Transcript of ‘Judging Freedom,’ 11 June edition

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC6IGxEnJhk

Napolitano: 0:33
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, June 11th, 2025. Professor Gilbert Doctorow will be here with us in just a moment. Just what is the Kremlin thinking and what is the Kremlin planning to do next? But first this.

Commercial

Napolitano: 2:21
Professor Doctorow, welcome here, my dear friend. Thank you for accommodating my schedule and thank you for all of the off-air communications that we have informing me of your very thoughtful observations. Are you satisfied that the Kremlin is satisfied that the drone attack two weekends ago was certainly perpetrated with the help of the British and probably perpetrated with the help of the United States?

Doctorow:
I think that there’s an article in today’s “Financial Times” which the viewers of this broadcast should follow up. I’m not a fan of the “Financial Times” regarding their Russian coverage because they’re quite biased, but occasionally they come up with something that is important that cannot be ignored, and today was the day. They had, one of the reporters interviewed the people responsible for developing the drones that were used in the attack on these four Russian air bases housing their strategic triad bombers. And it comes out from that that the Ukrainians were entirely capable of carrying out this act on their own. Of course, they go back 18 months.

3:45
And of course, 18 months ago, no doubt, the United States and Britain helped them to decide where to attack, what to attack, and maybe even the mechanics of the attack, not to be an attack from long distances, but from short distances. I have little doubt that British, with their extensive espionage network across Russia would have been facilitators in helping the Ukrainians to decide how and where they would hide their drones for eventual use, kind of sleeper drones we can call them.

But as regards the attack itself, I don’t think that the Brits or the Americans had anything whatever to do with it, because the Ukrainians were capable. And this is an important fact, which is overlooked, unfortunately, by the whole, virtually the whole, of independent media. We all assume that the Ukrainians are helpless fools, that they just throw their lives away by combating the Russians without their own means of producing weapons, and they’re entirely dependent on what they get from outside, often which is misaligned with their needs.

Nonetheless, the point that came out of this article today is that the Ukrainians are surely ahead of the United States and ahead of Great Britain in drone warfare. And why shouldn’t they be? They’re doing the battle on the battlefield, not the Americans or the Brits. And they are up against an opponent who had to catch up in drone warfare, but has done, I mean the Russians. And I’d say they are peers now. They both are the world’s leading fighters of drone warfare.

05:30
Now, why do I say that about the Russians? Because I watch Russian television, which some people disparage, but if you watch it properly, you’ll get something interesting and useful. The useful point is that the targeting of all Russian activity now on the front is not satellite reconnaissance. It is reconnaissance drones. That gives an instantaneous location of targets in, that’s the article [on screen], instantaneous location of targets even faster than you get from satellites, because they’re farther out, and it takes longer for real-time information to arrive.

The Russians are doing it, so why shouldn’t the Ukrainians do it? They’re not stupid, they’re very good at computer games.

Napolitano: 6:19
Is the media narrative, and this is not mainstream, I mean this comes to me from guests on this show, who are former intelligence officers themselves, that Ukrainian intel is wedded at the hip and subservient to MI6 and CIA. Is that necessarily proving to be accurate a hundred percent of the time?

Doctorow:
It’s accurate some of the time, not all of the time. It depends on what weapons we’re talking about. And when you talk about drones, as I say, the Ukrainians and the Russians are way ahead of everybody else. So what kind of help do the Ukrainians need from Britain? None. Once the drones were put in place, and this is months, if not years ago–

Napolitano:
What, do they have the intel or the satellite capability of knowing where the Russian targets are without British or American assistance? You don’t need satellite reconnaissance. That’s the whole point. The war is now done by drones which have artificial intelligence and they are doing their own targeting. That’s what this article is all about.

And I say it just is believable. I understand that this supports the overall editorial position of the “Financial Times”, which is not the position of you or me or nearly all of our viewers. That’s not the point. It doesn’t make their information less accurate.

Napolitano: 7:43
Agreed. And as you know, I devour the “Financial Times” every day, even though many times I grit my teeth at their editorial policies. Watch Foreign Minister Lavrov on Monday on this very issue. So Chris, cut number eight.

Lavrov: [English voice over]
It is obvious that the Ukrainian side is doing everything possible, but it would be absolutely helpless without the support, I was tempted to say Anglo-Saxons, but probably without Saxons, just without the support of the British. Although you never know probably by inertia, some US special forces would be involved in that, but the British are actually behind all those things I’m one hundred percent sure.

Napolitano: 8:34
Agree or disagree? Or is this misleading when he says the British are behind it? He didn’t say they paid for it or they crafted it, but they’re behind it.

Doctorow:
It’s misleading intentionally, which is another way of saying he’s lying. There’s obviously no reason to believe that Mr. Lavrov is an angel. He isn’t, why should he be? Angels do not serve at top levels of government for 20 years. They got thrown away long before that. So of course he’s saying what the current Kremlin policy is.

9:05
My insistence is that we as observers and as analysts should keep our sense of detachment from all sides, including the Russian side.

Napolitano:
Is the Kremlin finding credible or not credible President Trump’s denials of US knowledge and awareness? Because we do have this ambiguous statement from Secretary Hegseth, which I’ll play for you in a minute. But what does the Kremlin think of Trump’s denials to President Putin on the phone?

Doctorow:
If we follow up the logic of the article we were just discussing, I think President Putin was a hundred percent confident that Trump knew nothing about this. He knew nothing about it because there’s nothing to know. The actual implementation or execution of this attack on the basis was a hundred percent Ukrainian when it took place. I’m not speaking about the planning or the assistance in putting these drones where they were, but that goes back months if not years. In the present tense, the Ukrainians did it themselves.

10:14
Therefore, I’d say that Putin had to know the capabilities of those drones. And therefore he would know that Trump wasn’t informed because the US intel didn’t know exactly when this would happen.

Napolitano:
Here’s Secretary Hegseth. So it’s long. Chris will stop it after he says “following the drones in real time”. He both, he says both US knew. He’s under oath before the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he says both. “We didn’t know anything about it. Oh, and by the way, we follow the drones in real time.” You tell me what you think this means. Cut number ten.

House questioner:
Are we seeing the ushering in a new era of warfare, the use of drones from afar? After all, these drones were smuggled into Russia, hidden for a great span of time and then activated from 2,500 miles away. Are we prepared both defensively and offensively [let’s say Terry]

Hegseth:
It was a daring and very effective operation that we were not aware of in advance and reflects significant advancements in drone warfare, which we are tracking in real time inside Ukraine.

Napolitano:
Okay, we didn’t know about this, but we tracked drone warfare in real time inside Ukraine. I don’t know if he realized what he said with the second part, but I have to ask you about the first part. Is that credible that the US didn’t know about this?

Doctorow: 11:57
Let’s parse what he said.

Napolitano;
Because you’re smiling as I am over this.

Doctorow:
Let’s be very careful about this. He didn’t say that we followed this attack. He said we follow drone warfare, generic, right? I mean, you can interpret as you wish. I interpret it as a generic statement. We are monitoring drone warfare because the United States is interested. They have to have capability in this too, eventually. But he did not say that we saw this in real time.

Napolitano:
Are you satisfied that the United States did not play any role in this, notwithstanding what Foreign Minister Lavrov said? And then we’ll jump to another aspect of this.

Doctorow;
Lavrov was, look, Lavrov is not an independent party. He has been the loyal servant of whoever is his boss. When he was working for Putin in Putin’s first terms in office, he was Putin’s man and he was supporting completely the foreign policy that Putin sketched for him. When Medvedev took over and was promoting a foreign policy, I wouldn’t say 180 degrees opposite, but let’s say 90 degrees at variance with what Vladimir Putin was doing, Lavrov became a loyal servant of that policy. He is today a loyal servant of the latest Russian explanation of their policies, which is what you were just saying. It’s not, it is-

Napolitano: 13:30
Why would the Kremlin want to promote the false idea that someone was involved in this if they weren’t? Are they looking for an excuse to attack another country and widen the war? I don’t think so.

Doctorow:
Well the country involved was specifically named. They want to attack the United Kingdom. And let’s face it: they, the Brits, have been behind most every monstrous thing that has gone on in Russia, whether it’s the Navalny killing or it’s the Bucha massacre, which– these are all false-flag catastrophes that they put at the door of Russia. Who is behind this? MI6, no question about it. They have run way ahead of the Americans in this monstrous activity. The Russians know it perfectly.

14:19
If they were to sink, let’s just ask this question. If the Russians were tomorrow to sink two British nuclear submarines, what would come out of that? Nothing. The Brits can’t do a damn thing without American permission, and Washington is not going to let them go to war to see the United States cities hit the next day by Russian ICBMs.

Napolitano:
All right. If Donald Trump is telling the truth and if Pete Hegseth is telling the truth, who’s running American foreign policy? Are rogue CIA agents, or was the CIA’s hands clean of all this?

Doctorow: 14:56
Look, this is a very important question you’re asking and I’ve been in the middle of a debate over this and even comments on my appearance last week raised this question. “Oh, Doctorow says that the deep state is dead.” Ha ha ha. I’m sorry that my words have been misinterpreted intentionally.

I was saying that there’s always a deep state. The question is what kind of deep state? A deep state by definition is bureaucratic continuity. Officials have 20-, 30-year careers, and they see administrations come and go. That is normal, and it should give some stability and moderation to policy.

15:33
So nothing wrong with that. The question is, have they been purged to introduce a single policy or approach to policy? Under Dick Cheney, they were. American State Department and the agencies were purged. People who knew anything about Russia, Eastern Europe, were thrown on the street.

A lot of the career analysts were thrown on the street. And a large part of American intelligence was outsourced to commercial operations using open sources. Now, all right, then that created a new deep state, which was deeply hostile to what you believe, what I believe, and I think most of the viewers believe. Mr. Trump in his first days in office has had another purge in the deep state. When he threw out 40,000 employees of USAID more or less on the street [he] was going at the jugular vein of the neocon control of the federal government.

16:35
So when we speak about rogue CIA, I don’t believe it for a minute. I think those people have been, have gotten the fear of God in them.

Napolitano:
If Trump stops all US aid to Ukraine, can Ukraine continue to maintain the war using its superiority in drone warfare?

Doctorow:
Unclear. But the notion– There have been apocalyptic statements by my peers in the last week or two, how Ukraine is going down the drain, how it’s going to be overrun, how the Russians will be at the Dnepr tomorrow. I don’t agree with that. These are hyperventilating. Does that mean that Ukraine will go on for 20 years? I hope not. I also, again, keep our distance.

Let’s keep our distance from everybody. I keep my distance from Mr. Medinsky when he said, “Well, they did great for 21 years against Sweden. We can do the same.” No, you cannot do the same.

Mr. Putin will likely not be in office five years from now, let alone 20 years from now. Russia’s event, Russia got into this war in February of 2022 for one specific reason. They had a window of opportunity where they knew that strategically they were five to ten years ahead of the United States in weapons systems, particularly in hypersonic missiles, and not only. And they had made themselves sanction proof. In the eight years while the United States was building up Ukraine, the Russians were building up themselves.

18:17
So on these two grounds they were, had a window opportunity that would not extend forever. The Europeans now are throwing hundreds of billions of dollars into defense industry. There will be results.

Napolitano:
What is the pressure, if any, from either his inner circle, elites, or the public perception of the war going on and on and on, on President Putin? Is that pressure to maintain the slow, methodical, patient, and exorably slow pace of the war. or to just get it over with once and for all?

Doctorow:
We cannot say with any certainty. And let me be specific why. Look, I follow, you know, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, this particular program has a very large followership in Russia. They now have “Judging Freedom” is now, a few hours after it goes on the internet, it is available in Russian with a voiceover or synchronized lips, the whole thing, AI control, beautiful. And it gets 100,000 views.

It gets as many views per program, per individual and per topic, as you get in the English original. Now, I look occasionally at these videos. I look at the comments section. And I can tell you, I don’t like what I see. There is a very strong xenophobic current, anti-Western current.

They are not kind to you, they’re not kind to me, they’re not kind to anybody in the West. Now, is that justified? Of course it is. Is it nice to see? It certainly isn’t.

20:03
So these people are defending Mr. Putin, by the way. They’re questioning you or me or anybody who suggests in any way that Russia does not support their president. So that is a strain that is certainly present and that Mr. Putin’s advisors no doubt are watching. At the same time–

Napolitano:
As you have written, Russia is not the brutal murderous dictatorship that it was in 1942. It’s now a democracy in which people can express their opinion and Putin relies in large measure for everything he does on popular support, as it should be.

Doctorow:
I agree. By the way, the latest proof that it’s not what it was in 1942 were the pictures of the returning young men who were prisoners of war and were released in the exchanges that took place on Monday.

And they were interviewed with smiling faces and the people like Grymodinsky and others who were interviewed were speaking about humane policies now. Let’s remember what happened in 1942, 1945. Russian prisoners of war returning from Germany were incarcerated if they weren’t shot. That was the dictatorship of the 1940s of Mr. Stalin.

21:20
That is worlds apart from Russia today. Is Mr. Putin susceptible to the currents of popular thinking in Russia? Of course he is.

Napolitano:
Last question or last subject matter, Professor Doctorow: the Ukrainian nuclear assets, who has them? Does Russia have them? Does the United States covet them? Are they still Ukrainian?

Doctorow:
Let’s go back a few weeks. So this was something, a subject, I believe we discussed. And again, I got some real flack from readers of what, of my essays on this subject, to say, well, what … right does Mr. Trump have to make claims on the … Ukrainian nuclear reactors as a source of possible revenue to offset the shipments of arms to Ukraine during the Biden administration? Well, it sounded like a really peculiar thing. Where did he pull this out of, other than the fact that there will be money there, it’s clear. All of the coal burning and gas and the oil burning, traditional power generation has been knocked out by the Russians.

22:32
And I didn’t touch the nuclear plants. They’ve been shut down because of risk of war, but they can be started up instantly. And so this would be a likely source of important revenue which Mr. Trump would like to tap into. But there’s more to it than that, and it’s not my say.

It was the Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Ryabkov, who was quoted in “Commercant”– which is one of the more responsible business-oriented daily newspapers and online newspapers in Russia– as saying, “We’ll have to talk to the Americans about this.” He’s speaking about the Zaporozhzhye nuclear plant, which is Europe’s largest, of course, Ukraine’s largest, with six reactors on site. “We have to speak to the Americans about this because you know, four out of the six reactors are now fueled by Westinghouse. And there are American technicians who supervise the transition.” So it’s more complicated than it looks.

Napolitano: 23:29
I can’t make this stuff up. Professor Doctorow, thank you very much. Your analysis is always scintillating, even if you are iconic. I welcome it here. I welcome your views.

And of course, I welcome all of our Russian viewers. And thank you for reminding me that they are out there. I did have the opportunity to speak via the internet to a Russian gathering put together by our mutual friend, Dmitry Simes, and I’m happy that it was well received, particularly when I referred to Russia as Mother Russia. Professor Doctorow, thank you, all the best. We’ll look forward to seeing you next week.

Doctorow:
Thank you.

Napolitano:
Okay. And coming up later today at 11 o’clock this morning, Professor, oh, God, I don’t remember who we have on. At 11 o’clock, Colonel Douglas McGregor. Bear with me a minute here.

Sorry for that. At 11 o’clock, Colonel Douglas McGregor. At 3 o’clock, Daniel McAdams, who’s not new to the show, but who’s going to talk about, “do we still have a constitution?” And at four o’clock, what are the British up to? with our former British diplomat, Ian Proud.