"Ukraine Russia War Latest w. Col. Doug Macgregor
Judging Freedom (January 25, 2023)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K74GonVNYO4

Judge Napolitano:

4:05 Douglas Macgregor: “The mood in Washington has very definitely changed. The attitude of the Washington Community -- those people who are the leading Senators, members of the House, cabinet officers, president, vice president -- the mood of these people has clearly changed. I think they’re sensing that this is a lost cause, that Ukraine is very definitely going to lose. And they’re trying to figure out how do we prolong the suffering. How do we prolong this fighting? They’ll say publicly it’s for the purpose of quote-unquote “harming” Russia, which has been a complete fiasco and a disaster because Russia, frankly, has not been harmed very much. Not at all, I would say in substantive terms: economically, financially, otherwise. But I think that’s part of it.

“The second thing is that they’re now really goading the Europeans, the Germans in particular, into committing acts that, frankly, can be regarded legally anywhere in the world as acts of war against Russia. And I think the German government is sitting there saying, you know, do we really want to supply heavy military equipment: tanks, artillery, all these things in great quantities to this war zone to help these Ukrainians fight the Russians. Are we not, in fact, becoming co-belligerents? You and I have talked before about this. I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. We are co-belligerents. But I think the Germans are now interested in putting the brakes on that so Scholtz put us in a difficult position because his representative at Ramstein last week at the conference for donors and allies who were willing to send things to [Kiev] said that the only way the Germans would send any Leopard tanks was if we sent him M-1s. Then we went through a series of comments from people in the Department of Defense, like this Mr Colin Call, Assistant Secretary of Defense in OSD who said that the M1 is a gas guzzler and it has extreme maintenance requirements. It’s too complex for the “Ukrainians.” It won’t help them. The Leopards would be easier for them to use and would be better.

7:10 I agree with it, but not for the reasons Mr Call said. We’ve known for thirty years that the gas turbine engines are a catastrophe, both for reasons of fuel usage but also because of the intake of all the dirt and sand and nonsense on the ground. This is an engine designed for the use of a jet at fifteen thousand feet. Not for use on the ground. So here we have this turbine engine that’s supposed to power this tank up and send it at 50 or 60 miles an hour towards the enemy. The problem is that, historically, that’s not necessarily what you need from a tank. A tank doesn’t have to go 50 or 60 miles an hour. We don’t need to cover all that ground again, but the bottom is that the M1 has got a lot of problems. … I don’t think people wanted to see this employed for fear that they would be embarrassed by its performance. Not the gun, not the crew, but the tank as a whole, for the reasons we mentioned.

8:03 “Now the tables have turned. In order to get the Germans to send tanks, apparently President Biden said, well, we’ll send 10 M1s. And Mr Scholtz responded by saying, fine, then we’ll send 10 Leopards. This seems childish and stupid but I think we need to understand what is really happening. Number One: people have no faith in Ukraine’s ability to win this war. We have been lying about what’s happening in Ukraine between the Russian and Ukrainian forces for months. We have been exaggerating Russian losses, exaggerating Russian problems, and minimizing and obviating Ukrainian problems and losses. The truth is seeping out. You can’t conceal it much longer. So the first thing is, they know they can’t win. In other words: We’re losing the proxy war. Our proxy can’t win it.”

8:54 “Secondly, the Europeans are concluding that this is dangerous. How far out do we stick our necks? They don’t have the military-industrial power to rapidly produce anything. And I think this is enormously important. The lead time, for instance, for the AMRAM missile which is a very important weapon that’s used in the F-15, the F-22, the F-35, and by NASAMs, this brilliant air defense system that we and the Norwegians have put together with Konsberg. It’s excellent for shooting down cruise missiles, helicopters, so forth. The problem is, from the moment you ask for a missile, the wait time until you get it is 32 months. That’s how long it takes to produce these things. When you look at all of the missiles that we’re promising the ‘Ukrainians’ and the systems., they’re not going to arrive in any short period of time. Now the Germans are talking about giving the ‘Ukrainians’ air-defense systems like the Patriot, and they’ll probably provide them with some missiles. But you go through those missiles very rapidly and you just can’t replace them. So, the Europeans and we do not have the surge capacity to fight a major war. We just don’t have it. The Russians do. Their factories are operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Contrary to popular belief, they’re not running out of anything. They’ve got more of what they need than they’ve ever had. All of this is dangerous. That’s what we’re learning from the Europeans now in private.

10:39 Judge Napolitano: “You . . . [and some stuff about FDR “provoking” Japan] . . . [some statements from Sergei Lavrov] . . . [‘hybrid war’] . . .

14:05 Hybrid War

16:39 Douglas Macgregor: ". . .hybrid technology goes beyond weapons systems and ammunition. It's information warfare. We control the information highways. We are proselytizing for war against Russia. We are depicting Russia as this evil state, this nationalist state that rests on the foundation of Russian Orthodox Christianity. It protects its borders. It has an identity. Ergo, it must be destroyed. It must become like Western Europe and the United States, a country without borders. A country with identities that are being washed away in seas of illegal human trafficking, drug abuse, and so forth. That's what is at stake in their minds, and it's not an unreasonable assumption based upon what we are seeing. And he [Putin] is saying, 'We're going to fight.' And that's what we need to understand. They're not kidding. And we're not prepared for an all-out war. But Russia is."

17:31 Judge Napolitano: "Are the people in Washington who are now manifesting a change in mind aware of the defiance and forcefulness with which these kinds of statements, out of the mouth of Mr Lavrov, have been made, and are they prepared to counter it by sitting down and talking to him? Do they think they're going to counter it militarily? And do they not realize that that is World War Three if they do?"

18:00 Douglas Macgregor: "First of all, I think it is very clear that under no circumstances are they going to hold talks with the Russians because that would suggest that they made a mistake

Judge Napolitano: "It would suggest that we're pulling the Zelenski strings, which of course we are."

Douglas Macgregor: "So I don't see us doing that. You know, I was asked the other day by a jouralist, 'What do you think we should do?' I said, 'Hold talks immediately without preconditions. We need to come to some sort of resolution, no matter what.' That, in fact, is what Kissinger said a few months ago and then, of course, changed his tune. We're not going to do that because that's an admission of failure. No one in Washington ever admits that they failed at anything. Everything's a success no matter how many times you fail. That's the first problem."

"I think the second problem is that there's a lot of arrogance and self delusion. I don't think the people on the hill really understand what war means anymore. For many, many years we had lots of interesting people on the Hill -- Sam Nunn was a good example, but there were many others. Most of them had served in the military, a lot of them had lived through the Second World War. They understood what you meant when you started talking about war. So when it came to Russia, or in those days the Soviet Union, people made it very clear, that's not what we want. Whatever we do, we must find a way around that because we all know what that means. And they weren't necessarily saying it would be nuclear, but it would be so destructive and self-defeating, we don't want to engage in it. I don't sense that anymore "

19:30 Latest Numbers

Judge Napolitano: "What is your understanding of the latest numbers of military killed? Ukraine. Russia."

Douglas Macgregor: "Well, Judge, first of all, this goes back to the fiction that we have been spinning about the war. We haven't told the truth about Ukrainian losses. It is becoming harder and harder to accept. We know from obituaries. We know from people on the ground in the hospitals treating the wounded. We know from the Ukrainians themselves who are posting things, comments on Telegram and sending videos. Ukrainians have lost easily 122,000 -- with absolute certainty -- men killed on the battlefield. Secondly, they've admitted to roughly 35,000 missing in action -- and presumed dead. If you go back to World War Two and look at German fatalities, there were alomost two million casualties, dead frankly, from the Second World War in Eastern Europe in the German Werhmacht, and a substantial chunk of that, hundreds of thousands were missing in action and presumed dead. They were never recovered. We have to understand that the majority of casualties being inflicted on the Ukrainians is a consequence of artillery fire. Not just hard shell rocket fire, firing thermobaric warheads. These are fuel-air explosives that utterly destroy a whole area. This is how you avoid going into buildings where there may be people waiting for you. You fire a thermobaric warhead into the building, it eliminates the oxygen. It's destructive, but it kills everything because there's nothing to breathe. You have a whole range of these kinds of explosives. The Russians have great quanities of them. They use them very effectively because they are also linking these in real time to overhead surveillance. This is surveillance, Reconnaissance, Intelligence [ISR] platforms. So, you are getting within seconds, sometimes, certainly within a minute or two accurate data to the artillery systems that can then fire. Keep in mind that the Russians can fire up to, roughly, 60,000 rounds a day. Ukrainians are lucky to get off 6 or 7 thousand rounds a day. In other words tenfold more than the Ukrainians can fire in response."

21:58 Judge Napolitano: "Can you address you've indicated 122,000 dead, 35,000 unaccounded for, probably dead, Ukrainian. What do your sources tell you is the number of dead or missing and unaccounted for on the Russian side.

Douglas Macgregor: What we're getting from the Russians as well as from some -- the Ukrainian sources are unfortunately when it comes to the Russians, they're just not believable -- but we are hearing from people on the battlefield, depending upon where you are and who you talk to, the Russians have had somewhere between 16, 17,000 and 25,000 killed, and perhaps another 25, 20, 40,000 wounded. And people say, well, how could that be? I just explained it to you. You have overmatch in firepower on a dramatic scale, on a strategic scale, that's why."

22:50 Changing the Mission

Judge Napolitano: "When will the globalists in Western Europe and in the state department and the defense department come to the same realization that the political class in Washington has begun to achieve: that this is a losing fight and we have to change the mission?"

Douglas Macgregor: "Thus far I have not seen any evidence that there is any recognition of this. In fact, I continue to hear these disturbing comments that, well, if the Ukrainians have to fall back to the Polish border, then we'll fight a perpetual war against them . . ."

Judge Napolitano: "This crazy president of Poland is going to send 10,000 Polish troops east over the border and is going to beg Joe Biden to let the 101st Airborne join them?"

Douglas Macgregor: "Well, I don't think he has to beg. I think there are lots of people that would push for that. And, remember, you've got at least the equivalent of three armored brigades from the United States on the ground in Poland and down in Romania plus the 101st plus other units, formations, artillery, and so forth. Then you have the Poles, as you point out. They've now mobilized at least 200,000. They're trying to build up a force of over 300,000. That would probably support the projection of somewhere between 60-and 100,000 troops on the ground. I don't know about the Romanian side. But I know that there are elections scheduled in Poland in the fall. I don't know exactly how the government thinks, but the Polish population -- and this is very important -- we also discussed this map of Europe that shows the various polling data. And what you get all across Europe from the publics is a very definite preference for a negotiated solution to this war as soon as possible. There is no evidence that anybody in Europe wants to go to war with Russia. And I'm beginning to see that happen in Poland where more and more Poles are saying, 'Wait a minute. We're literally on the edge of the Abyss here. If this war spreads, we'll be destroyed"

Judge Napolitano: "Doesn't the German public want inexpensive Russian natural gas back in their homes to heat them for the winter?

Douglas Macgregor: "I'm sure that some do, but not yet. I think there's this belief that somehow or other they can get past this tough winter and be ready next year with their alternative energy sources. This climate change business is more than a program. It's a religious faith in much of Europe and particularly with the Germans and Scandinavians. It's quite strange. And real data don't make any difference anymore. Again, everything connected with this war is emotion.”

25:40 Putin’s Plan

Judge Napolitano: “I want you to assume, that everything you have just educated us on is known by Russian intel and is known by President Putin. Does he come in with this slam-bank invasion of 300-to-500,000 soldiers and finish everything off or does he let the ‘Ukrainians’ just sort of die on the vine?

Douglas Macgregor: “I think he knows that he can’t do the latter because we will constantly try to resuscitate the corpse no matter how bad it gets. We will rush in there, put it on life support, try to get it back up on its feet and fight. I think he knows that the only way to rid Ukraine of this Ukrainian armed force is to go in and destroy it, and ultimately to replace this regime with something else or wait for something else to emerge. I don’t think he feels anymore -- or for that matter any of the Russians -- that they can trust anything we say. They know they can no longer trust the Europeans. They used to trust the Germans and they actually, I think, believed Macron at one point in time. Now they know they can’t trust anybody. I don’t see great enthusiasm for a long and destructive war in Ukraine. Why would they be enthusiastic about that? Why do they want to kill other Slavic Orthodox Christians. I don’t think they do. But the point is, they don’t have much choice, and I think they will press ahead. The question is when, and I told you I thought that the major offenses would begin sometime between the 21st of January and the 7th of February. We’ll see if I’m right. There are others that say, Oh, no, They’re going to wait until March. I don’t know. But I think it’s coming sooner rather than later because of the things you’re pointing out. Why should they sit around and wait for resuscitation again? Why not just go in and put this thing out of its misery? But it’s not going to be a lightning blitzkrieg. That’s all nonsense. Warfare has changed. They have over Ukraine this large umbrella of Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance assets and this wide range of strike assets, everything from rocket-artillery to jets to tactical ballistic missiles to long-range artillery. All of this is linked. And they’re going to move their ground forces under this umbrella. They’re not going to be surprised. Anything out there that looks like it could threaten their forces will be identified and struck quickly and put out of business as they move. So, instead of this lightning blitzkrieg it’ll be a deliberate methodical advance. It’ll take a little longer, maybe a month, maybe six weeks, but it’ll happen.

28:25 CIA