‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 30 April: (Live from St Petersburg): Can Trump Negotiate for Peace?

‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 30 April: (Live from St Petersburg): Can Trump Negotiate for Peace?

Today’s chat started out with some observations on what ordinary Russians are saying about their quality of life now that the war in Ukraine has entered its fourth year. My comments were drawn from table talk with four friends who joined us for dinner in our apartment yesterday evening. The most memorable remark bearing on Judge Napolitano’s question was made by the oldest person in the room, Volodya, who celebrated his 90^th birthday a couple of months ago: “I have never lived so comfortably as I do today.” His pension is more than adequate to his needs and there is much social assistance with shopping and other chores available from the city administration. So much for the sanctions breaking the spirit of the Russian people!

When asked what the Russians I meet make of Witkoff and Kellogg, I had to admit that they look to me to make sense out of it for them because they are confused by the contradictions in the Team Trump. However, all of our contacts are both patriots while they remain hopeful that a rapprochement with the States will proceed and result in true detente. They do not think in terms of the desiderata for a peace treaty that Sergei Lavrov set out during his ‘Meet the Press’ interview this past weekend. They just want the war to end and they expect Russia to be victorious so as to dictate the peace.

Our chat ended with the fool’s errand that the prime minister of Belgium has undertaken in his bid to raise the country’s budget for defense to 2% of GDP.

Transcript:

https://odysee.com/@unRhodes-ian:6/2025-04-30-Judging-Freedom-TRANSCRIPT:b

or following submitted by a reader

Transcript submitted by a reader

Judge Andrew Napolitano: 0:31
Hi there everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for “Judging Freedom”. Today is Wednesday, April 30th, 2025. Professor Gilbert Doctorow joins us from St. Petersburg, Russia. Professor Doctorow, always a pleasure. Thank you very much for taking the time to chat with us.

You are in St. Petersburg, Russia, truly one of the most captivating cities in the world. Have you been able to grab a sense of the Russian people, their attitude about the war, their economic prosperity, their level of happiness, whether the military is still recruiting, the expectations about Ukraine?

Golbert Doctorow, PhD: 1:21
Well, I’ll answer the easiest question among that group, their feelings about prosperity. We had a dinner party with some old friends, old in the dual sense of the word. One of the couples was old, they’re friends of a long period, and the gentleman celebrated his 90th birthday a few months ago. He told us over dinner that this is the most prosperous and the most comfortable time in his whole life. And they’re doing well. He worked until age 85 or so. He was a key person in one of these military institutes doing something with rockets. I don’t know what. He wasn’t firing, that’s for sure. He was in the design bureau.

2:10
The situation is genuinely one of a lot of money coming into people’s hands, and that partly explains the inflation rate, rather largely explains it. They’re not printing money. The problem is that people have been receiving big increases in their salaries as there’s been a labor shortage. And so it’s kind of a vicious cycle. The labor shortage means that they can’t produce goods and services to the level that meets the demand of a more prosperous population. That’s where we are now.

Napolitano: 2:50
What about military recruiting? You mentioned to me in one of your notes you didn’t see a single military recruitment poster. What does that tell you?

Doctorow:
Well, I was corrected by one of our dinner guests last night. I could be wrong about this. The military, like all advertising, the advertising is done in cycles and it could be that we’re at a pause between the end of one contract for advertising and another. But I think it’s more likely something else, which was my interpretation of a day ago, namely that they have decided at the federal and local levels to call a halt to promotion of new recruitment because I think the war is coming to an end. They have been paying more recently a lot of money, up to, say, 35,000 euros to anyone who would sign up now for the war in Ukraine. And that would be unjust to those who have been fighting until now, if people were to receive that money and they never get to the front line because the war has stopped before that.

4:01
So I think they have called a pause at least in the recruitment, and I don’t see anybody noticing that. Well, it should be noticed, and I hope that others will join in and try to find an explanation if they disagree with my interpretation.

Napolitano:
How do your friends who are either military ex-military academics, I’m talking about the gentleman who just turned 90, how do people like that perceive Mr. Witkoff having the presidency or spending now by my count a total of 10 hours, one on one, although I imagine others were in the room with President Putin, but not an official of the United States government in any sense.

Doctorow: 4:44
It’s a bit embarrassing to say it, but they were waiting to hear from me, how to interpret it. Because they are–

Napolitano:
Well, they probably have not seen anything like this before.

Doctorow:4:53
No, no, they’re puzzled. They are hopeful. Look, among the intelligentsia, among the educated people who are in public relations or in creative domain, the people were always very pro-Western and very hopeful that the good old days will return. In that sense, they would like to read into Mr. Witkoff the most positive possibilities, that indeed there will be not just a reset but a genuine rapprochement or détente with the United States and that all these restrictions will be lifted. This is a widespread hope. And it’s understandable because they were so proud that they could travel the world but they had no problems. And now, well, one of our dinner guests just came back from six months in the States where she was staying with her brother who lives in Queens.

5:55
And she got there, she got to the States by flying to the other side of the moon. She had to go to Georgia, Tbilisi, Georgia, to get a US visa. Then to get to New York, she had to fly to Qatar and have a 16-hour flight to New York from Qatar. So they have experienced all the inconvenience that the sanctions, particularly on travel, have caused the general population.

But she went through the 16-hour flight and all the other hurdles she had to pass over to spend this time in the States, which was very valuable to her. I don’t mean that she was in love with the States. She was there to see relatives, to see her grandchildren, and so forth. But she was very pleased to have had the opportunity to be in the States. I think everyone at the table felt the same way.

6:52
They would like there to be something like normal relations and return to where things were before, say before 2008.

Napolitano:
You know, I wonder if one of the cards Trump believes he’s holding in negotiations with Putin is the sanctions. Obviously, Putin’s not crazy about the sanctions, but people forget– and I’m going by Foreign Minister Lavrov’s figures– American industry has lost over $350 billion in revenue during these sanctions.

I don’t know what the Russians have lost. They actually seem statistically more prosperous, notwithstanding this inconvenience. And of course, the inconvenience is bilateral. When I interviewed Prime Minister, forgive me, Foreign Minister Lavrov, I had to fly JFK, Dubai, 12 and a half hours, wait a little bit, and then Dubai, Moscow, five and a half hours. And then because I’m an American, I was stopped and interrogated for an hour at the airport, and then everything was fine.

But it’s a long, arduous trip. So the sanctions. Did Joe Biden inadvertently do a favor to Donald Trump by handing him this card to play or is this not a big deal, sanctions to President Putin and the Kremlin?

Doctorow: 8:21
The sanctions are a very big deal. I’ve been looking over my notes going back to 2014 because I’m preparing a third volume of memoirs during the time that I’ve been in the opposition, so to speak, to US foreign policy and publishing articles.

And I found in 2014, in the early autumn of 2014, after the first very serious sanctions were imposed, The Russian economy was not doing well, not doing well at all. These are in my notes, what I saw around me, shortages and so forth. So it took them eight years to become sanction proof. And that’s why the war broke out in February ’22. Not just because in 2018 they became, they had more advanced offensive weapons, strategic weapons than the United States possesses.

9:14
That was point number one. But point number two, they made themselves sanction proof. Having said that, there’s no question that Mr. Putin and his colleagues would like to see the sanctions lifted. There are distortions in the Russian economy that are caused by the sanctions.

You don’t have to produce everything at home. Before they produced too little at home, they were content with very big energy exports. But let’s look at the figures. There was a proficit of 135 billion dollars in Russian foreign trade last year. That’s to say, they were exporting a lot more than they were importing, and that is a consequence of the sanctions.

9:58
Was this good for the economy? Well, it’s a questionable thing. It depends on which school of economics you’re in. But it was a bit abnormal to have this whopping proficit and at the same time the market is starved. Look, I went to the, not just to supermarkets, but to electronics stores, the people who are selling the gadgets, selling the computers.

I can tell you in the six months that I was away, all Western computers have disappeared from the mass market. I don’t mean to say they’ve disappeared from the market, because small shops specializing in parallel trading and serving very wealthy clientele are selling, you can be sure, anything that’s available in New York. However, the big retailers, the ones that have stores across the country, they cannot do business on this lot or that lot coming by parallel trade. They need large supplies and reliable supplies. And so what I saw on the shelves were Chinese no names.

11:05
There was no Huawei. They were companies that are able to defy American sanctions because they have no American business. But are these the best computers for the consumer? I don’t know. I doubt it.

Napolitano: 11:22
How does the Kremlin perceive General Kellogg? I mean, the proposal that he came up with is so absurd, it’s such a non-starter, one wonders if he even ran it past Donald Trump first, that NATO — NATO — would supervise the partitioning of Ukraine, much like Germany was partitioned in 1945.

Doctorow:
I don’t think the Kremlin puts Kellogg as very distant and contradicting the proposals that Witkoff brought. In point of fact, as you know from Sergei Lavrov’s, I think it was Meet the Press interview over the weekend, he set out very clearly the Russians’ desiderata, what they want in a peace, and that is very far from Witkoff. So from the Russian, the Kremlin–

Napolitano:
Very far from Witkoff, or very far from Kellogg?

Doctorow: 12:29
From both, because they want, essentially they want the de-nazification, the demilitarization. They do not want Ukraine to have an army capable of staging a new offensive. And clearly, they want regime change in Kiev. They don’t want Budanov to stay in power and to do what he has threatened over the last few days, to have 20 years of terrorism against Russia and to try to kill any Russians they can find, they can get their hands on. They don’t want that.

Napolitano:
This is the head of the Ukrainian Intel who probably is responsible for the murder of the Russian general last week.

Doctorow:
Exactly.

Napolitano: 13:11
Do you believe, you Gilbert Doctorow, do you believe that Trump can close the gap and bring about an amicable resolution of this, or are the parties so far apart that only a military victory will bring an end to the war?

Doctorow:
I don’t believe that Trump can succeed. And as I have said in the last ten days, the smartest thing he could do would be to pull out now. I think what he’s looking for is a reason that will shut up his critics in the Congress, critics in the Republican Party as well as the Democratic Party, that will satisfy them that Kiev is not capable of arriving at a peace, because Kiev is insisting on a Russian capitulation when they are the losing party.

14:00
So if Trump were to abandon this project, walk away from it, it would be the best for his own personal standing, and it would lead to a peace much faster than anything else [that] could happen. But what I believe is that that will happen without affecting the rapprochement with Russia, because the rapprochement with Russia has its own justification quite separate from the whole story of the Ukraine war.

Napolitano: 14:28
Well, the rapprochement with Russia is what both Trump and Putin want, as I understand it, which is a reset, an amicable commercial cultural reset without any sanctions whatsoever. Chris, can you put up the picture from St. Peter’s Basilica of President Trump and President Zelensky? I wonder what value could come from this or if it was just for political purposes. I mean, to have no one else there, for the Americans to rely on just Trump’s memory or Trump’s spin on one hand. On the other hand, can Zelensky concede anything material, like Crimea, and expect to stay alive, Professor?

Doctorow: 15:25
Yes, you put your finger on it. It’s not his whim or his arbitrariness or he has a nasty personality. These are irrelevancies. The point is that the people behind him, people behind the throne, will not let him or anyone else in that position make concessions, territorial concessions, de jure to Russia. The meeting that you’re showing here, they were alone because Trump had chased away Macron. Macron was hanging around with his hands over the shoulder of either Trump or Zelensky. That’s his usual habit. He’s got to have, press the flesh. And Trump got rid of him. And that’s why it was one on one.

Napolitano: 16:12
But I mean, the weren’t even Secretary Rubio or MikeWaltz or even some person whose name we don’t know to record what was said. You know, I know Trump, he’s going to remember this the way he wishes it happened. That’s going to be two vastly different versions of this. Do you think Zelensky said to him, “Hey, Donald, I can’t concede Crimea, or you’ll be coming to my funeral.”

Doctorow:
No, I don’t think that any distortion that Trump would give to this conversation would be greater than distortion which the Ukrainians have given to it. I was asked about this in another interview a few days ago.

16:53
Oh yes, it was with the Indians who were presenting the Ukrainian argument that this was so important, that they had a, that Trump during the meeting had spoken critically of Putin and that gave hope to Zelensky that he was coming around to see the truth.

And this is rubbish. The meeting was 15 minutes long, and the second meeting that Zelensky had asked for later in the day, was refused by the White House. Compare that with the four hours that Witkoff had the preceding Friday, that’s two days earlier, sorry, one day earlier, on his stay with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. What are we talking about? Who has Trump’s ear? Zelensky or Putin? There’s nothing to talk about. The Ukrainians were putting lipstick on a pig. There’s nothing there with Trump.

Napolitano:
So how do you see this ending on the battlefield?

Doctorow:
It’s unpredictable. As I’ve said, this is a new war. The Ukrainians keep on repeating this, that they are working hard on expanding their own production of drones. The drones, we know, are getting through into Russia and are causing damage. This is clear as day.

18:09
And the number of people that you need to have this drone warfare is measured in tens of thousands or maybe just in single thousands, as opposed to hundreds of thousands of soldiers on the front line. So it serves the Ukrainians very well as a kind of leveler for the weaker side against the Russians, to have this drone war so prominent. Nonetheless, the Russians are advancing every day. That’s also clear.

Napolitano:
Right.

Doctorow: 18:38
So how long will it take? I think that the psychological issue, that when Trump turns his back on Ukraine, I think the Ukrainians will fold, not because they have to, but because they will have lost their, their elan, their spirit.

Napolitano: 18:55
Let’s switch focus for a moment. If Donald Trump turns off the spigot, will the Europeans attempt to replace it?

Doctorow:
They will, but they can’t. How much– everyone talks about, “Oh yes, and Trump is there to sell arms to the Europeans.” Is he really? I think this is also a misreading. He already turned down the request of Zelensky to buy, what was it, 50 billion dollars of patriots. He turned that down. I don’t know how he will respond to European requests to buy American equipment to supply to Ukraine. I would not take it for granted that he will acquiesce in that. So the ability of Europeans without American equipment to keep Ukraine afloat is very, very limited.

Napolitano: 19:49
What are the Belgians doing?

Doctorow:
The Belgians are doing very stupid things. We have a Flemish nationalist prime minister who has been a force behind the throne of Belgian governments for the last 10 years. He didn’t rush to become a prime minister because a person who made his career talking about breaking up the monarchy was not an ideal candidate to be the king’s prime minister. However, they finally found terms to make this acceptable. And in February, he became the prime minister, after eight months were spent trying to put together a coalition that would have a majority in the parliament.

20:33
He succeeded. But what he’s been doing with respect to Ukraine and defense is a fool’s errand. He– the French speaking newspaper, Le Soir, the main newspaper for half the population, came out with a two-page, three-page article, last Thursday, I believe, in which they set out the ideas of De Wever, how he’s going to raise the Belgian contribution to defense to two percent, raise it to two percent. Just keep in mind that Belgium is the home of the NATO headquarters, and it is together with Spain at the bottom of the pile in its contributions to defense.

21:16
How was he going to do it? By theft, by theft and deception, and this is not my interpretation, it comes out perfectly clear from what “Le Soir” was saying. That is, they will take 500 million dollars, stealing it from Russia. These are the, this is the interest on the 200 billion or whatever in Russian state assets that are frozen in Euroclear, which is a European-wide organization that has its headquarters in Belgium. So the money is in Belgium, and the Belgians are saying that they will steal that money to raise the three and a half billion that’s short in the budget, to bring their general finances of defense up to two percent.

Napolitano: 21:57
Is this part of the von der Leyen, Mertz, Starmer, Macron coalition of the willing? What a poor choice of words given recent history. But anyway, is this part of the whole thing?

Doctorow:
It is part of it. And just keep in mind that two to three weeks ago, Wever and his minister of defense and commerce, Theo Franken, visited Kiev together with the heads of the Belgian arms suppliers and manufacturers. And the prime minister committed to making a one-billion-euro contribution to Ukraine this year in military supplies.

22:42
They’ve also said that they’re ready to join the coalition of the willing to enforce any ceasefire. This is utter madness, because the money isn’t there, and only can be taken from social welfare, where it will destabilize the government.

Napolitano: 23:01
Unbelievable. Professor Doctorow, enjoy your time in St. Petersburg. We look forward to chatting with you again. Thank you very much for all your incredible first-person insight. Extremely helpful. And to me and to our audience, fascinating. All the best to you. We’ll see you next week.

Doctorow:
Thanks. Bye bye.

Napolitano:
Bye bye. And coming up later today at 12:30 from Shanghai, Pepe Escobar; from Brussels, Professor Glenn Diesen; from somewhere in the bowels of Washington, D.C., Max Blumenthal; and from good old Virginia, Phil Giraldi.

23:41
Judge Napolitano for “Judging Freedom”.