News X World interview on the significance of President Putin’s upcoming annual Direct Line Q&A

It was a pleasure earlier today to be given a time slot in NewsX World’s round-up of key global developments to talk about the soon to be scheduled 4 hour annual Direct Line of President Putin taking questions from the nation, by call-in, and from the journalists representing global press and broadcasters who are present in the auditorium where Putin holds forth.

This event will be closely watched by everyone commenting on Russian affairs, although most of the show will be about domestic Russian concerns like pensions, inflation, the availability of nursery schools and good medical facilities across the country.  Nonetheless some 10 to 20 percent of the time Putin will address international issues like the Ukraine war which are of particular interest to us foreign observers.

I was glad to be asked about the tight control which the Kremlin exerts over television and the mass media, because it gave me the opportunity to counter the generally held opinions in the West over our free press and their state run press.  The reality is much more interesting as I hope you will discover by listening to this 5 minute interview

minute 3.55 to 8.16

Transcript submitted by a subscriber

Napolitano: 0:33
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, November 7th, 2025. Dr. Gilbert Doctorow will be with us in just a moment on: Are the Russians Losing patience with the pace of the war? But first this.
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2:03
Dr. Doctorow, welcome here and thank you very much for accommodating my schedule. This is not your usual day or your usual time. You’ve been traveling, I’ve been traveling, and we managed to meet at this hour, 3 o’clock New York time, 9 o’clock Brussels time on Friday afternoon.

Is Russian society evolving during the special military operation and if so is it going towards self-confidence or is it reverting back to the old Soviet Union or somewhere else?

Doctorow: 2:41
It’s a very complicated society. Look, there are 150 million Russian Federation citizens now. You cannot take a reading of five or ten people and say that you were confidently speaking about all of Russian society. However, what you can say is that so many people who are on your show, who are on other authoritative talk shows, and who have their own platforms, are speaking as if their knowledge of some people, particularly high-level people who invite them to Russia for events, that that limited knowledge is the whole of Russia.

Dead wrong. You very kindly referred to my academic title as a PhD in Russian history. But my writings and my speaking these days is based primarily on what I see and know as somebody who has lived and worked and who visits regularly Russia today under the difficult conditions of getting there. And that is a different Russia.

When you have a bank account, when you deal with notaries, when you buy and sell apartments, This is living in the country and meeting a great many people, and not just those who are kindly treating you because they expect you to say what they say about their country.

So my words are not intended to be a comprehensive take on Russian society, but I’d like to introduce some of the complexities, and particularly what I picked up in the last few weeks because they bear, I was there 17 days, it bears directly on your question. And I saw for the first time we sat at a dinner, the Unity, Russian Unity Day, dinner. The Russians used to celebrate the 7th of November for the Russian Revolution, but they moved it three days earlier, or four days earlier. And now November 4th is celebrated as Russian Unity Day. If you ask people what it stands for, they have a hard time explaining because basically it goes back to 1610 or whatever it was when they had a time of troubles and Russia was invaded by Poles, Moscow was held by the Poles.

Yes, Poles. And they liberated themselves from the Poles, and so we have National Unity. Well, anyway, they celebrated. And we had a dinner, a festive dinner, five people there. I’ve known them for years, for decades, I can say.

And we never discussed directly the question of how the war is being handled until we did this week. And I can tell you, answer your question directly, four out of four of these people with different backgrounds, one worked for maybe 30, 40 years, maybe 50 years, designing ballistic missiles in the defense industry. Very patriotic. His wife was a former spokeswoman for the mayor’s office in Petersburg. At this level, they are high in Russian society and in loyal Russian society.

They all said one thing. The war has to stop. It’s going on for much too long. The fellow in the defense background, who knows a thing or two about designing weapons, said it’s clear what’s going on. The general staff is using the territory of Ukraine now for target practice, for testing new weapons.

And the day after we had this discussion, on the fifth of this month, the Financial Times had a lengthy article detailing precisely that, listing one after another the latest modifications made to Russian glide bombs, these are the dumb bombs from the Soviet Union which are stockpiled in vast quantities and have been upgraded to glide bombs. And so there are people in the government who, and particularly in the military, who are motivated to keep this war going.

Napolitano: 7:18
 Your friends who are educated and patriotic, I think that’s a fair way to describe them from this, to summarize the description you’ve given. Are they just impatient, normal human impatience, or do they see some sort of regression in Russian society because of the duration and cost of the war?

Doctorow: 7:44
Well, the latter, the last points you’re mentioning, we didn’t discuss it at the dinner table. I discussed that, it was introduced not by me, but by my interlocutor when I was at the Russian Union of Journalists. And I heard precisely this question coming up of the war. Well, no war in any country lends itself to the progressive evolution of society. It always is a tightening of the screws and of an illiberal move in a society.

Napolitano: 8:25
You and I are using the common English word war. President Putin uses the technical legal phrase special military operation. There was obviously a difference. However, what do the Russians use? Do they say it’s a war, not World War II, we’re not being invaded by the Germans, it’s not 1812, we’re not being invaded by Napoleon? Do they use special military operation, which connotes a refined, finite, limited goal, or do they use the word war?

Doctorow: 9:00
Nobody speaks about special military operation any more. It’s a war. And I heard precisely what you expect to hear about a war. The apartment that we maintain with my wife on the outer borough of St. Petersburg, happens to be near a helicopter base, which brings in at night, wounded, injured, severely injured Russian soldiers from the war.

Now they are not flown in by helicopter from the front obviously. They are brought to some point in the Russian Federation by a normal plane, a fixed wing plane, and then they are offloaded onto many helicopters who take them to specialized hospitals in various cities across the country, including St. Petersburg. We hear this. A taxi driver was describing how many of these flights are coming in, how the local hospital, military hospital is overloaded now.

What people talk about is not so much deaths, they talk about casualties, about the maimed, about those who have lost limbs. When you listen to Russian television now-

Napolitano: 10:17
While they’re talking about this, and while the Russian military is making gains against Ukraine, but also experimenting with new weapons and refurbished old weapons, as you’ve described, what is the economic viability of life in Moscow and St. Petersburg. How well stocked are shelves? What is inflation like? Are there gas lines?

Doctorow: 10:46
Well, I was in Moscow in May, my last trip five months ago. I was only in Petersburg for these 17 days. As I have written, I write travel notes. And I did that on this trip, publishing on my Substack platform.

As I noted, when you go through the shops quickly and pick up this or that, amongst staples, what are ordinary commodities, milk or butter or cheese, the prices look stable. You have to spend a little bit of time and use the kind of care that you use anywhere. When a Mars bar gets smaller, that’s inflation. When the same thing in Russia, they change the way that many portioned foodstuffs like cakes or buns or whatever, a bakery, they’re no longer by piece. They’re now by 100 grams in little tiny letters so that the customer will be embarrassed when the price asked at the cash registers is three times what they thought they were going to pay for that bun or that cake in the store.

They are playing tricks. Stores are playing tricks to extract a much higher price than you would expect now or that people did expect. Saying that, I think overall inflation is probably not far from the 10% described, But in some items, it’s way out of whack. I can tell you right now that in May, I bought the usual 250 gram package of coffee, ground coffee, and the price was close to what it is in Belgium. This time it is 40% higher in the St. Petersburg supermarket than it is in the supermarket in Brussels. That is a hell of an inflation for coffee coming presumably from the BRICS friends in Brazil. So these things are more sophisticated to figure out. But I can tell you inflation is there, people are aware of it. But the big issue is the maimed, wounded, and killed soldiers.

Napolitano: 13:03
Are journalists free to criticize the government over its handling of the war or even to criticize the moral and legal basis for the war?

Doctorow:
On the latter, no. The former, yes. You can say that the war is being mishandled. You can argue that more drastic efforts should be made to subdue Kiev or to decapitate the regime.

You can say that. You cannot say that the war is a bad idea. That is, you cannot make openly anti-war positions. And the Union of Journalists, under the successor to the KGB, which is called the FSB, were instructed recently to throw out members who are against the war. And they did that in St. Petersburg to their great regret.

Napolitano: 13:54
Is there any validity to the rumors which spread in the past 36 hours in Moscow, not picked up in mainstream media but alternate media, we see this, of a falling out between Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov.

Doctorow:
No, I’m not aware of that. This would be detected much more closely in the West than it would have been in Russian media. The question of Mr. Lavrov, he is widely respected. I know that you respect him greatly. And the world at large has a great deal of respect for Lavrov for what he’s achieved and for his long service. But let us be completely frank. Mr. Lavrov is not, never was an independent actor. He is the implementer of the president’s policies. He is not a maker of policy.

Napolitano:
Correct.

Doctorow
And so if-

Napolitano: 14:56
Well, but that’s the case with any secretary of state or foreign minister.

Doctorow:
That’s the way it should be, but it isn’t always. But yeah–

Napolitano:
Right, right. Does Vladimir Putin want the war to end?

Doctorow:
That’s an interesting question. If he really wanted it to end, if that were his highest priority and in line with the general principle of the Russian government that Vladimir Putin wants to spare Russian soldiers’ lives. Well, the best way to solve it, spare their lives, is to end the war tomorrow by decapitating Kiev. Now, I’m not saying something out of turn. This very idea has been broadcast on Russian state television by none other than Vladimir Solovyev and a few of his panelists. And if people say, oh, you’re listening to Russian television, well, yes, Russian television is very closely controlled by the government and it let this pass. So there are people within the government who would like the war to be ended now. And Mr. Putin is obviously not one of them.

Napolitano: 16:07
Is there a credence in your view to the argument that Putin is intentionally waging a war of attrition? You and I have talked about this, but not in a number of months. So maybe you feel the same as you did a few months ago, or maybe you feel differently. The president is intentionally waging a war of attrition to destroy a generation of young men in Ukraine so that Russia doesn’t have to put up with this again.

Doctorow:
No, I don’t believe that is in line with Mr. Putin the man. As I said, as I’ve written, there are contradictory notes coming out of this visit, including the very interesting coda to a famous opera by Rimsky-Korsakov, which ends in a statement, a very powerful message about Russian culture, Russian culture being very Christian in the sense of turn the other cheek, not looking for revenge and so forth. Mr. Putin is to all appearances, a deeply, a deep believer in these values of Russia as no Soviet leader ever could be. So there’s a big change. The question is whether this peculiar feature of Russian culture which Mr. Putin embodies isn’t leading us to World War III because it is not appreciated by this very secular Western European and American leadership. They don’t get it.

So the two sides are working on, and here as I raise it, we have the famous clash of civilizations of Sam Huntington in which the Eastern Orthodox faith was described as a separate civilization. But there was no mention by Huntington or no thinking that it could lead to a clash. Well, my friends, we have that potential today because Putin is operating under different cultural values from what Washington, London or Berlin are operating under.

Napolitano: 18:30
Let me bring you back to the first question I asked you: Is Russian society evolving during the war? And if the answer is yes, can you say if it is moving towards self-confidence or back toward the old Soviet Union or in some other direction?

Doctorow:
Charles Dickens was very clever when he opened the Tale of Two Cities with that statement “it was the best of times and it was worst of times”.

Napolitano:
Right.

Doctorow:
Life is contradictory. What I saw on this visit is contradictory. The Soviet society was a sick society. In 25 years in power, Mr. Putin has done a great deal to make it a healthy society. I have described in my notes the idiocy of bureaucratic requirements as they pertain to Russian citizens and certainly as they pertain to foreigners who are trying to register and follow the laws, they are idiotic. They impose a great task on the bureaucracy that serves the people in these local administrative offices. Those people are very kindly. They are very helpful.

Soviet officials, whom the public dealt with, were not friendly. They were nasty. They were underpaid. And they were disagreeable. The Russian officials, officials of today are very nice people.

So that’s all positive. The sickness of the Soviet days is gone. But Elon Musk would agree with me, the Russians could fire half of their bureaucrats and life would be twice as good.

Napolitano:
The Russians could fire half of their bureaucrats and life would be twice as good. Can I take from you that if you detect any direction of Russian society evolving, it’s towards self-confidence, it’s not toward the old Soviet Union? I don’t want to put words in your mouth. I’m going-

Doctoorow: 20:33
For society, I agree with you completely. But the problem is that in any war, the worst elements come to the fore. And censorship comes to the fore. And the abuses of power at the low levels come to the fore.

In the 1990s, the traffic police were a burden on anyone with a car because they were stopping everybody, giving them fines to be paid in cash on the spot, going into the pockets of the police. That has come back. It’s come back. The Putin government has lost its control over these ills because it’s so absorbed by the war.

Napolitano:
Were you as a non-Russian, I’ll just throw this example out, permitted to have a Russian telephone with a Russian telephone number in the two or three weeks you were in Russia?

Doctorow: 21:32
 I have had a Russian telephone since 2009. The Russians were never controlling the access of foreigners to their phone system. It was never an issue. In fact, in the past you could get a SIM card at the airport. You arrive in Moscow or Petersburg and they were selling SIM cards for temporary use, either loaded with so many rubles on the SIM card or whatever.

Now not only is that gone, but anyone who is a foreigner has to be resident, has to be registered with GosUslug, which is a multifunctional interface between all government services and citizenry and has to have a Russian health insurance policy. You tell me what the connection is between having a Russian health insurance policy and having a phone number. Not much.

Napolitano: 22:39
Wow. Where do you think the war will be in the spring, six months from now?

Doctorow:
Right where it is now. I disagree with all of the– Look, I have looked, I’ve written my War Diaries, volume one, and already it was coming to me then, back in May, that my goodness, we’ve been making projections, and making projections all based on good military logic that the Ukrainians have lost the war and should admit it. We were missing the point that the West wants this war to go on. First it was the Biden administration that was orchestrating the whole thing. And now that Trump has pulled the United States out of the leadership role, now it’s the Europeans who want the war to go on.

And so the notion of that, if the Russians take Pokrovsk it will be the end of the war, is utter nonsense. They still have to reach the Dnieper, and from the Dnieper. Well, what does that mean? If the Europeans keep on supplying arms, if they move in and create military bases in Ukraine, then the Russians will have not achieved their objective of the special military operation. So this war can go on for years.

Napolitano: 23:55
Professor Doctorow, pleasure, my dear friend. You are sometimes a contrarian, but I love it because it challenges people and makes them think. And your observations, of course, are unique because of all your interaction in Russian society, which you just concluded in a three-week trip. Thank you, Gilbert. We look forward to seeing you your usual day and time next week.

Doctorow:
Well, very kind of you. And I hope this sets minds thinking.

Napolitano:
It surely does. Thank you all the best. Have a fine weekend.

Still to come, it’s the end of the day and the end of the week. That means at four o’clock, At four o’clock Eastern this afternoon, Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, the Intelligence Community Roundtable will review all of this.

24:42
Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.

Yesterday the NewsX World interview within their hourly news wrap-up focused on the battlefield claims of Russian and Ukrainian sides in fighting that is bloody and dominated by drone warfare.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G5kBgkeYV8)

or on youtube search: Moscow reports 1,485 Ukrainian casualties as fighting intensifies across Donetsk

In this morning’s chat with the NewsX World presenter, attention focused on Zelensky’s latest bleating about Russia’s supposedly ‘terrorist’ attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure and his vowing to chase the Russians out of Pokrovsk, where Vladimir Putin claims to have completely surrounded 5,000 Ukrainian troops and has invited Western media to come and look.

(https://youtu.be/-Rkby1TzBgl?si=0lsf5z2Tfl4eOoaO)

(in case this link provided by the broadcaster expires, please enter the following in the youtube search box to be directed to the video

“Israel Red Cross news: Gaza Ceasefire strained after exchange of remain/ Hostages body/ NewsX”

The links which I provided earlier from the broadcaster were time limited and no longer work, I am told.

The following links should take you to the youtube podcasts

Zelenskyy condemns Russian strikes on Sloviansk power plant| Russia-Ukraine War Updates| NewsX World

Trump-Putin Meeting Cancelled | Trump cancels Putin meeting amid Ukraine dispute | NewsX World

It appears that I am now a daily commentator on this Indian broadcaster, which keeps me on my toes since they open with breaking news that sends me rushing to US, British and Russian sources to stay abreast. As you will see from these two segments of their 3pm (Indian time° broadcast, their production team is well prepared with pertinent questions on the most important developments in diplomacy and on the field of battle.

(https://youtu.be/1TBU6GO0?si=SGRTTGja4XV2vGGH)

Trump stands up against Putin. Trump-Putin meeting cancelled / Trump cancels Putin meeting amid Ukraine dispute

Russian missiles hit Ukraine’s power site. Zelensky condemns Russian strikes on Sloviansk power plant/Russia-Ukraine War Updates

(https://youtu.be/iQz0rligy3Y?si=13V37w9DOwFefNl7)

POSTSCRIPT: it may be that one or both of these links does not work. if so, please send me a note or comment here with the corrected link. the problem is that youtube sometimes changes the link an hour or two after NewsX sends it to me. When in Brussels I fix this myself, but in Russia youtube is not accessible

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhLsCsqkw9E

Napolitano: 0:31
Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for “Judging Freedom”. Today is Wednesday, October 29th, 2025. Dr. Gilbert Doctorow will be with us in just a moment on President Putin’s next moves. But first this.
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1:59
Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, welcome here, my dear friend. Thank you for accommodating my schedule in the US. This is an early hour. What is the Russian view, whether it is Kremlin elites or folks in the street, about the cancellation of the Trump-Putin-Bucharest conference?

Doctorow:
There’s a lot of confusion and with good reason. The news coming out of Moscow has been changing every day. And that is not good, because you like to see consistency of message from a major world power. And we’re not seeing that.

Well, if we don’t see it from the United States, Donald Trump, it’s understandable. We all know how volatile he is, but the Russians have always made a very important commitment to solid, reliable positions. Now, what I’ve seen in the last two days– for example, two days ago, the Russian news agencies were reporting that President Putin said he agrees to Trump’s conceptualization of the resolution of the conflict with Ukraine. Very interesting.

3:15
Yesterday his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said, “My goodness, we understand now that Trump has gone back on the commitments he made in Anchorage and is looking for an immediate ceasefire and not addressing the fundamental causes of the war.” Well, all of this is possible, but as I said, it does not demonstrate confidence in the Putin administration. It looks like confusion, and that is not good.

Napolitano: 3:53
Well, is it fair to conclude that after– and of course you and I were not flies on the wall, I wish one of us had been, probably you, because you have the language skills– of the telephone call between Marco Rubio and Sergey Lavrov, at the end of which Lavrov said, “What’s this nonsense?” I’m paraphrasing, he doesn’t speak this harshly. “What is this nonsense about a ceasefire? Are we back to that again.” Now look, we all know Rubio is a neocon. We all know Rubio is in the Victoria Nuland camp when it comes to Ukraine. But of course he works for Donald Trump. Is it realistic to come to the conclusion that Rubio said something to Sergei Lavrov, which Lavrov interpreted to mean this is not a step forward?

Doctorow:
Yes. And as you said, we all know that Rubio works for Donald Trump. The Russians’ position now is that Rubio works against his boss.

Napolitano:
Yes. Yes. I mean, if the Russians believe that Rubio is working against Donald Trump, which by the way, Dr. Doctorow, many inside the Beltway believe that. Many of your colleagues on this show remind the viewers of the public and apparently persistent animosity between the two of them. Many recount the story of Mrs. Adelson, Trump’s enormous donor, saying, I want Marco as the vice president and Trump saying he would drive me crazy. I’ll make him the secretary of state and keep him at bay.

I mean, all this stuff is more than rumor. There is evidence to support all of it. But isn’t it dangerous if the Russian Foreign Ministry believes that the American Department of State is at odds with the President of the United States?

Doctorow:
Well, it is. And as I was yet saying, the confusion that we see in Washington has a parallel in Moscow. There is no question now, but there is open, well, actually, how open it is depends on whether you believe what you hear on the talk shows, but that there is definitely a dispute in the leading members of the establishment in Moscow over how to handle the States and whether or not Mr. Putin’s “gently, gently” approach is paying off or is reducing Russians’ deterrent image and force.

6:44
Was Foreign Minister Lavrov either admonished or corrected, softly as the Russians can do it so nicely, by Dmitry Peskov, the president’s official spokesperson?

Doctorow:
I didn’t sense that. Lavrov, well, that could explain why he reversed himself yesterday.

Napolitano:
Well, that was going to be my next question, because now he’s whistling a different tune. And then you mentioned this fellow that I don’t even know about, but I think you watched them on our friend Dimitri Sime’s show, Dmitri Trenin. So untie this knot for us, please.

Doctorow:
Well, every which way. The Russians, the most knowledgeable, the people who give inputs to Putin and represent the well-informed elites, they are also confused. I’ve watched– I was very surprised even now, a few minutes before the show started, I watched the afternoon edition of “The Great Game”. When you speak about Dimitry Simes, you’re speaking about the evening edition of the same program, “The Great Game”. Formerly, the chief of the whole thing was a certain member of parliament, the member of the Duma, the grandson of the Soviet leader Molotov, who brought real gravitas to the program, who was a member of, a long-standing member of the Duma, and had, it was the head of Ruski Mir, which was the NGO, you could call it, Moscow-subsidized NGO to look after the interests of the Russian diaspora, as some speak. And this Nikonov is not there.

You have Simes taking over the evening program, it’s clear that he’s running the show himself. And now I was surprised to see that someone else has taken over the afternoon show, someone whom I know quite well, because he was the major moderator of a rival talk show called “Time Will Tell”, “Bremya Pekazhet”. I was on that program in 2016 as well. So I saw him in action. He’s quite good, but he is not the same rank.

So I would say the program, “The Great Game”, has been taken down a few notches. Simes is great, but he’s not Nikonov. This one is the one I saw in the afternoon is very good, but he’s not Simes. So that program which was really, I thought it was ahead of the competing program of Vladimir Solovyov, whom I quote extensively. It looks like they’ve fallen behind.

9:29
Solovyov has been uniformly very hawkish and very critical of Putin’s policies, never of Putin the man, but of Putin’s policies with respect to the gently, gently approach to–

Napolitano;
All right, well, is this musical chairs at a Russian talk show orchestrated by the government? Is it indicative of the Kremlin’s thinking or is it the decision of the producers? Listen, I’ve been in the business for 30 years, as you know. Is it a decision of producers to get more eyeballs on the screen?

Doctorow:
I don’t know. I think there’s a split in the producers because the Simes show that you’re talking about is, like Solovyov, very critical of what Putin is doing without naming Putin. The show that I just watched now was very sympathetic to what Putin is doing.

Napolitano;
On the same network.

Doctorow;
On the same … network, yes.

Napolitano;
Right, right, all right. Let’s switch gears slightly. The new sanctions that President Trump has imposed on the two Russian oil giants. Has there been, I can’t imagine there has been yet, but I’ll ask you anyway, has there been or is there likely to be a palpable effect on the Russian economy? I’m going to ask you later about the war and then later about BRICS, but right now just the Russian economy, has there been an effect?

Doctorow;
It depends on whom you’re listening to. The Putin line you’ve heard very well that it’s had no effect. we’ve seen these factions come before, and so forth. That is exactly what I heard 10 minutes ago on “The Great Game”. They were all saying that “Oh the Russians will find a way of getting around it. We already have understandings with the Indians. We will sell oil from Lucoil to a minor player, minor Russian refiner, who will then be the reseller to India” and so forth. That is their story. I’m very skeptical of that story. The Indians have said directly that they will not buy Russian oil.

11:41
And I think it’s going to be difficult for them to play this game that was just described on Russian television and get away with it. The effect on the economy will be big. Is big. This is not speculation. We all know the news. That Lucoil a couple of days ago announced that they are trying to sell all of their overseas properties before November 21st, which is the US deadline before those properties are in turn sanctioned and become unsaleable.

Napolitano:
Well, that’ll be a fire sale if they’re trying to sell it in four weeks.

Doctorow:
Precisely so. Look, I’ve been in business development. That was my professional job title for 25 years in major corporations. And I know very well what this means. How much effort and expense, was invested by LucOil to build its European network, vast amounts. And now in a month, it’ll be lost. Now, you tell me, is that an effect on the Russian economy? It sure as hell is.

Napolitano: 12:44
What about on the special military operation? Will the sanctions affect that? I don’t mean politically. I mean in terms of the ability of the military to get the supplies it needs in a timely manner.

Doctorow:
I don’t think the Russian military has any problems. And there, in this point, I’m completely in agreement with the Kremlin’s official line. The war will go on; the problem is at what speed, and whether or not there is in the foreseeable future any conclusion. The Kremlin is very vague on this. And for me, that vagueness means they expect this war to go on for several more years.

Napolitano:
Several more years. Will the Russian elites, will the intelligence services, will the senior military people have the patience to endure this for several more years, or will there be pressure on President Putin to level Kiev and get this over with in a week?

Doctorow:
Well, you know, my personal position is the latter of the two scenarios. I don’t believe there is the agreement. It’s splitting now. I’d say the opinions are splitting over the acceptable duration of this war and bombing the hell out of Kiev now and getting it over with. So it’s very hard to say which way it’s going to go.

Well, it’s quite possible that Mr. Putin himself will do what’s necessary and will bomb hell out of Kiev. It’s quite possible that he won’t, that this war will go on for a time longer before there’s some change at the top in Russia.

Napolitano: 14:27
We had a guest on yesterday, a retired military person, whom I respect, opine that the Ukrainians have only lost about 100,000 troops. Isn’t the number, the true number, many, many times that, isn’t it, in excess of a million Ukrainian troops killed or so disabled they cannot go back to the military?

Doctorow:
Well, the figure goes as high as 1.7 million if you take together both killed and maimed, which is what generally is done because it’s very hard to distinguish the absolute identification– who was killed and so forth is not available. But it’s certainly not 100,000. That’s an absurd number.

Napolitano;
The Russian number, of course, is much lower, even though the Russian military is much larger, because the population base is much larger. Do we have any idea what the Russian number is, or do they hide it like the Israelis?

Doctorow:
No, they hide it. But let’s assume it’s 150,000. This is the number that’s bandied around by my colleagues who understand these questions much better than I do. So I accept their number. But let’s put this in a perspective.

That’s twice, more than twice what the United States lost in the Vietnam War. And the American population at that time was twice what the Russian population is today. So the impact on society, let’s say, is four times, in terms of losses and families, of what the US experienced back then, and then it had enormous political impact. I cannot believe that this will go on indefinitely in Russia without it becoming a political issue.

Napolitano:
Well, you often send us missives about your interactions with people in supermarkets and greengrocers and shopping malls and public conveyances. Are Russian mamas whose boys are in the military or whose boys are of draft age irritated about this or is the population quiescent and patient and expecting a victory?

Doctorow: 16:48
Well, I can’t speak about the Russian mamas, because I haven’t met any yet, and probably will not in the time that I’m here. What I can say is there’s an old expression in Russia describing how the population deals with all kinds of crises and that is “lyudi molchat”, “the people are silent”. Our old friend vice president Agnew would appreciate it as in his term the silent majority. The sound majority of the Russian population doesn’t say [much].

Napolitano:
Well here’s an interesting comment from President Putin just three days ago about allowing Ukrainian soldiers to surrender peacefully. I wonder if in your view this is political propaganda or if the president of Russia believes that the war is nearing an end and there’s going to be a lot of surrendering. Chris, cut number eight.

Putin: (English voice over)
First of all, to minimize unnecessary human casualties, I’m asking to take all necessary measures to enable the surrender of Ukrainian troops, those who want to surrender. We have to treat prisoners of war in accordance with international law as well as Russian law. Russia’s army has historically always been merciful towards a defeated enemy.

Reporter Medvedenko:
First of all, he was lauding the successes of the Russian army in Pokrovsk and in Kupyansk. He was saying, as you’ve heard just now, that basically there is a situation where Ukrainian troops are near surrender, and Russia should enable that. So he’s been saying that Russian forces have encircled those two cities. You will see that both Pokrovsk and Kupyansk are around 50, 60 percent controlled by Russian forces.

Napolitano: 18:38
So why is the president saying this, if you have any idea? And secondly, why did he say it wearing a military uniform? Is that customary for Vladimir Putin? We’ve seen it two or three times now.

Doctorow:
Yeah, I don’t think his wearing the uniform is a message to the West in any way. I think it’s a message to his own people, to give them some comfort that the man who bears the title of Supreme Commander, Commander in Chief of the armed forces, is capable of wearing a military uniform, not just a business suit. He couldn’t have a more civilian Minister of Defense than Mr. Beelowsof, who after a few weeks in office, also put on a military uniform, though he looks very uncomfortable in it. This is a message domestically. I don’t think it signifies a hardening of the line by Mr. Putin in any way. But the message, this whole story about surrender, we’ve heard before, because it’s not the first time when Russians have surrounded Ukrainian troops.

19:43
This was a big deal about a year ago with the, in Kursk, when also the Ukrainian forces that were surrounded in Kursk in the last stages of the Russian North Korean liberation of the occupying forces in that Russian oblast that had been invaded by Mr. Zelensky. Well, we heard, we knew where that went. Mostly they were slaughtered. And I expect because Kiev refused these people the right to leave.

That also happened earlier, in earlier stages of this war, going back to Mariupol. When what happened was those who wanted to surrender were shot in the back by their comrades who were built of sterner stuff. That is unlikely that Kiev is going to respond positively to this proposal. It is unlikely that those who would like to desert or surrender will be allowed to do that by the hardliners that Kiev has in their ranks. So it is Mr. Putin exculpating himself for what could be the slaughter of 5,000 troops.

Napolitano: 21:06
All right. Let me go back before we end, Dr. Doctorow, about the Rosneft and Lukoil sanctions. What’s the effect on BRICS of those sanctions You’ve already told us that the Indians, a significant member of BRICS, are not going to buy Russian oil.

Doctorow:
I think when the dust settles, people will find that this exact issue that you’re raising now was one of the dominant factors in the construction of the sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, not just to punish Russia, because how significant the punishment will be is still totally unclear, but to drive a wedge between these three founding members of BRICS, where the Chinese and the Indians would double-cross Russia just to serve their own economic interests and would stop buying its oil. Whether or not a workaround is achieved, we will see only in a few weeks. But let’s remember that whatever is done, Russia is going to lose several months of oil exports. That is unmistakable.

22:24
Any work around will take time to put in place. And considering that 25% of the Russian state budget depends on those exports, they will be a hit.

Napolitano:
But none of this will affect, in your view, and if this is your view, it’s also the view of Scott Ritter, Larry Johnson, and Colonel Macgregor. I haven’t spoken to Colonel Wilkerson about it yet. None of this will affect the Russian troops on the ground.

Doctorow:
I agree with that in principle, but not entirely. The nuance I would add here is that paradoxically, this is a message to Putin to get it over with now. The longer he prolongs the war, the bigger the impact of the deprivation of 10% of the budget will be on the ability to conduct the war. In that respect, Trump is right. So it is a message to Putin in a very specific way, which isn’t obvious to the public, to get the damn war over with.

Napolitano:
Do you think he will get that message and accelerate the military activity so as to bring the war to a resolution quickly and from the Russian perspective amicably?

Doctorow: 23:44
It may happen, but not of his own free will. My colleagues have said that he works in a collegial way. Well, that’s not entirely true. I ask you to go back and look at the video of Putin’s statements in 22nd, 23rd of February, 2022, when he announced first the Russian recognition of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent countries and then concluded with them a mutual-defense pact.

If you look at Shoigu, if you look at the other members of the Putin cabinet, they didn’t look too happy. They looked absolutely miserable. Therefore, the idea that this is all collegial is greatly exaggerated. And I do believe that the situation is becoming so absurd when Putin and Lavrov are contradicting their statements from day to day that he will be under pressure, that he cannot resist and he will change his policy.

Napolitano:
Fascinating observations. Thank you, Dr. Gilbert Doctorow. Always a pleasure. We look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you, my friend.

Doctorow:
Thank you.

Napolitano: 24:53
Of course. And coming up later today at 11 this morning, Aaron Maté; at one this afternoon, Scott Ritter; at two this afternoon, Anya Parampil with the latest on Venezuela; at three this afternoon, Phil Giraldi. And if you’re looking forward to a change of pace, tomorrow Thursday at nine in the morning, Jack is back. Well, that’s a young picture of him. Oh my goodness. He must’ve sent that one in. Anyway, Jack Devine, former head of the CIA for Latin America will be here and he will do his best to try and defend what the CIA is doing in Venezuela today. That’s Thursday at nine AM.

25:37
Judge Napolitano for “Judging Freedom”.