‘Judging Freedom’: Understanding the Russian Way of War

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‘Judging Freedom’: Understanding the Russian Way of War

Today’s discussion with Judge Andrew Napolitano had two central issues. The first is captured by the title given to the interview above. The second concerns the vote of no confidence proceedings now going on in the European Parliament which, if successful, would remove Ursula von der Leyen from office.

As I stated here the Russians have seriously intensified their ongoing aerial attacks on Ukraine, with latest figures of more than 700 drones and missiles fired at Ukrainian cities each day and the expectation that this will rise to 1,000 per day shortly. Moreover, they are using more than 1,000 heavy guided bombs each day as well, creating enormous destruction of Ukrainian fortified positions.

Meanwhile, the Russian ground forces are capturing more and more settlements in the Donetsk oblast, as well as in the Ukrainian oblasts of Kharkiv and Zaporozhie.

Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to assume that Ukrainian resistance will crumble in the immediate future. The best proof of the resilience and deadly skills of the Ukrainian army was the killing of Russia’s most decorated warrior, Lt General Gudkov on the front lines in the past week.  Gudkov is the officer whom we all saw on Judging Freedom a few months ago when Vladimir Putin spoke to sailors and officers inside a Russian submarine and announced Gudkov’s promotion to senior officer of all Russian marines. Just days ago, Putin was giving Gudkov’s widow an unprecedented second medal of Hero of the Russian Federation. The state funeral for Gudkov was covered on national television.

The point is that Gudkov died from an artillery counter-strike by Ukrainians near the Russian guns which initiated the long-range duel. The Ukrainians clearly had the equipment, the trained personnel and the will to respond effectively to Russian attack.

Otherwise, latest news from Ukraine indicates that they are now deploying optic fiber controlled drones similar to what the Russians introduced and are using so effectively for several months now. These state of the art attack weapons are impervious to electronic warfare jamming or to distortion of gps signals for guidance.

And so I insist once again that the Ukraine war will end because of the political collapse of Kiev, not due to the collapse of the front lines as such.

The second issue, namely the censure proceedings against von der Leyen is fascinating to follow and thanks to relevant videos now posted on the internet the Community can come to its own conclusions. My point is that the ‘omerta,’ the silence about the abuses of power in the European Institutions imposed and enforced by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has now been broken and we all are witnesses to the rottenness in the organs governing the 450 million citizens of the EU Member States.

Video of the full 49-minute discussion on the website of the European Parliament:

The most dramatic single contribution to the debate, by Fabrice Leggeri, MEP from Marine Le Pen’s party which Judge Napolitano showed in our interview:

The vote on the motion of censure of von der Leyen comes tomorrow, 10 July.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

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Published by gilbertdoctorow

Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.

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