“A Different Lens” from The Hampton Institute:  An audio podcast bringing truth to the working class

Some two years ago, I was interviewed by The Hampton Institute for its “Different Lens” program to talk about the Russia-Ukraine war.   A few days ago, they invited me back for an update. That interview has just been posted on the internet. 

See  https://adifferentlens.libsyn.com/episode-187-destruction-and-diplomacy-with-dr-gilbert-doctorow

For those who may never have heard of this think tank dedicated to the memory of a Black Panther member, I refer you to their website: https://www.hamptonthink.org/our-organization-1

Full transcript submitted by a reader followed by a translation into German (Andreas Mylaeus) 

Transcript below by a reader

Hampton: 0:24
It is July 11th, 2024. You’re listening to “A Different Lens”, a podcast produced by the Hampton Institute. Today, we are chatting with international affairs specialist Dr. Gilbert Doctorow to discuss the recent battlefield events in the Ukraine-Russia war, the possibility of a diplomatic completion to that war and current delving into Russia-China and Russia-Korean relations.

There are going to be a number of links in the show notes. I would encourage everyone to look into. And there’s also going to be a link to a previous interview he did about two years ago now on the Russia-Ukraine war on this podcast. Listen in.

All right, Dr. Doctorow, it’s good to have you back on the show. I hope you’ve been doing well.

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 1:23
Well, thanks for the invitation.

Hampton:
Of course. So as you know, we’re here xxxxx want to discuss the Russia-Ukraine situation and the surrounding issues of that. And so I want to ask first and foremost, right, what does the current battlefield situation look like?

Doctorow:
The situation in the field, the situation in politics, which do you want to start with?

Hampton:
The situation in the field.

Doctorow:
In the field, the Ukrainians are being pushed back. They’re losing, oh, one or two kilometers a day at each of the various points in the line of confrontation that the Russians are engaging them in. It’s not a very fast or strategic change in positions by the choice of the Russians, because when you are on the offense, you have casualties of a higher rate than when you’re on the defense. And the Russian general staff, in agreement with their president, is trying to reduce the losses of Russian soldiers to the bare minimum. In general, according to Russian figures, their rate of loss is one to five. That is, they lose one man, either seriously wounded or killed, to every five Ukrainians that are seriously wounded or killed.

2:49
Nonetheless, if you have several hundred thousand Ukrainians who are killed, then you have [a hundred thousand] Russians who are killed. The latest figures are said to be 60,000 Russians and probably 300,000 Ukrainians killed in the war so far. That is a very large number of people, and you can take pleasure in having a favorable kill ratio, but it doesn’t give much comfort to the widows and the orphans. So the Russians are going slow in their offensive to reduce to the greatest extent possible their loss of men as they proceed in pushing the Ukrainians out of the Donbas, because that is what’s going on.

Also as they proceed in eliminating the threat of attack on their residential areas just across the border from Ukraine in the area surrounding Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkov, in the Northeast. So the Russians have been operating a cleanup operation to make it impossible for the Ukrainians to use artillery or short missiles to reach into the cities of the Belgorod province that is on the Russian side of the border. There were many such attacks. There were losses of civilians, and the Russians had enough of it.

So that is the basic situation. There’s nothing dramatic. And there’s nothing dramatic because that’s the way the Russians want it. They are slowly decimating the Ukrainian military in a way that Ukraine cannot fill its ranks. And yet there are several elite battalions left in reserve, and the Russians are hoping that Mr. Zelensky, in his appeal to President Biden and to his American backers, will stage some kind of a counteroffensive, which the Russians would use to finish off what elite reserves Ukraine has. That’s the overall situation.

Hampton: 5:03
It’s interesting how this whole thing has shifted, because for the longest, we were hearing Ukraine is winning, Ukraine is winning, and then we hear about this offensive they’re going on. “Oh, this big counter-offensive, it’s happening”, this, that and the other, and then it amounts to not seemingly much. And so, yeah, now it seems that, as you said, the Russians are effectively, in many ways, in control of the battlefield.

Doctorow:
Yes, but there has been a lot of cheerleading on all sides. All the American media were simply repeating, without any, exercising any critical faculty, what they were receiving from the State Department, which was receiving the propaganda from Kiev. That means that there was a lot of hubris, a lot of overconfidence on the American side that the war was going well for Ukraine. And, of course, the loss of several major positions in the fall of 2022 due to the Russians not having enough men in the field to hold onto territory they quickly captured, that was interpreted as showing the Ukrainians were winning. It was nothing of the sort.

6:30
The Russians gave up territory, they retreated in an orderly fashion, which was not the easiest thing to do, and they had minimal losses when ceding territory to which they did not have the men to hold. That interpretation of a Ukrainian victory held on for a good long time. But, of course, the reality is that the Russians always were stronger. The Russians had a 10-to-1 advantage in artillery shells from the very start of the war. It’s not something that just happened in the last few months because the United States Congress withheld funding. It’s simply Russia has the world’s biggest production of artillery shells, period. It has more than all the United States and all of its allies put together. And this, you know, what has become very quickly a war of attrition, is a decisive factor in Russia’s favor and working against Ukraine and its Western backers. The possibility has always existed for Russia to stage a strategic attack and knock out the Ukrainian army. But, as I said, that would come at enormous cost in lost men, and for that reason, and also might be considered extremely provocative and a factor in an escalation by the U.S. side towards a nuclear war.

8:00
So the Russians have decided to go slow, to get what they need done with minimal losses and with minimal provocation to the enemy, meaning not just Ukraine, but its American and West European backers.

Hampton:
This is the second question I wanted to ask. Last month, [Putin] stated that in order to end the war, Ukraine would have to not join NATO and give up the four regions that have been taken by Russia. So why is this kind of, these positions being dismissed by Zelensky, being dismissed by the West? It seems that Russia’s, correct me if I’m wrong, but it doesn’t seem that Russia’s terms for ending the war have changed even when you compare it to two years ago.

Doctorow: 8:45
Well, the terms have changed, and they changed because of the way the West imposed a battle on the Russians. When Mr. Josep Borrell, the foreign policy and military spokesman for, or commissioner, for the European Union, said that this war would be resolved on the battlefield, it was said at a time when Europe and the United States felt confident that they could have the upper hand against the Russians. That was mistaken. They underestimated the Russians badly. They judged the Russians strictly by American military doctrine, assuming that the whole world works from the same rulebook.

Well, the Russians have their own rulebook, how to conduct wars, very different from the United States. And the way they conducted the war was misinterpreted by American analysts as being weakness and inability to deliver. That wasn’t the case at all. It was dictated on the Russian side by various assumptions about their future dealings with what would remain of Ukraine, whom they considered to be brothers of a sort. But from the Russian view, this was a kind of civil war between themselves and Kiev. And they did not want this to be so devastating that they would be unable for generations to come to have any kind of good neighborly relations with Ukraine.

10:17
So the war was being fought by the Russians in a different way. It was misjudged by the Americans and the West, and so they thought that they had the upper hand, and they very glibly said it will be solved on the battlefield. Well, it is being solved on the battlefield. And the Russians, considering their losses and considering the determination and the patriotic upsurge throughout the country, the Russians have no intention of ceding at the negotiating table what they have won at the cost of blood and treasure on the battlefield.

10:52
So, the idea of going back to the offers of March in 2022, when an agreement was signed, yes, that is put up again by Mr. Putin, but not in exactly the same specifics, because the additional note is: take into account the situation on the ground. Meaning that the resolution of this is no longer to be decided only by Ukraine being neutral and not joining NATO. It will lose most, if not all, of the ground that it has lost on the battlefield to Russian forces. And the Russians are intent on taking control of the entirety of the Donetsk province, oblast, which they even today only control part of and not all of, and of the Luhansk oblast.

12:00
These are the core provinces that are called Donbass, where the majority population is Russian-speaking, and where the Russian state felt that it had been betrayed by the Soviets, by Lenin, who gave this Russian-speaking industrial territory to what was the Ukrainian republic within the Soviet Union, or became the Soviet Union. So, what I’m saying is that the terms, the specifics of the terms of an agreement that Mr. Putin is laying out today are different from what they were in March of 2022, even if the fundamental notion of a neutral Ukraine and a Ukraine that enjoys certain security guarantees remains the same.

Hampton: 12:53
So in fact, it seems that Ukraine does want a diplomatic end to this war as was reported late last month. So would they not most likely end up agreeing at least to some major concessions? And it seems that both sides do at least want some concessions, like how realistic is this in terms of like both sides getting?

Doctorow: 13:18
The latest terms coming out of Kiev which were repeated to journalists by Viktor Orban following his meeting with Zelensky yesterday, indicate that the Kiev regime– because it’s not a government, it doesn’t enjoy legitimacy, since Mr. Zelensky’s mandate ended more than a month ago– that the Kiev regime is not ready for genuine peace negotiations, and is still working on a propaganda peace plan called the Ten Points of Zelensky, which is essentially imposing on the victor the terms of the loser.

That is to say, they’re looking for a Russian surrender when it has the upper hand on the battlefield and every other measure of military standing. That won’t fly. So, the only thing that will fly is Prime Minister Zelensky and his team. They will fly out of Kiev. And then there can be some peace.

Hampton: 14:27
So, it seems that the majority of European nations think the war is going to end in a negotiated settlement. And so, how does this view contradict what some European leaders, such as Macron, who wants to, and may even possibly send military trainers to Ukraine, and even said that sending Western troops wasn’t off the table. He didn’t discuss in what capacity. What do you make of this disconnect between some European leaders with the majority of the European populace?

Doctorow: 15:08
But Mr. Macron, who was running to the front of the band, as usual, to present himself as a leader of European foreign policy and some of the most important voices in Europe, he has just been trampled by his own marching band within France. First it was the June 6th Europe-wide elections to the European Parliament, in which his party, or it’s a movement, was defeated by the other contenders. The first and foremost, his most vicious enemy in French politics, Marine Le Pen and her RN, Rassemblement National, so-called extreme right.

15:58
But it really is, “extreme right” is a pejorative that’s applied by mainstream press. What it is, is a national sovereignty party. That is, they want to assert France’s identity and its control over its own future, as opposed to its future being determined by unelected people sitting in the European Commission in Brussels.

Well, anyway, she trampled him two to one, and he then called a snap election, which– the first of two procedures took place less than a week ago, and again he was trampled. So that his movement of the parliamentarians who are allied with Macron will be less than 15 percent, maybe less than 10 percent, of the new lower house following the electoral procedure. This is a man who has zero political power going forward for the rest of his presidency. And his remarks about the tough position for Ukraine, now you can discount 100 percent.

17:10
What that means is a big breach has been opened within Europe, because France is the second biggest economy in Europe and one of the biggest arms manufacturers in Europe. And France, I think I can say, will no longer be a big factor in the Ukraine war. In the meantime, other winners in the European elections are the Netherlands, where an extreme right coalition also has taken power, and we can expect the Netherlands to be less supportive of Europe, Europe’s assistance to Ukraine, than it was under the government of the outgoing Mr. Rutte, who is now the new head of NATO.

18:00
So within Europe there have been very big breaches of this conformist position that’s held sway over the last couple of years. And Europe’s ability to support Ukraine will of course be completely undermined if Mr. Trump is elected in November.

Hampton: 18:26
Indeed. I think there are going to be some major changes if he gets elected this November. So there’s a lot of talk being made of the deal that Russia and North Korea made regarding standing up to aggression, right?, aggression from the West. But how big of a deal is this really? Like, even if North Korea does supply munitions to Russia, how much of a deal is this relationship?

Doctorow: 18:56
Well, there are several dimensions to this that are– Yes, they’ve been supplying maybe three million artillery rounds to Russia in the war so far, which is quite a considerable amount. Let’s keep in mind that Europe made pledges in this year to deliver one million rounds to Ukraine, and they can’t fulfill that. So the fact that North Korea would supply three million, rumored three, maybe as much as five million, artillery shells is one of the 155 millimeter caliber artillery, that is important. But that existed before this agreement.

19:36
What this agreement brings in is the readiness of North Korea to provide all kinds of assistance. Now, what does that mean, all kinds? On the civilian side, North Korea is prepared to send workers to Russia to fill in positions that are otherwise vacant because men are off fighting in the war. So, having guest workers from North Korea, which existed before sanctions were imposed on Korea, that could be helpful to the war effort in Russia.

However, the North Koreans also stand ready to send maybe 50,000 soldiers to fight in the war if Europe sends in its soldiers. And North Korea will probably be invited by Russia to match those numbers so that Russia will be at no disadvantage if there are increased numbers of soldiers coming to Ukraine from the West. That’s a very important factor.

20:43
These are two dimensions. Let’s look at another dimension. Let’s look at what Mr. Putin said about asymmetrical response to Western U.S. and West European escalation in the war in Ukraine. Well, there’s a pressure point on the United States in Korea. North Korea can make trouble. They can make trouble. North Korea can receive missiles from Russia to sink any aircraft carriers that the United States may be stupid enough to send its way, as Mr. Trump did in his presidency, to send lots of gunboat diplomacy to intimidate the North Koreans.

So the North Koreans can make trouble in their neighborhood to distract attention of the United States from the Ukraine war. This is the– these dimensions are worth mentioning when we consider the value of that comprehensive partnership that Mr. Putin concluded with his opposite number in North Korea.

Hampton: 21:57
Definitely a lot of factors that you brought in that people probably, myself included, not particularly privy to. So just a couple days ago actually, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, he did an interview with Bloomberg, and he argues that due to Russian dependence on China, and this is a direct quote for him, I’m about to say: “One phone call from President Xi Jinping would solve this crisis.” Like, how accurate is that? Like, how close really are Russia and China?

Doctorow: 22:31
Well, this text statement shows complete ignorance or willful ignorance of reality. It is precisely the kind of delusional thinking that is so much dominating Washington and the European allies of Washington. The Russians and the Chinese have been both under threat from the United States and from Europe, first of all, militarily, as regards the United States, by its readiness to threaten the Chinese control of Taiwan and to make and provide arms to Taiwan that would make a forced merger between the People’s Republic and Taiwan, very, very costly in men and in weaponry.

23:22
There’s a military threat to China from the United States. That’s undeniable and is growing. There is the economic threat to China, which has been going on since Mr. Trump’s administration, and has been accelerated by Biden in these various prohibitions on providing chip-making equipment or advanced chips that are so essential in all kinds of manufacturing, and sanctioning China in this way.

So China, they see the handwriting on the wall, that the United States is intending to do to it what it has been doing to Russia. So the United States, by every action, has driven these two countries into an ever-deeper and ever-more-significant cooperation. Alliance is the wrong word, because China, by its own doctrine, does not make alliances. But deep cooperation is there. And it’s military cooperation, it is financial cooperation, it is cooperation in every domain. So, to think that you can drive a wedge between China and Russia today is foolhardy.

24:39
To look at the relationship as big brother, small brother is also absolutely ignorant. The Chinese are at least as dependent on Russia as Russia is dependent on China. If the United States uses its navy and its alliances with various countries in the Pacific to squeeze the supply lines to China of much-needed raw materials, starting with hydrocarbons coming from Arabia, then Russia is the most reliable supplier of those needed materials. It already has that capacity in terms of existing and planned pipelines, and also in the case of gas, of liquefied natural gas deliveries to China.

25:38
This dependency, which is only partly realized now, but would be essential if the hostility between China and the United States were to continue, which is highly likely. It means that China has to have good relations with Russia. So the quotation you gave, I said, is by a totally, willfully ignorant person.

Hampton: 26:04
So just before we end, where can people find you and support your work, and where can people find more information about Russia, Ukraine, China, like what are some of the news sources that you utilize personally?

Doctorow:
Well, I have the pleasure and the honor to have become a regular visitor to a program called “Judging Freedom” by Judge Andrew Napolitano. It now has 400,000 subscribers. I would– subscription is just a formality. To view that, you just go to YouTube and type in “Judge Napolitano”, and you will be taken straight to any of his programs, including– these are 20-minute, 25-minute interviews. The man spends the whole day having interviews and discussions with some outstanding, non-mainstream, but highly professional and well-regarded experts.

I say, I’m delighted to be among those whom he interviews each week, but at any given day you find many such interviews, and I would– which go over the facts. He has a very good research team obviously. He’s up to the minute. His questions are highly topical, and you can get a very good understanding that you can juxtapose with what you read in the New York Times or any other mainstream newspaper to see how little they are giving you and how much there is to know if you want to understand the world that surrounds us. So that’s a good place to start.

27:55
As for me personally, I have a web platform on Substack. There’s gilbertdoctorow.substack.com and as you would find I publish maybe five, six essays per week, either essays or links to interviews that I give, because I’m also on India’s biggest English-language global broadcaster, WION, The World Is One [News]. Also, it’s unlikely that your listeners would be aware of it, but the world is changing, and we speak about the global South and how important they’re becoming and how sophisticated they’re becoming, because I’m also interviewed fairly regularly by Press TV, which is, again, an English-language international broadcaster of Iran. And you can find links to that on my Substack platform, and I think you’ll find it quite surprising at the sophistication and moderate positions of their professional journalists.

29:21
So the world is becoming more interesting. There are relatively few lunatics who are on the world stage happily, and there’s a lot you can learn from countries that you could never have imagined would have this level of sophistication and would be as informative as they are.

Hampton:
Thank you so much for coming on the show, Doctor. I really appreciate it.

Doctorow:
Thanks again. Thanks for having me. Good luck to you.

Hampton: 29:51
Thank you.

“Eine andere Sichtweise” vom Hampton Institute: Ein Audio-Podcast, der der Arbeiterklasse die Wahrheit bringt

Vor etwa zwei Jahren wurde ich vom Hampton Institute für sein Programm “Different Lens” interviewt, um über den Krieg zwischen Russland und der Ukraine zu sprechen. Vor ein paar Tagen luden sie mich erneut ein, um ein Update zu geben. Dieses Interview wurde soeben ins Internet gestellt.

Siehe https://adifferentlens.libsyn.com/episode-187-destruction-and-diplomacy-with-dr-gilbert-doctorow

Für diejenigen, die vielleicht noch nie von dieser Denkfabrik gehört haben, die dem Andenken eines Black-Panther-Mitglieds gewidmet ist, verweise ich auf ihre Website: https://www.hamptonthink.org/our-organization-1