
So from the very start, the Russians were a superior force. The question was, for them, how much time it would take them to get into the saddle. The Russians have a folk saying that "We're very slow getting into the saddle, but we ride very fast once we're there." And that is what we're seeing today. They're riding quite fast. How long the Ukrainians can resist this is questionable. I just would like to point out that one indicating factor here. Going back a month or more, the daily news briefings on Russian state television were speaking about 800, 1000, 1,200 Ukrainian soldiers killed in action in the 24 hours preceding. They're now speaking about 1,700 Ukrainians. That is a 40 percent rise since the Russians began what has not formally been called an offensive. It's just "an improvement to our local positions", as they describe it.

6:12
If, when they decide to call this an offensive, I can't imagine what the numbers of deaths will look like, not to mention desertions. The Russians are also reporting heavy desertions of Ukrainian soldiers to their side. And how and why, why is it credible? Because the people who are now deserting were forced into the military, they were picked up off the streets against protests of bystanders, their wives and relatives, and they were dragooned into the army. So it's logical when the Russian forces give them a high sign to come on over, they they will cross over and they do.

Napolitano: 6:48
Well, this obviously can't last much longer, no matter how much cash-- disagree with me if you see fit, of course-- no matter how much cash or how much weaponry Joe Biden and Tony Blinken send over there, right? I mean, they need human beings and they don't have them.

Doctorow:
That's exactly right. At the same time, from the very beginning, Russian state television, Russian panelists on talk shows, which I follow quite closely, have always warned against being overconfident or underestimating the determination and the force of the enemy. Even today, while the Russians are steamrolling various parts of the front, they are moving daily several kilometers inland on the Ukrainian side and taking village after village, which they name every day. Nonetheless, there are points of resistance where the Ukrainians are throwing their reserves and their best equipment in the hope of withstanding the Russian assault.

And there, there is what the Russian war correspondents described as savage, vicious fighting going on. Let's not underestimate this reality. So, it is a tough fight. And we have to remember that President Putin's first concern in fighting this military effort is the lives of his soldiers. And the Russians are being very careful to avoid expending lives unnecessarily for the sake of public relations exercises, which is what the the Ukrainian army has been doing for more than a year. In this case, the progression is not blinding speed, but it is moving steadily and with minimal losses on the Russian side.

Napolitano: 8:43
Doctor Doctorow, what is, without getting too graphic, what is savage, vicious combat? Hand-to-hand, face-to-face combat in the streets?

Doctorow:
Almost that. The Russian troops, again, the war correspondents on the Russian side are accompanying the troops, and we see this on nightly news. There are visits to villages that are still being fought over, where the northern part of the city is being controlled by the Russians and the southern or central parts are still controlled by Ukrainian forces. And indeed they are going house to house. In the fields, though, in the forests, we're talking about the trenches, and the Russians are dropping, both artillery strikes and heavy bombs are being dropped to do the utmost damage to the Ukrainian entrenched positions. But nonetheless, the storm brigades have to come through, and they go through the trenches. And of course this is a risky and very personal fight occasionally. They hope to find empty trenches but that's not always the case.

Napolitano: 9:54
All right, let's go to a big picture. Do you think that this war can end while President Zelensky is still in office, or he's not in office, while President Zelensky is still in charge of the government, whether legally or not? I mean, stated differently, will the Russians even negotiate a surrender with him, or is there such antipathy toward him that they won't even deal with him and they'll insist on regime change first, end of the war second?

Doctorow:
Well, let's differentiate here. You've used a very emotional word, "antipathy". This is a big point of distinction between the Russian official positions and the Ukrainian official positions. The Ukrainians are indeed, or they have, since Zelensky said he will not negotiate-- didn't say, it was an edict-- that the Ukrainian side cannot negotiate with Putin's government. They will not negotiate with the Russians until Putin is removed. The Russian side is rather different. There is no antipathy here. The Russians are questioning now the legitimacy. What is the value of Mr. Zevensky's signature on a piece of paper when according to the constitutional term that he served, he is no longer president? This is the Russian point of objection to Zelensky signing a document.

11:18
But I'd like to come back to the question you asked just before that, [of] the timing. I think that the removal or disappearance of Mr. Zelensky and the capitulation will come at the same time.

Napolitano: 11:35
In the past two days, we've heard two startling announcements, one by U.S. Secretary of State Blinken, that the United States-- this is obviously leaking this out as a trial balloon-- the United States is considering authorizing the Ukrainian military to use offensive weaponry and attack sites inside Russia, and the President of France, Emanuel Macron, made a similar statement. Before you comment on either, let's listen to President Macron yesterday, cut number one.

Emanuel Macron, French President 12:13
[clip translated to English voice] "So how do we explain to the Ukrainians that we're going to have to protect these towns and basically everything we're seeing right now around Kharkiv if we tell them 'You're not allowed to reach the point where the missiles are fired from?' The missiles. In fact, we're telling them, 'We're giving you weapons, but you can't defend yourselves.' So we stay exactly within the same framework. We think that we should enable them to neutralize the military sites which the missiles are fired from, and basically the military sites from which Ukraine is attacked. But we must not allow them to hit other targets in Russia, obviously civilian capabilities or other military targets. When it's from identified targets in Russia that Ukraine is attacked, well, I think we have to be able to allow them to do that if we really want to retain our objective."

Napolitano: 13:01
Do you think that President Macron and Secretary Blinken perceive the danger of publicly permitting the use of-- in the case of Macron, French, in the case of Blinken, American-- offensive weaponry to land inside Russia? Do you think that they don't realize what that opens up as a potential lawful response by the Russians?

Doctorow: 13:30
That assumes that he was sincere in making these statements, and sincerity and the personality of Mr. Macron are very far apart.

Napolitano:
[laughs] OK.

Doctorow:
The man rushes to be at the front of the orchestra, and since this is the subject of the day, freeing the Ukrainians to use Western military hardware as they see fit for their own defense, it all sounds very logical and is appealing to the general public in the West. He is quick to jump to the front and state exactly that. He will do anything to get into the news, and he'll do anything to appear to be the leading force in European foreign and defense policy.

Now coming back to what does it all mean? I say it is most likely a bluff. I don't think the people around him are so foolish and so incompetent and so ignorant not to be aware of the threats, the vital threats to France as a country that doing this would result in. And I think that as we consider this, I say very reasonable, proposal to give to give the Ukrainians their freedom to use equipment for their defense, we have to consider a very important development on the Russian side that has gotten remarkably little attention in Western reporting.

15:01
And that is, I mean, President Putin's statements at a press conference held in Tashkent airport before his departure for Moscow, at the end of a three-day visit, very successful business and government visit, to Uzbekistan. He called in the Russian press and they had a standing press conference as they, maybe 20 Russian journalists, were lined up on one side and five or six yards away was Mr. Putin standing at a microphone. He used this to make a programmatic statement that remarkably has not gotten attention it deserves in the West.

And three or four years ago, considering Mr. Putin's dignified and respectful approach to international affairs, I wrote that he was making a very bad mistake in not bringing back the playbook of Nikita Khrushchev. Nobody ever called Nikita Khrushchev a thug. Nobody ever treated him as if he were a lightweight. And Mr. Putin has unfortunately subjected himself to that type of treatment, because he never took off a shoe and banged it on the table of the United Nations.

Napolitano:
[laughs] You're dating yourself. We all remember that as children.

Doctorow:
And he never said, "We will bury you." Now, Mr. Putin-- and people like Paul Craig Roberts have come out and said repeatedly that he is leading us into World War III by being such a nice guy. Now on Monday he was not a nice guy, and I'd like to say exactly why he wasn't a nice guy. First of all, he called out the falseness of the statements that Macron and Stoltenberg and Cameron and Blinken have made regarding freeing the Ukrainians to do what they need to, to defend themselves. He said this is ignoring the fact that they all know or should know that the targeting and even pressing of the button of these weapons is being done by NATO officers, not by Ukrainians. It's not even clear if the Ukrainians who are standing by know where they're sending the missiles that [are] being launched.

Napolitano: 17:21
Let me just interrupt you for a second. Is it probable that some of those NATO officers are Americans?

Doctorow:
Oh, of course they are, but there are greater numbers [who] are Poles and Brits. And the Germans aren't there, because Mr. Scholz understood exactly what I'm about to say. And he didn't want Germany to disappear from the map. The point that Mr. Putin was making is that he stripped away the fig leaf. The Russians have known this, they've talked about this among themselves on television. But they never had the head of state say what he said on Monday, that this is really NATO that is using Ukraine for its purposes to wage its war on Russia. The only thing-- he was a hair breath away from declaring war on NATO.

18:12
And there was more that he said, which we haven't heard from Mr. Putin or from any leader of the Soviet Union since Mr. Khrushchev. And that is, he addressed himself to the three Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. And he said, gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, because they're actually ladies prime ministers there. "You take a step back for a moment and consider who you are and who we are. And you are small countries that are densely populated. Do reconsider your words that you will bring Russia to its knees."

And those are the words a week ago of the prime minister of Estonia. This is as close as the head of state could come to say that he will obliterate, wipe off the map, these three states. Is this is Mr. Nice Guy? It isn't.

Napolitano:
Yeah, I think we have a very small clip, but a poignant one, of just what you're talking about. It's only about 20 seconds long. It's President Putin warning the NATO countries. I know there may be some internet difficulties, so I'm going to read what he says, and then we're going to play it.

"Representatives of NATO countries, especially in Europe, especially in small countries," this is what you just mentioned professor, "they should be aware of what they are playing with before talking about striking Russian territory."

Here is the excerpt of President Putin from that press conference of which you spoke, cut number four.

Vladimir Putin 19:50
"Representatives of NATO countries, especially in Europe, especially in small countries, they should be aware of what they are playing with before talking about striking Russian territory. In general, this constant escalation can lead to serious consequences."

Napolitano:
In general, this constant escalation can lead to serious consequences. Have you heard him speak that profoundly and directly before, about NATO countries?

Doctorow:
No, and I would like to take this back to something [that has] happened. He's made three visits abroad since his election, or re-election. The first was to Beijing, the second was to Belarus, Minsk, and the third was to Tashkent, which is where he made the press conference that you've just shown. And I take it back a couple of weeks to his stay in Beijing. I think that his lengthy and very detailed discussions with Xi gave him additional confidence to proceed with the direct challenge to United States-led NATO that we heard in his Tashkent meeting.

21:10
When I said that his time in Tashkent was successful, let's bear in mind that the United States, under Blinken, has made trips through Central Asia in the hopes of dislodging Kazakhstan, dislodging Uzbekistan-- these are the largest, most populous and important Central Asian countries-- from the Russian orbit. And there was a time, going back a year, when it looked like they were wobbling. The nature of the meeting that Putin had in three days-- it was a day longer than was planned-- in Tashkent, during which a number of very important commercial agreements were signed including for the building of the first nuclear power station in Central Asia, a small one but nonetheless, the first one, which will be Russian built.

22:04
This type of warm greeting, without any side glances to those who are giving the "come hither" note like Mr. Blinken, tells you that Central Asian countries are behaving as normal countries would. They go with winners, and they have sensed that Russia is the winner in the war with Ukraine and NATO.

Napolitano:
Wow, profound, profound observations here. How much longer do you think the war can last, given what you told us earlier, Professor, about 1,700 Ukrainian troops killed in a day, and the need to conscript men, kidnap them in their early 20s off the streets with no real training and sending them to the front lines. This can't go on much longer, can it?

Doctorow:
It really depends on the Russian generalship and how they proceed with executing their strategic plans. We don't know. The Russian public doesn't know. This is, as it should be, a well-guarded secret. They are engaging in what is likely a feint in Kharkov. Mr. Putin has said, and I don't think he was lying, that the Russians are not going to storm Kharkov. The Ukrainians nonetheless were forced, compelled, to bring many of their reserves and best equipment to the Kharkov region to forestall what could be the overrunning of the second-largest city in the country and a tremendous public relations disaster.

Nonetheless, where exactly the Russians are going to make their big push, now that they have weakened the entire confrontation line forces of the Ukrainians, we don't know. But I think they have a very great motivation to do this quickly. And I'm stating facts and not wishes. Everyone is talking about the three Ukrainian pilots who just graduated in Arizona, I believe, from a U.S. training center, and how they have to be 18 and such pilots to have a brigade and so on.

24:27
All of this is being talked about in Western media, and the Russians also read the news. You know, they are obliterate. And they are aware of the plans as early as possible to introduce Ukrainian, supposedly Ukrainian-pilot F-16s into Ukrainian airspace to challenge Russian air domination and perhaps to fire missiles into Russian Federation territory. This would bring us extremely close to World War III. I think that to prevent that, the Russians are going to overrun Ukrainian positions in the immediate weeks.

Napolitano:
Professor Doctorow, I've thoroughly enjoyed this interview, and I can tell you from the number of people watching internationally and from their comments, our viewers are as well. And this will multiply many, many times over, because we post it immediately. But before we end, I want to go back to where we began, which was the conference in Belgium, where you are. Here's President Zelensky-- cut number two, Chris-- here's President Zelensky there yesterday.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy 25:42
Even from reconnaissance, you get maps, satellite images, but you cannot respond. I think it's unfair. But we cannot, and this is a fact, risk the support of our partners. And that is why we do not use the weapons of our partners on the territory of the Russian Federation. Please give us the opportunity to retaliate against their military.

Napolitano:
What do you think?

Doctorow: 26:07
You're looking at the left of the screen. I'm looking at the right of the screen.

Napolitano:
Oh, good point. Who was that next to him?

Doctorow:
That is the Belgian Prime Minister de Croo. And I think in his presence, we have the tragedy of the European situation. The man is very intelligent. He's very well educated. He is a second- or third-generation governing elite of Belgium. His father was a minister. And yet, he has lost his spine, absolutely. And he is listening to these rantings of Zelensky and taking them seriously. Zelensky is a showman, indeed, and he has done an unexpectedly good job of selling Ukraine everywhere. He's had some failures. He has misjudged his audience from time to time. But generally, he's been spot on, and so he was here. But let's just consider, you speak about a $1 billion additional grant to him. In the big order of things, that isn't very much. In the European newspapers, the Financial Times are talking about the $100 billion in guaranteed assistance to Ukraine that is now being discussed among EU member countries. It sounds good. All of this is very good headline news, except when you go two or three paragraphs down the article and you find that there's no new money. This is just re-designating and giving a new heading to money that was allocated or described as coming forth a long time ago. So his visit here may give him additional front-page space in our media, but it doesn't change very much.

Napolitano: 27:57
Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, thank you very much, very, very illuminating and informative and fascinating comments from you. I hope you'll come back again and visit with us soon.

Doctorow:
Thanks again.

Napolitano:
Of course. All the best. Coming up later today at 11 o'clock this morning, Eastern, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. At two o'clock this afternoon, Eastern, Scott Ritter. At three o'clock this afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer. At four o'clock this afternoon, Max Blumenthal.

Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.

The official transcript of the Tashkent press conference in English is available here: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/74132