Transcript of ‘Judging Freedom,’ 2 July edition

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnusdxbXzp0

Napolitano: 0:30
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for “Judging Freedom”. Today is Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025. Professor Gilbert Doctorow will be here with us in just a moment on Russia’s information war against NATO and other relevant topics. But first this.

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1:58
Professor Doctorow, welcome here, my dear friend. What is your understanding of the current status of the special military operation in Ukraine or at least the Kremlin’s view of the current status of the special military operation in Ukraine?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Well, the Russians announced yesterday with great pride that they had completely liberated Lugansk oblast, which was one of the two regions formerly of Ukraine that we call the Donbas. There was, about three percent was left under Ukrainian occupation xxxxxxx as they were viewed from Russia. But that was cleaned up. And now the whole of Lugansk is theirs. They were also making substantial progress in Donetsk.

They are going after men more than going after territory. They want to deprive Ukraine of an effective military and do that at minimum cost to themselves. And so they’re proceeding not so much in a showy way by territory that they seize, although they are adding several square kilometers every day or two, but they are doing it in a way that the losses of personnel by Ukraine are again well over a thousand a day.

Napolitano:
Wow.

Doctorow:
In the Donbass, they continue to advance and to bomb and destroy the major logistical hubs that still are under Ukrainian control in Donetsk. And that is, first of all, Pakrovsk, as the Ukrainians know it, or Krasnoyarsk, as it’s called in Russian. So they show you every day this town, or that town, well, settlement would be a better title, that they are taking control of in the Donbas. The Russian flag goes up, or even a regional flag representing the military unit that was responsible for this particular action. For example, it could be the Baikal, troops from Baikal, and they would raise a Baikal flag over this or that hamlet.

4:21
But let’s be clear about it. The Ukrainians are moving back, but their lines are not collapsing. And I wouldn’t want to read into this, into the progress that the Russians are making, the suggestion that Ukraine is on the point of collapse. Nonetheless, everyone knows well that the Trump administration has curtailed, if not stopped, shipment of many valuable military assets to Ukraine. I think, first of all, those Patriots are not going to Ukraine. That’s clear as day. And other anti-aircraft.

Napolitano:
Let me just stop you for a second, because consistent with what you’ve said, Larry Johnson says, Ukraine will not be getting the Patriot missiles as you said. The thing they need the most, I know you’re not a military person, neither am I, but we can use our sense of reason. The 155 millimeter artillery shells, because the American supply of those is dangerously low. GMLRS rockets, I’m not sure what that is, and Stinger Hellfire missiles. All of a sudden, the Spigot has been partially closed. Please continue.

Doctorow: 5:37
Yes, well, the Spigot has been closed, and that sends a message to the Ukrainian military that they have to be particularly parsimonious with their forces and avoid direct confrontation with the Russians where possible, because they simply don’t have the supplies of weaponry, offensive and defensive, that they would like and that they need. So their situation is dire, but not desperate, not hopeless, and not urgent in the sense that tomorrow, or the week after, the capitulation. It won’t be.

Nonetheless, the Russians are feeling good about the way the war is going. And Mr. Putin has probably picked up a little bit more support among wavering Russian patriots who would like to see action faster.

Napolitano: 6:35
Is there pressure on President Putin from his right, to get more aggressive? I’ll just throw a name out there. I don’t know if he says these things for PR reasons or because he’s actually saying this to his colleague. A former president Medvedev, for example, has from time to time pounds the table. Is that pressure still on President Putin? Or if it is, does it go in one ear and out the other?

Doctorow:
Well, as regards Medvedev, he’s well under control by President Putin, and he is the attack dog that Mr. Putin has set up. He’s not attacking Putin. He’s taking the initiative to put the West on notice about Russia’s plans for continuing the war. So I wouldn’t look at Medvedev as a force against Putin, not at all. He’s an instrument of Putin.

But there are people, of course. There are, well, even this political scientist, Karaganov, who a year and a half ago was calling for a military strike in Germany using the Oreshnik, using even a tactical nuclear weapon to demonstrate that the Russians are serious, and to take their red lines with all due seriousness. So that pressure exists, but I don’t believe that Mr. Putin is responding to it or is forced to change his tactics, and not to mention strategy, as a result of this, since the armed forces have good news to put up on the television screen every day.

Napolitano: 8:22
Right. Right, right. What is the current attitude of Russia toward NATO? Taking into account, of course, the rather extraordinary telephone conversation that President Putin had with French President Macron yesterday for two hours, the first time they spoke in three years.

Doctorow:
Well, this is really two questions. And I don’t, I want to be sure that I get a handle on both of them.

Napolitano:
Sure, sure. Address it as you see fit, please.

Doctorow:
Both of them are very important. I think that the general public and the Western media are interpreting the call by Macron to Putin in the wrong way. We have very little information coming from anyone other than Mr. Putin as to what they talked about. He said they talked about, that he delivered to Mr. Macron Russia’s view of how this war will end. And we all know that; I won’t repeat the points, that they have to go back to the original source of the problem, resolve that, and not just have a ceasefire. So Mr. Putin used the opportunity to tell Macron directly what he otherwise would know indirectly from the Russian memorandum delivered to the Ukrainians at their last Istanbul meeting.

9:40
However, that is misleading. My understanding of the reason for the call is rather different. Macron reached out to Putin to involve the Russians in reinstating the old agreements with Iran over its enrichment program, the one that Mr. Trump pulled the United States out of. He– Russia was a party to that, and so it’s impossible for the European Union to proceed and try to reinsert itself into the peace process with Iran, since they’ve been totally sideline by the United States. If they reinsert themselves, they have to bring in Putin.

Let’s just remember that until relatively recently, when Viktor Orban went to speak with Putin, he was denounced by the EU for breaking ranks with the rest of the EU member states over the isolation of Russia. And here we have Mr. Macron, as if he’s doing this on his own, spontaneously, he’s a nice guy, he’s just changed his view. No, He did this as the emissary of the EU on behalf of Kallas and von der Leyen, who want to get Russia back, to help them get back into the Iran negotiate.

Napolitano: 11:01
Do you think he called up his buddies Keir Starmer and Friedrich Merz and said, “I’m about to talk to Vladimir. What do you want me to say to him?” Or do you think he did it on his own, with just the EU leadership backing?

Doctorow:
I think it’s the latter. Well, that’s sufficient. That’s entirely sufficient. He is running for the microphone and to be at the head of the band at any opportunity he has. And so when, say, Kallas or von der Leyen tapped him and said, “Look, we need somebody to reach out to Putin”, he would have been overjoyed. And I don’t think he would look for the consent from Merz who is answering–

Napolitano:
It’s odd that they had their conversation yesterday, or maybe there’s a connection here. You can analyze it for us please. French missiles were used to kill Russian civilians just two days ago. Could that have been the impetus for the Macron phone call?

Doctorow: 12:05
I think it would have pushed things along, yes, because Macron would be aware that Russian animus towards France had just gone up a few levels in light of that. This missile was originally identified, I think, by Western sources as having been a Storm shadow. Technically speaking–

Napolitano:
If it were, that would make it British, right?

Doctorow:
No. Well, if you call it Storm Shadow, it was British. If you call it, I think, SCALP, I forget what the French call it, it’s the same missile.

Napolitano:
Okay, but I mean, the Western sources thought the missile that killed the Russian civilians came from Starmer. In fact, it came from Macron. Am I correct?

Doctorow:
You’re exactly correct. Now this is not my assumption, it’s not some contacts I had with Russian military, nothing of the sort. I’m repeating what was on Russian television yesterday. And whether that is true or not is almost irrelevant. If the Russians are saying there was a French missile, then for all practical purposes in diplomatic relations, it was a French missile.

Napolitano: 13:05
Wow. … What is going on between Russia and Azerbaijan as we speak? And how potentially inflammatory is this?

Doctorow:
It is inflammatory, but it has interest, I think, for the audience of this program for several reasons. I think the most prominent reason is that– I’ve said in the past, Russia is not a cuddly rabbit. Russia is what it is, which is a major power, and major powers sometimes behave badly. And in the case of the relations with Azerbaijan, Moscow behaved very badly. This problem, and it is a big problem right now, but it is more in symbolic ways. The Azerbaijanis are giving every day some new signal to Moscow, “Boy, we don’t like what you’re doing, and we don’t like you.”

And they say that openly. There are accusations against the Kremlin directly in Azerbaijani media. And where did this start? By a very shabby response from the Kremlin to the downing of a passenger airplane, Azerbaijani airplane, about six months ago, as it was flying in the south of Russia and in an area which was under attack by Ukrainian drones at the time. This is– I’m giving you the Russian side of the story– that it was mistakenly downed, although they didn’t even admit that, it was mistakenly shot down because Russia was responding to the drones that were in the air in that area coming in from Ukraine.

14:50
Well, whether, whatever truth there is in that, there was a mistake, la la, the most important thing was what the Russians didn’t do after this catastrophe which took many lives. They did not apologize to Azerbaijan. They did not offer to pay compensation for the plane, or more importantly, to the passengers on that plane. This was shocking. In international behavior, this was terrible.

And to this day, the Kremlin has not said, “We are sorry; we made a mistake.” And in Baku, they’re furious. They have to be– in February when this occurred. Shortly afterwards, they closed Russia’s cultural center in Baku, Russia House. This last few days, they’ve shut down all Russian language courses in their secondaries, in their school system.

These are clear messages. They’ve also arrested the editors of Sputnik, this Russian news agency in Baku, about which Moscow is now howling to the skies. The whole problem began with Moscow; and from the perspective of Azerbaijan, they were behaving like bullies and like imperialists. And I mention this to highlight this point. Let’s not get carried away and believe that every, that Russia is always an innocent, No, Russia is a state power, and state powers behave badly from time to time, and they have to be told that.

Now as to how serious it is, I believe that there is foreign intervention here to exacerbate the situation.

Napolitano: 16:36
When you say that, you mean MI6, CIA, or Mossad.

Doctorow:
None of the above: French. I believe the French are somehow involved. Look, the French are very active in the Caucasus region. They are the ones behind the rebellion, call it, of the prime minister of Armenia against relations with Moscow, this Nikol Pashinyan, who is making a bid to join the EU, who has been absent from major meetings of former Soviet–

Napolitano:
Gee, I wonder if this was discussed between presidents Macron and Putin yesterday.

Doctorow:
It could be, but of course none of this would come out to the public. But as I said, the French are mixed up in the Caucuses, and look at the map, Azerbaijan is right there. So it is not inconceivable that the French could have been active in exacerbating the issues.

Napolitano: 17:36
Let’s go to Iran if we could, before we conclude. What is your view, Professor Doctorow, about why Donald Trump dropped those 30,000 pound bombs? Was it a regime change? Was it just to get Netanyahu off his back? Was it a serious attempt to set back the nuclear program? Or was it a pinprick, a big pinprick, designed not to kill human beings but to bring them to the negotiating table?

Doctorow:
I think it was all of the above. The question really for any analyst is to weight those various factors, but they’re all present. I think that– well, there’s one that you didn’t mention, which I jumped on first when I was trying to make sense out of his action, and that is to prevent Netanyahu from using nuclear weapons against these Iranian positions. Because absent American assistance, that is the only thing that would be in the Israeli arsenal that could have a chance of doing the job. So I think to prevent the Israelis from doing something horrific and to take the ball away from Netanyahu and to eliminate either de facto really or in words the Iranian nuclear program and put an end to this whole crisis in the Middle East around the nuclear program that has been a 30 year and idee fixe of Netanyahu and his associates.

Napolitano: 19:17
How was it that Mossad, which claims to be the most effective intelligence service on the planet, so grossly underestimated the power and ferocity and destructive capability of Iran’s retaliation? Didn’t they warn Netanyahu accurately of what would happen?

Doctorow:
I think they didn’t. There are a number of mistakes made by Israeli intelligence, which were suffering a real case of hubris after their delight in decapitating the neighboring, I would say, cat’s paws of Iran in Lebanon with their gadgets that exploded in the hands of Hezbollah leaders.

They certainly were delighted with having set the plan, this goes back several years, was waiting to spring the plan on Iran to decapitate its top generals in their forces and the leading scientists in their nuclear program. They had their eyes perfectly focused on minutiae, and they were suffering from near-sightedness. They didn’t focus their eyes on the big picture. They should have known about the 40,000 missiles. They should have known about the hidden launchers underground, which the Israeli air force could not decimate. And my assumption is that they gave Netanyahu inadequate information, which is for an intelligence agency, the most damning thing you can say.

Napolitano:
Right, right. I suppose the only thing worse is what the American intelligence agency does, telling the president what they think he wants to hear, whether it’s connected to the facts or not.

Professor Doctorow, thank you very much. Thanks for your time as always. And again, Thank you for all those notes and insights that you periodically send. I read every word of them and appreciate all the thoughtfulness behind it.

I guess they don’t celebrate the 4th of July in Europe. They certainly don’t celebrate it in England. I know you’re not in England, but have a nice weekend. It’s a big holiday weekend here, and we’ll look forward to seeing you next week.

Doctorow:
Well, we will celebrate. We’ll cool off. I mean, it’s been 95 degrees in Brussels. Tomorrow it drops to 70.

Napolitano:
Oh, nice to hear. All the best to you, Professor. Thank you.

Doctorow:
Thanks, bye-bye.

Napolitano: 22:03
Sure. And coming up later today at 2 o’clock this afternoon, Aaron Mate; at 3 o’clock, Phil Giraldi; at 4 o’clock, we’ll find him, Max Blumenthal.

Judge Napolitano for “Judging Freedom”.