Transcript of chat with Lt Colonel Daniel Davis, 8 October

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=855xgceYwv4

Davis: 0:01
In the very vexing opportunity and effort to try and find an end to the Russian-Ukraine war, there are problems really all around. Russian ones, American ones, European ones, and definitely your Ukrainian ones. But we’re trying to find out here where is the contours of any possible peace? Where are the fault lines of potential opportunities to get rid of the peace and to cause problems that could keep the war going on? And really, just where is all this headed?

We have with us today, I guess we’ve had him with us once before, many of you know him well, Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, historian and international affairs analyst, coming to us live from Brussels in in Europe. Doctor, welcome back to the show.

Doctorow: 0:44
Well, good to speak to you again.

Davis:
Well, listen, I wanted to– we were talking about some of the shifting red lines and where some in the West have claimed that various things are Russian red lines, even if the Russians didn’t say them like early on with a lot of the claims were that Russia set– the Western claims were that Russia set red lines with tanks and with artillery, and then with HIMARS and then with a ATACMS, etc., the F-16s. And every time the red line was brought up to, the West passed it and nothing ever happened. There’s some debate over whether Russia actually had red lines on those issues, but now the latest one that’s up for debate right now is this issue of the Tomahawk cruise missile. And some are suggesting that the Russians are actually putting a red line on this one where they haven’t on the previous one.

Here is Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov from earlier today talking first of all that a lot of momentum that appeared to be on the table for the talks between Russia and the United States in Anchorage, Alaska has now been lost. But then he directly interacts the Tomahawk issue.

Ryabkov: 1:51 [Russian, English subtitles]
Unfortunately it must be stated that the powerful momentum from Anchorage in favor of agreements has largely been exhausted. This is the result of destructive activity, primarily by Europeans. As for the Tomahawks themselves, as you understand, without software, without launchers, the rockets on their own are, let’s say, inert objects. Hypothetical use of such systems is possible only with direct involvement of American personnel. I hope that those pushing Washington towards such a decision fully understand the depth and gravity of the consequences of the decisions.

Davis: 2:34
Other news coming out of Reuters today said that some of the Russian members of parliament, of the Duma, said basically if you use these things we are going to destroy the launchers and the launch sites which would almost certainly mean destroy American troops. Do you think that this represents a real red line for Russia, or is this just more rhetoric?

Doctorow:
Look, this issue came up more than a year ago, and Mr. Putin then issued a red line. He was asked by Pavel Zarubin, who is a journalist with Russian state television, what this meant, when it’s discussed that the United States could be sending long-range missiles to Ukraine.

This was about June, July of last year. And Putin said, this was on the spot, outdoors, he answered the question saying that the Tomahawk can only, or didn’t name the Tomahawk, but long-range missiles of this variety could only be operated by the Americans, that all the programming would be American. And the only thing that would be Ukraine would be the finger on the button.

3:47
And in that case, if this happened, that Russia would respond militarily to that attack by any such missile from the source, where it came from, where it originally came from, not where it was launched from. So it’s a bit more, it was a bit more severe back then than even what you mentioned now, because you were describing a Russian attack on the launcher, presumably the launcher being somewhere in Ukraine, when Putin was speaking a year ago about attacking essentially the United States.

4:18
Now, what happened on Thursday when he spoke at the Valdai Discussion Club meeting in the city of Sochi in the south of Russia, he was asked about the Tomahawks and his response then was, his first response was this: the delivery of Tomahawks to Ukraine would spoil the relations between the United States and Russia. That seemed to be having a light-at-the-end-of the-tunnel characteristic now.

When he was leaving the stage, and after this four-hour session, he was quite relaxed, And he was stopped by Pavel Zerubin, that’s very same journalist whom I mentioned had asked him this question in June or July of last year. He said that the delivery of these Tomahawks to Ukraine would destroy American-Russian relations. Well, destroying relations more or less means you’re at war.

5:29
Then a moment later, he drew that back and he said, I meant to say: it would damage them. Well, Mr. Putin, which is it, damage or destroy? When you’re speaking about an essential matter of Russian national security, this is not a small detail. And it makes you wonder whether he is really in control of the responses that Russia should give to red lines being violated.

Davis:
Well, and let’s just stick on the topic of red lines for a minute. Are there any red lines? Are there actually any red lines that Russia has, whether they were self-imposed or attributed to Russia, there hasn’t been any so far because the war has stayed, thank God, contained within the borders of Ukraine and hasn’t escalated beyond that. But there … there’s a very difficult dynamic that any country would have to face, especially in Russia’s position, that they may not want any outside power to do anything, but if they take some action in there that could spawn drawing that other country in full on, not just with support, but like their armed forces, et cetera, that would be very high level. But to not do it, to not actually ever strike anything in there, is to encourage other sides to take even more action against them. How difficult is it for Russia to actually have a red line that they might enforce?

Doctorow: 6:57
Depends on whom they’re supposed to enforce these red lines against. And you can understand that they are very hesitant to set and then to defend red lines against the United States. The other nuclear power, their peer, which if it enters into a direct conflict, could lead to a nuclear war. That does not mean that Russia has no red lines that it would act upon.

And let’s go back to the Tomahawk issue. I see it as misleading and a distraction from the real issue before us. Let us remember that going back from even before his election, Friedrich Merz, the current chancellor of Germany, had been in favor of delivering, activating Taurus missiles. Unlike the Tomahawk, that is not a 30- or 40- year-old missile. It’s a rather current missile, which has a great deal of capability and which has never been encountered by the Russians. The Russians say that they have well-developed missiles, defense missiles against precisely the Tomahawk, knowing all of its characteristics.

They don’t have defenses against the German Taurus. And the German Taurus could be quite damaging, not the same range, it’s not going to be Moscow or Petersburg, but could do a lot of damage in, I think it’s a 500 kilometer range, which isn’t bad. Now, the situation was that first, Scholz and then Merz have been restrained. They didn’t want to be the first one going against Russia with long-range missiles. The logic was, they were waiting for the United States to go through the door first.

8:55
And what Mr. Trump is doing is walking through the door first. Whether he actually delivers a single Tomahawk or not is almost irrelevant. This opens the door for Merz to use Tomahawks. Now the red lines, the Russians surely will attack Germany. They will bomb the factory that makes the Taurus if they are deployed and directed against Russian targets. That is a red line you can be sure that they will exercise, because Germany is not the United States.

Davis:
Wow that’s a pretty bold statement there and pretty alarming as well, because they may not be the United States, but they are an Article 5- wielding member of NATO. What would be the thought process for the Russian side to take that kind of an action? Because that would … potentially draw in a lot of fighting against them, not just against the Ukraine side.

Doctorow: 9:52
Potentially but unlikely. Their calculation is the Germans would never get Article 5 support from other NATO members. If they are violating essentially violating international law which is what directing a Taurus against Russia would be, they become co-belligerents. And they, Germans, not NATO but Germans, would be subject to retribution from the Russians — which would be all the more logical if it were not directed against Berlin but were destroying the factory producing those missiles. That is the Russian calculation.

Davis: 10:26
Wow, that would be a pretty big issue, which hopefully explains why the Germans haven’t given the Taurus missiles, and hopefully that continues on.

Doctorow:
I’m not sure I agree with you. I think they have given the missiles. I think they went in before Scholz left the chancellorship. They just haven’t been opened to inspection. They haven’t been advertised. When they said under Scholz that in a few weeks we will send them, that is, by the way the whole war has evolved over the last three years, that means they were sent already.

Davis: 10:58
So, but they haven’t been deployed at least as far as we know.

Doctorow:
Exactly right.

Davis:
And one would hope that that permission isn’t given. And correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s not a unilateral decision that Kiev could make. They could only do it with the participation of the German military, is that correct?

Doctorow:
That was the issue in Germany when several, I think it was Air Force generals, complained that deploying the Taurus in Ukraine was only possible with the technical assistance of German personnel.

Davis:
So then that is correct. As long as it hasn’t– in order for it to be deployed, it would have to have authorization, one would imagine, from the very top in Berlin, right?

Doctorow:
Correct.

Davis: 11:50
Well, let’s … hope that doesn’t happen then, because that … would be bad for a lot of cases others. We don’t want to risk any escalation of this. Going back to Trump for a second, when … he was talking about, or the possibility of using the … long range missiles, which … we were under here with the Tomahawk, the question is what is he going to do and what does he want to accomplish? Now, he had come into office obviously saying that he was going to end the war in 24 hours. He knew Putin; he knew Volodymyr Zelensky. It would be easy. He would know how to do it.

12:24
Well since then he’s kind of backed off of that a lot, saying well okay, it was harder than I thought. But he thought going into Anchorage, Alaska that he might be able to make something happen. But as Sergey Rybkov mentioned here, nothing did happen. And there’s not really any difference today than there was before that meeting back in August that took place. And yesterday in the Oval Office, President Trump was asked about that situation now, when he was visiting with Canadian Prime Minister Carney.

Trump: 12:50
Things are happening with respect to Russia-Ukraine. That’s one that last week marked 7,812 people were killed. Soldiers, mostly soldiers. But 7,000, more than 7,000, almost 8,000 soldiers were killed.

It’s a crazy, it’s a crazy thing. I thought that would have been one of the easy ones. I get along very well with Putin and I thought that would have been– I’m very disappointed in him, because I thought this would have been an easy one to settle, but it’s turned out to be maybe tougher than the Middle East. We’ll see what happens with the Middle East.

Davis: 13:25
Yeah, who would have thought that ending one role would be harder than the Middle East, but who would have thought either one of them were actually simple. But this seems to be an issue to come back to. I know that you’ve written some things, but you seem to be having challenges or differences of opinion, maybe a better way to put it, that Putin seems to be putting too much deference in trying to reach out to Trump. What do you mean by that?

Doctorow: 13:47
Well, his performance last Thursday at the plenary session of this Valdai Discussion Club was very puzzling and disturbing. He, they spent time talking about, Charlie Kirk. They spent time talking about the … American son of a CIA director and a head of a firm, a subcontractor to the US military, who died in Donbass, having volunteered to serve the Russians, because he believed in their Russian traditional values.

That was a lot of time spent flattering the United States, meaning flattering Trump. They also made remarks about what a good conversationalist, interlocutor Donald Trump is. He also talked about the Trump peace plan, the 20-point peace plan for Gaza, saying that he supported it. And he also mentioned in a complimentary way, Tony Blair’s appointment to be on this peace board that Donald Trump would head in the interim period after Hamas left and before the Palestinians were deemed suitable for self-governance.

15:08
This was a lot of flattery for Donald Trump. And it was surprising, and I think it was overdone, because it compromised Russia’s sovereignty. The whole message of Putin the last several years has been sovereignty. And here he was doing his best to ingratiate himself with Donald Trump, not quite calling him Papa, like the Secretary General of NATO did, but it didn’t look good. The countries are at odds, very seriously at odds, and this was not appropriate.

Davis: 15:47
How is that being viewed in the Russian media, in the Russian landscape?

Doctorow:
Well, that particular side of it has not been discussed on Russian state television, for example. But it has blown hot and cold about Donald Trump. The most serious commentary about Trump is, he’s a good guy, but he can’t deliver, because the political balance in Washington is against accommodation with us. And this was what Putin was overlooking. He seemed to be placing too much trust in the personal relationship with Trump that was so much in evidence in Alaska.

And it doesn’t look good for for Russia’s defending its interests. But let’s come back to what Trump is trying to say. And here I have a take on Trump’s message which is different from most of my peers, and I’m ready to defend it. Trump’s been buying time. He has been buying time almost since he took the Oval Office. Buying time for what?

Buying time for Putin to finish up the war, to get it over with. And Putin doesn’t get that message. Trump goes this way and that way. He is pivoting to Zelensky. Then he’s turning back towards Putin and it’s all buying time with Congress not to impose these tough secondary sanctions.

A lot of the difficulty that he would have in dealing in a straight way with Congress and the political establishment of the states, he is avoiding by attacking this way and attacking that way. And Putin doesn’t get it. When Trump said last week, repeated, that he was disappointed in Putin because he thought he would get it over with in the first week of the war. Let’s go back to the start of this special military operation. Most people like yourself were assuming that Russia would go in, in the American fashion of shock and awe, and would finish off Ukraine in a week.

18:08
Everyone knew that the Russian military operation was being done in a backwards way. When you have an attack, you want to take the country, you go in with three times their forces. Instead, Putin would end with one third of their forces. Now that explains why the special military operation got off to such a poor start. And Trump was revisiting that issue today.

Trump is not saying it, but he knows and we know that Putin can end this war tomorrow if he wants to. He has Oreshniks, they know where the government offices are on Bankovskaya Street in downtown Kiev. Well, in one day, they can decapitate Ukraine. And they should do it, but it’s not happening.

Davis: 19:04
And what do you suppose it is? With the capacity to do so, why do you think Russia hasn’t done it?

Doctorow:
One is the indecisiveness of Putin and his unwillingness to take risks. But the risks in … striking against Kiev are much smaller than the risks of this ongoing conflict with the West, where the leaders in Europe have gotten to understand that Ukraine is losing badly, and they are moving from one provocation to another, ever steeper and ever more risky and dangerous, that can lead us into World War III. And Putin does not get it.

Davis: 19:49
–was looking for something here to see if we could pull this up. Gary, if you could possibly pull up the Ursula von der Leyen that we used earlier today, that would be great from her comments this morning. Because I want to kind of go down that path. You say that the delay, and I know I’ve had some conversations with a number of folks that have some contacts on the Russian side themselves, and they have in one hand voiced a lot of frustration because of Leyen. Same thing, because they see people like Emmanuel Macron, who continues to mock Russia as he did last month by saying they’ve only taken 1% in the last two years because that’s all they can, the implication being, the counterclaim being that Russia can take more than that, but they are not using their forces in that regard. One of the arguments is, well, they’re doing that because they perceive that there could be a war with NATO one of these days.

20:41
And so they are, with all of this industrial capacity, they are stockpiling all the key aspects that was necessary for war, training up additional men, so that in the event that that comes in the future, they’re ready for it later on, which apparently they aren’t right now. First of all, just on that aspect of it, what is your understanding of that argument?

Doctorow:
That was good. The war has evolved. The war has changed dramatically over the course of the first three years. When the war started, Russia had a ten-time advantage over Ukraine in artillery shells and artillery tubes. They were waging, from the beginning, an artillery war. That was their war of attrition. Today, the artillery advantage is less important. I don’t mean to say it’s not important, but it’s much less a factor in the way the war is proceeding.

It is now basically a drone war. My peers who appear on programs like yours, they assume because they never name their sources, but I assume that they’re speaking to people in the military or military experts in Russia and are delivering their information on air from that source. They never stop to think whether anybody in the military in Russia would ever dare to give them something confidential, because they’ll be taken to court and they’ll spend the rest of their lives in prison for betraying national secrets. But somehow this little detail doesn’t enter into the minds of my peers.

22:12
What I’m listening to is Russian television. “Oh yes,” people say, “yes, Doctorow only watches television.” But my goodness, the whole of Sovietology in the Cold War was based on that type of expertise. People read Provda and it’s Izvestia. And you might say, why are they reading that junk?

Because in that junk, they found clues as to what comes next. Now, Russian television is much more honest than anybody imagines. I don’t mean RT. RT isn’t Russian television. It’s a special product, devised for the American public, to hold up a mirror to America’s ills.

22:45
That is not Russian television. Russian television interviews– is war correspondents on the front. I watch them every day, and it is extremely interesting and informative. The Russians are now talking about the birdies. The birdies are the attack drones.

Now the Ukrainians are not stupid people. They are very much like Russians in their skills, strengths and weaknesses. They’re very good at computers. They’re very good at video games and they’re very good at operating drones. This is a very big threat.

And it means that the Russians are operating on the field completely differently from what you would expect when the war opened and they had such an advantage in heavy tanks and all of the hardware. No, that’s not what– the tanks are being used as artillery today, just movable artillery, that’s all they are. There are no tank battles in Ukraine. The real issue today is one where the Ukrainians have a much more balanced stand against Russia than they did when the war started and they were a 10-time disadvantage in artillery shells.

Davis; 23:53
And so what is the net-net for that? What does that result in on the battlefield, those dynamics?

Doctorow:
Small movements. However, I disagree with what Macron said. It’s not a 1% increase. That’s nonsense.

When the war started, Russia had– maybe 70% of Lugansk was under Russian control and perhaps 50% of Donetsk. Now it’s 99% of Lugansk under Russian control and 70% of Donetsk under Russian control. That isn’t 1%. So Mr. Macron doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Or he’s just giving propaganda. They’re moving. But if it could continue to move at this pace, it’ll be a 10-year war.

Davis:
So is Russia moving at this pace because that’s all they can do, or are they moving at this pace because they’re risk-averse and they’re not using all their capacity?

Doctorow: 24:45
That is true, but that is not the only factor. A bigger factor is how they conceive of this war. They conceive of it in a manner that the German classics of warfare would approve of. Warfare is about knocking out the military force of your opponent. They are killing Ukrainian soldiers at a ratio perhaps of 10 times their own losses. And it is known that when they advance in this place or that, instead of proceeding and marching on and pushing the Ukrainians back further, they are retreating slightly to draw the Ukrainians into a trap and murder still more Ukrainians.

The problem is that Ukraine is still, though it’s dropped from 40 million to maybe 25 million, and though it has several hundred thousand deserters, it still has a military. And my peers who are speaking as if Ukraine is going to roll over and die tomorrow are dreaming. That is wish, that is not fact. And the move that the Russians are taking will bring them maybe in a few months at this pace to the Dnieper, but that’s not the whole of Ukraine. And the Russians have no interest in crossing into really Ukrainian territory where they will be invading, occupying army.

26:08
So the war’s end on the battlefield is questionable. I’ve said for some time the war would end in a political collapse of Ukraine. But if Europe rushes in with a hundred and forty five billion euros of assistance, there will be no political collapse of Ukraine. And there’s the problem.

Davis: 26:30
Well, and in fact, that’s exactly what I wanted to discuss next, because with this delay, if Russia’s military is capable of going much faster pace and achieving a military victory by destroying the units and then taking the territory as well — by going in this slower pace, it may be whittling down slowly at the capacity of the Ukrainian armed forces, but as you say, it keeps alive the possibility that no, we can hold out for a lot longer than this.

That was reinforced by Ursula von der Leyen earlier today, when she seems to go down here continuing path that this is a war, that we are actually in a war with Russia and maybe one we can win.

von der Leyen: 27:10
Something new and dangerous is happening in our skies. In just the past two weeks MIG fighters have violated Estonia’s airspace and drones have flown over critical sites in Belgium, Poland, Romania, Denmark, and Germany.

Flights have been grounded, jets scrambled, and countermeasures deployed to ensure the safety of our citizens. Make no mistake, this is part of a worrisome pattern of growing threats. Across our Union, undersea cables have been cut, airports and logistic hubs paralyzed by cyber attacks, and elections targeted by malign influence campaign. These incidents are calculated to linger in the twilight of deniability. This is not random harassment.

It is a coherent and escalating campaign to unsettle our citizens, test our resolve, divide our union, and weaken our support for Ukraine. And it is time to call it by its name, this is hybrid warfare.

Davis:
And so what do you make of that? Is her characterization accurate, or is the Russian view that they’re not trying to escalate into Europe? What do you think is the case?

Doctorow: 28:37
I think it’s a pile of lies. Von der Leyen is a hawk. She is a warrior. She wants to grab– she’s also virtually a dictator. She has seized as much authority within the European institutions as she could, which was not so difficult, because she’s surrounded by 27 cowards who all have linked arms and are afraid to rein her in. She may be reined in. She may lose a confidence vote in the next few weeks. But the point is: everything that she’s saying is to make the point that Europe is threatened and it needs a strong leader who makes defense federalized under her watch. And it’s all self-serving.

Now these attacks, the incursion on Estonian airspace, I ask you to look at the map. When you look at the overlapping territories that are sovereign territories of the countries bordering the Baltic Sea, which are now all– with the exception of Kaliningrad of Russia, all of the bordering lands of the Baltic Sea are NATO countries. When you extend out into the sea, their territorial rights leave you with almost nil international waters. So this whole claim of Russian infringement is in fact not a Russian aggression, it is a European-NATO aggression against Russia, to create an air and sea blockade on Russia in the Baltic. As they said very nicely, when Finland and Sweden joined NATO, it turns the Baltic into a NATO lake.

Well my friends, if that’s how you feel, we will have World War Three, because the Russians will not be barred from using the Baltic Sea. That is a casus belli. And it takes more than a few cutters from Estonia to stop a Russian oil tanker or Mr. Macron’s little police boats stopping a suspected gray-fleet Russian tanker somewhere off the coast of France. They proceed with this and we have World War III. There’s nothing to talk about. They won’t proceed with it, because the Russians will not allow them to do it.

31:25
However, this “drone attacks” is even more preposterous. All over the place and in everybody’s back yard is a drone attack, all done by the Russians. This is as nonsensical, as absurd as all of the “Russia, Russia, Russia” stories to prevent Trump’s election in 2016 and to impeach him after his election.

This, I would be sure, is all launched and coordinated by MI6 in London who are the main practitioners of dirty tricks, and von der Layen finds this very convenient, a story to establish and justify her stranglehold on power in the European Union.

Davis:
Yeah, I’m not sure what good it is going to be to have power if you end up with, some of your actions end up spawning a global war. Hopefully that will just stay in the rhetoric realm. I mean, you mentioned something a second ago that potentially that Russia could go all the way up to the Dnieper River and that that might still might not end it. That kind of lines up with something that Putin did say a couple of days ago when he talked about what their objectives were right now in the SMO.

Putin: 32:37 [English voice over]
I address the soldiers and officers, the real heroes of our time, with a special feeling. I thank you for your loyalty to your motherland, for your military valor and courage, for every day of your hard combat work. I am sure that, thanks to you, the security of Russia will be reliably ensured, and the long-awaited and strong world will return to the heroic land of Donbas and Novorossia. We are together and this means that all our plans will be realized.

Davis:
So he says all of his plans will be realized, all of Novorossia, which is we talked about on this channel a lot, that’s four additional oblasts besides just the four that are allegedly on the table right now and you’re saying, suggesting though, that that still might not be enough.

Doctorow: 33:25
Well there’s one thing missing in that Novorossia story, and that is Odessa. The French and British interest in Ukraine focuses on Odessa. Odessa, if you look at the map closely, it is very, it is in an easy strike range to Crimea. It is Ukraine’s major port. It’s what prevents Ukraine from being landlocked and is essential to the Ukrainian economy. It is important militarily, for the reason I just mentioned, because it would be a wonderful naval port for the French and the British.

34:10
The Russians understand that. And Russian television– which again I explain I use fairly regularly as a source– they are now calling out Odessa as one more objective before they end their military activities in Ukraine.

Davis:
So where do you see this going, let’s just say by the first quarter, by the spring of next year, so within roughly six months from now? Will this war just keep going on for years, or do you think Russia will finally just put the gas genuinely on the floor and try to achieve a military victory. What is your assessment?

Doctorow: 34:52
As I said, the political victory would be done in one day if Mr. Putin finds the guts to do it. And that is to bomb the hell out of the administrative buildings and use Oreshnik to go down to whatever depth is needed to wipe out Mr. Zalensky and his team in their underground hideouts. They have the missiles to do it, and that would end the war.

Europe will stand and do nothing about it. The Americans, Mr. Trump, will express regrets. That’s what war is all about. And then he’ll go about doing business with Mr. Putin that he’d like to do but cannot do while the war is raging. [It’s] beside my understanding that Putin does not end the war.

Davis: 35:51
And so if he doesn’t do that version where you say it could be over really quickly, what does it look like six months from now, the first quarter of 2026?

Doctorow:
Nothing. It looks like, well, if you want to see what it looks like, you have to go out four years. This bridging loan, which the Europeans want to give to Ukraine, what is it all about? It’s to keep the Ukrainians in play for three years, or four years. Why three or four years? Look at the rest of the program. They are spending now hundreds of billions of euros to build up, to bulk up Europe’s military production.

Germany is a leader in this with a one trillion euro debt that’s taking out mostly for the purpose of building out its armed forces and for, as Mr Merz said openly, to make Germany the biggest defender he calls it, let’s call it by the real name, the biggest military force in Western Europe. That will be ready for when? For 2029. Merz has said that the Russians will attack in 2029.

37:07
Let’s speak not more Orwellian language, but real language. He means that he will attack Russia in 2029. And if he builds out the army as he plans, you know, Europe could just win. This is not my opinion, but again, experts on Russian state television are saying, not that the Germans will win, but they’re saying that German industry should not be disparaged. German industry is quite serious, and if money is put into it, you know, they can build good arms.

So the situation is not a six-month perspective. The situation that Europe is looking at is a four-year perspective. And you know something? It can work like that. And that is precisely why I’ve changed my mind about the wisdom of the “go slow, don’t rock the boat, don’t challenge the West too much” policy of Putin. It’s reached the end of its practical life.

Davis: 38:08
Well, it does seem that there’s going to be a decision to make on a number of different parties here, not the least of which is in Moscow. And I guess we’ll have to wait and see how that’s going to work out.

Because the capacity is there to just a matter of whether the political will is and what the West would do in response. And all of that is, you know, something that’s very, very bad for global stability and global security, because anything that expands this war is bad for everybody.

And I pray to God we never see it, but we appreciate you coming on today giving us this different perspective than what we get from a lot of other places, and we really appreciate it.

Doctorow:
Well, thanks for having me.

Davis:
And we appreciate you guys to be sure, and like and subscribe if you haven’t done that on your way out. And we’ll thank you very much for watching our show today.

38:51
We’ll see you tomorrow on the “Daniel Davis Deep Dive”.

Chat with Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis on ‘Deep Dive’: Putin Shifting Russia’s Red Lines

This 40 minute interview goes into the corners of my arguments about Putin’s scandalous performance at the plenary session of the Valdai Discussion Club last Thursday, into the reasons why Putin should bomb the hell out of Kiev right now and put an end to this war by decapitating the Zelensky regime, into the evident emerging plan of European hawks to “lend” 145 billion euros of frozen Russian assets to Kiev for the sake of keeping the Ukrainian forces in the war for the next 4 years while Germany and others bulk up their armed forces and prepare to attack Russia in 2029.

You will note that I have parted company with many of the loudest voices in Alternative Media who are saying that Ukraine has already lost the war, that the front is collapsing and capitulation is just around the corner. 

I set out very clearly the open sources, namely Russian state television, which inform my changing understanding of the threats to Russia from prolonging the war. This is the modern-day equivalent of reading Izvestiya and Pravda for clues to Soviet policies back in the days of the Cold War; when done properly that yielded very valuable information. Today’s Russian electronic media are far richer in content.

 I question the value of the unnamed sources, presumably Russian military, who my peers say informs their views of how the war is going:  it seems to me to be irresponsibly naïve to believe that any chums in Russia will divulge military secrets to their nice buddy in the States; the penalty is life in the prison camps if not worse.

The Deep Dive audience may have a fair number of trolls among them judging by the vicious remarks in the Comments section.  However, the Likes are 8 times greater in number, which I find encouraging.

Enjoy the show!

Transcript of ‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 8 October 2025

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jqr9PzL1gY

Napolitano: 0:05
All right, thank you, everyone, for your patience. Professor Doctorow, thank you for your understanding. These gremlins happen from time to time. You were giving your opinion about whether or not President Putin will voluntarily leave office before the end of his term, and if so, why?

Doctorow:
Well, I think he will come to the realization that his inability to respond appropriately to the threats that are rising daily from the West, and his inability to exercise deterrence and to keep it in place, make his position untenable.

He has been 25 years in service. The SS Putin has grown a lot of barnacles which slow its navigation through troubled waters and it is likely the moment has arrived, or will soon arrive, for him to pass the baton to a younger generation. The younger generation is not going to be in 30s or 40s, but they’ll be in their 50s, and they are not hidden. They are visible. There are very capable people to replace him in the management of domestic affairs.

1:24
His prime minister, Mishustin, the mayor of Moscow, Sobyanin, they are world class managers and government people who travel widely, who meet extensively throughout Russia and in the near abroad, the Russia-friendly abroad. In the foreign ministry, Mr. Lavrov has an immediate replacement by somebody much more vigorous and appropriate to the age we live in. And that is Mr. Ryabkov, whose name, of course, will be familiar to you.

Napolitano: 1:56
Let me stop you here. Is there widespread talk about this, or is this view unique to a small number of people? As you know from other people who appear on this show who respect you, nobody else is saying this.

Doctorow:
Well, truth is not a popularity contest.

Napolitano:
Understood, but I just want to know if it’s a widely held view.

Doctorow:
No, I cannot say yes or no, because it’s the kind of question that is not publicly discussed. That doesn’t mean that the question doesn’t exist and that people aren’t talking about it over the kitchen table. I don’t mean the man in the street, but I mean the political classes. They’re not stupid. They’re aware of the risks, and I think they are nervous. Let me just say that I’m not drawing this conclusion, which just took a long time to mature, out of thin air. As your program, one or two other programs that I appear in that have large audiences are now being dubbed into Russian. Each of these programs, like the last one that we had a week ago, had twice as many Russian viewers as the English original. We’re speaking of 150,000 people.

Now, when you speak about a poll, a number like 75,000, 100,000, 150,000, that is an unusually large audience for polling. And I look at two issues that tell me which way the wind is blowing. One is the comments, I’m speaking now of the Russian version of “Judging Freedom”, which you don’t produce, but there is a group called In Russian which produces it very well using artificial intelligence. And I look at two indices. One is the comments, which are almost, I’d say, three quarters negative.

3:56
They are by, I’d say, simple people, judging by the grammatical mistakes and the language used. They are by simple patriots who reject out of hand and without even listening to more than a few minutes of your program, they decide that we Westerners are idiots, will never understand Russian, that only Russians can understand Russian, and so forth. Then I look at the other index, which is the thumbs up. The thumbs up is systematically two times or three times bigger than these comments by redneck patriots. That tells me something.

People who are watching your program in Russian, they are, I’d call them, they’re politically active, politically interested. And people who bother to give any kind of response, whether a thumbs up down or a comment, are more active bodies. So we’re speaking of several percent. It’s never 10%, it’s less, who actually bother to comment. Well, when I see that, these numbers–

Napolitano:
There’s a conversation about President Putin’s tenure in office while he’s experiencing an 80% approval rating is not a general public one. It may be whispered in, as you say, at kitchen tables.

Doctorow:
Yeah. The 80%, I’m sure, is accurate, but they’re not asking the right question. They’re asking, is he doing a good job?

Well, if you are looking at your paycheck and you’re getting three times now a salary, what you got before the start of the war, if you’re employed now in a small town that was once an industrial town and became laid waste in the 1990s and has revived since the start of the war because of industrial production being subcontracted to local factories, then you’re pretty happy.

5:44
When you have money in the bank and you’re getting 20% interest annually, you don’t mind the 8% inflation. So for this reason, if you ask the average guy in the street about his [glitch] about [do you] approve of Putin, he’ll say yes. Now, if you ask the politically active class, that’s a different story. They’re interested in Russia’s prestige and they’re interested in the risk factor of is this tenable?

And they are the ones who are giving two-to- one approval of a conversation that you and I have in which I’m questioning Mr. Putin’s speech at the Valdai conference. What was wrong with the speech was he put Russia’s fate in the hands of Mr. Trump, which is a very foolish thing to do.

Napolitano:
Let me read what you wrote about this. This is a rather profound statement. Forgive me for looking down. I want to read it precisely. This is what you sent me the other day.

[Doctorow]:
“If Mr. Putin continues to put Russia’s fate in the hands of Donald Trump by accepting each further escalation from the West, including those enabled by the American president himself, such as secondary sanctions and delivery of long-range missiles to Ukraine, then Russia is doomed.”

Napolitano:
What do you mean by that?

Doctorow: 7:04
I mean that the very risky probing, poking at Russia is accelerating, and I see the future taking shape. On this program and others, the panelists [are] generally looking at the next few weeks. I was one of those.

[By] trying to stand out as having been so much more penetrating in my view of things than my peers, I was saying to them, “Well, looking at the progress on the ground, looking at the heavy losses of the Ukrainians on the front, the war will probably come to a culmination in a few weeks to months.”

However, in the last several weeks, the picture has changed a bit. First of all, that knowledge that the war is going badly [for] Ukraine has penetrated the skulls of the NATO leadership and of the biggest influencers of EU policies, the leaders of France and Germany. And the result is that they are putting together something that is now clear to anyone who wants to read the handwriting on the wall. And so let me give the eyeglasses to read that handwriting.

8:25
That Europe is now ready to essentially confiscate the 145 billion euros in Russian state assets in EuroClear in Belgium for the sake of so-called collateral for a loan to Ukraine that will never be repaid. This is a very refined way of getting around the question of confiscation of state assets, but it comes to the same thing. And if Russia were to say openly what Mr. Putin is unable to or unwilling to say, that this is confiscation of assets and it is an act of war– There are a number of things that are going on which in normal international relations are considered a casus belli.

The so-called piracy of the French had on this what they assumed to have been a Russian shadow fleet tanker. That is [in] normal international relations, the cause of declaring war.

Napolitano: 9:25
Right. Right. Will the theft of 165 billion in Russian state assets in European banks– this is the $64,000 question– be deemed by the Kremlin an act of war? Will the ramping up of German arms manufacturers who are making weapons that will be aimed at Moscow be considered an act of war, and should they be stopped before they complete their tasks?

Doctorow: 9:53
This is the very reason why I’m saying that Mr. Putin should reconsider his staying in office, because he has aligned himself– going back to 2016 when Mr. Obama confiscated Russian embassy properties in the United States in strict violation of all international relations, he put up with that. And Mr. Putin has put up with a great many acts of aggression against Russia, which normally could and should be declared a casus belli. Even last week at Sochi, he was asked about the Tomahawks, and he said on camera in front of the audience, he said, “Yes, this will seriously damage our relations with the United States.”

Napolitano:
Yes.

Doctorow:
It’s a very interesting thing to say, when a year ago he said, “We will respond with armed force against the United States because we were talking about long-range missiles in case they are used by Ukraine, supposedly used by them, but actually used by Americans operating those missiles against us.”

Now, after he walked off the stage at Sochi, He had a little exchange with a journalist who was a hound dog. He was with him all the time. A certain Popov Zarubin, who asked him that same question. And first, he was relaxed. He just came off the stage. He was very happy. And his answer to Zarubin was that if the United States uses those missiles, it will destroy our relationship.

11:36
Then a second later, he backed up. He said, “Oh no, no, it will damage….” I’m sorry, which is it, Mr. Putin? Damage or destroy? They’re very different. And if on such an issue, vital to Russia’s defense, Mr. Putin waffles, I think he should consider that he should leave in grace.

Napolitano:
Yesterday, October 7th, was Vladimir Putin’s birthday. Here’s what the “Moscow Times” wrote. Now I’m reading an English translation, obviously.

[Moscow Times]:
“Under constitutional changes he pushed through in 2020, Putin could remain in power until 2036 when he will be 83 years old, with no sign he wants to step down. That would make him the longest-ruling leader in Russian history, surpassing Joseph Stalin.”

Napolitano: 12:36
All right. So obviously there is talk out there if the “Moscow Times” is alluding to it.

Doctorow:
Look, let’s look at the picture. I just said that there’s a constellation that’s formed in the last several weeks. I mentioned the first part of it, but I didn’t say where it leads. It’s 145 billion euros that the EU wants to take over to provide Ukraine with assistance.

Napolitano:
It’s theft. It’s outright theft. And I would think that Putin will declare it as that. The question is, will he declare it as an act of war? But go ahead.

Doctorow:
The issue is, what will that money do? It’s enough to keep Ukraine going for three years, or four years. They’re not going to just hand it to Mr. Zelensky in one go. So they know very well they want to feed it to him to be sure the war keeps going, until when and why?

We’ve heard enough the figure 2029 is the time when Mr. Merz says that Russia will attack. Well, it’s not Russia that’s going to attack. It’s Mr. Merz that wants to attack Russia. And they’re the warmongers, and Merz is a lead warmonger, but not the only one, that want to have a war with Russia, conventional war, four years from now.

13:55
Now, if they give Mr. Zelensky this money to keep his troops fighting until then, well, you see it. It’s a bridging loan for Europe to keep Russia distracted with this war of attrition in Ukraine, while they gear up to attack Russia. Now, some of my peers have spoken of Europe very dismissively. Russian experts who are on Russian state television are not so dismissive.

When Mr. Merz puts up one trillion euros to raise military production in Germany, and when you consider that Germany is not de-industrialized yet, and has a very strong capability of using all of its automotive industry, idle factory, employees and machinery, and other heavy industry that still has not gone to rust, to create arms — well, the Russians who are thinking Russians and get a microphone also express concern. And I think they were right.

15:05
Now, I don’t believe that it will come up to that point. I think Mr. Putin will either become a changed man and ready to openly set, follow his lines, red lines, and defend them, or he’ll be out.

Napolitano:
What is the true goal of the EU warmongers? Do they really want a war with the Russian military? Is this a scheme to enrich their arms manufacturers? Is there some long-term NATO, Donald Trump- related goal? What does Starmer, Macron– and Macron of course has his own very serious problems– and Merz really want?

Doctorow: 15:51
Over the last 20 years, progressively the EU has turned from an economic project into a geopolitical project. This has been accelerated under von der Leyen, who has virtually merged NATO with the EU institutions. Consequently, the leaders of the European states collectively want to assert a geopolitical role for Europe, which can be done by humbling Russia.

I have peers who speak about the military- industrial complex in Europe as if that is driving things. I don’t agree at all. The military- industrial complex is now being raised from the dead by the political leaders who are doing this for their own purposes. Mr. Netanyahu is not the only person on earth who engages in military action for the sake of keeping himself in power.

16:56
If you look at European leaders today, that’s exactly the game they’re playing. Now, von der Leyen took it to extremes by saying, “Oh, we have these great challenges. We have to keep ourselves together”, means locked arms, under her stewardship. That’s being challenged by Mr. Merz. But the general idea of Europe as a geopolitical force is very much the order of the day among the top leaders in Europe who want to keep their positions.

Napolitano:
Wow. What do you think will happen with respect to the remilitarization by three very unpopular leaders, Merz, Starmer, and Macron? Stated differently– we only have about two minutes left before I have another commitment. My apologies because of the problem with the internet, which we’ve overcome thanks to Chris. Will this remilitarization repopularize these leaders domestically?

Doctorow: 18:01
It depends how they play their hand. If they can continue to play this war hysteria, which is going wild here in Europe with Russian drones in everybody’s back yard, then they can instill a fear in the broad population and proceed with their militarization successfully. I don’t know if they have the wisdom or the advisors at their side to help them do it. And there are serious problems within EU, as we saw with the victory of Mr. Babish in Slovakia, creating a triad of Hungary, Slovakia, and Czech Republic. I’m sorry, I meant this Czech Republic. Those three, who are your skeptics and who are a stumbling block for the warmongers led by von der Leyen. So how this will play out, nobody can say with absolute certainty, but the risks are very great, far greater than we had considered just weeks ago. That is what caused me to change my opinion on the go-slow, reasonable, only-adult-in- the-room, a description of Mr. Putin.

Napolitano: 19:14
Got it. I know you’re taking a lot of hits from a lot of people that I respect. I want you to know that I respect your intellectual honesty. And of course, this is all very good for our viewers to hear a variety of views on a variety of topics. And I look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you, Professor.

Doctorow:
Yeah, very good, bye bye.

Napolitano:
All the best. Coming up later today on this and all the other topics we’ve been discussing all week, at 11 o’clock, Colonel Douglas Macgregor. At one o’clock, Aaron Maté. At two o’clock, Professor Glenn Diesen. At three o’clock, Phil Giraldi.

19:51
Judge Napolitano for “Judging Freedom”.

‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 8 October 2025: Is Putin stable?

‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 8 October 2025: Is Putin stable?

I recommend this interview to the Community because Judge Andrew Napolitano and I discuss openly and in a focused way the reasons why Vladimir Putin should resign and pass the baton to a younger generation of experienced, talented, patriotic and decisive officials who have proven their worth in office these past several years and who surely will be more decisive than he appears to be in defending Russia’s deterrence to Western aggression

I have reached this conclusion after much reflection upon seeing the formation of a constellation of threats to Russia, now that European leaders seem determined to confiscate the 145 billion euros in Russian state assets for the sake of keeping Ukraine in the fight through 2029 when the Europeans expect that their current massive rearmament programs will enable them to impose a strategic defeat on Russia using conventional weapons and without U.S. participation.

Ukraine to Boost Natural Gas Imports by 30% Amid Escalating Russian Airstrikes: NewsX World, 7 October

We heard about devastating Russian airstrikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure a day ago. The Ukrainians meanwhile claim that their drone and missile attacks have crippled Russia’s refineries and forced Moscow to import gasoline!

In this 8 minute interview I bring the two stories together and comment on what is true, what is false. However, I emphasize here that the Russian side has been very sparing in its discussion of the Ukrainian strikes on refineries and other energy infrastructure inside the RF.  They do not talk about the likely US-guided Himars strike on a refinery. The only open discussion relating to the subject of Ukrainian attacks has been the message from Moscow that the refiners, which are private, not government legal entities, should now put up the cash to protect their assets from Ukrainian drone attacks.

In short, the subject under discussion here bears on the question of whether Russia is really winning the war, not to say whether it has won the war as certain loudmouths interviewed by authoritative youtube channel hosts are saying day after day.

Transcript of NewsX World interview, 6 October

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLoEkNyU4vw

NewsX World: 0:00
Systems used by Ukrainian forces are performing rather poorly in intercepting Russian ballistic missiles. The system has failed to intercept Russian missiles in recent attacks, attributed to the fact that Russia is continuously modernizing its weapons to circumvent American systems. Ukraine has recently received Patriot systems from Israel and is expected to receive more from other European partners. Meanwhile, Moscow’s mayor has stated that Russian air defenses have destroyed drones flying towards the city. Overnight, Russia claimed to have downed around 251 drones launched from Ukraine. As the attacks intensify, the significance of defense systems become more prominent in order to counter the missile and drone threats.

0:45
With us on the broadcast is Gilbert Doctorow, international relations and Russian affairs expert, joining us from Brussels in Belgium. Sir, at the outset, I’d like to ask you what you make of these fresh reports coming in regarding the effectiveness of the Patriot missile systems. They say that it’s not as effective on the ground as interceptions are not as common. What sort of weight would you attribute to these reports?

Doctorow:
Essentially, this is simply confirming what we knew more than a year ago, that the Patriot system is not adequate to stop hypersonic missiles and to stop other missiles which have been redesigned to take into account its capabilities. Therefore, the defensive value of the American patriots, which has been widely discussed when [it] was considered to ship them or not to ship them to Ukraine, this has been vastly exaggerated. The problems that Ukraine faces are more complicated, both at the high end and at the low end of incoming Russian attacks than one would have imagined a year ago.

NewsX World: 2:04
Indeed. And in the meantime, Zelensky, President Zelensky has made a request with the US administration for the procurement of Tomahawk missiles. In your assessment, how long would this procedure take and would it really help Ukraine in the short term?

Doctorow:
There’s been a lot of discussion in the United States and globally, and it was a central issue that came up in Vladimir Putin’s widely televised speech and question-and-answer session in the Valdai discussion group gathering in Sochi last Thursday. The issue of Tomahawks is complex. It is unlikely that the United States has available Tomahawks to move to Ukraine. More likely it would tap its European partners, for example, Spain, to dispatch their Tomahawks.

3:03
The actual range of the Tomahawks that could or would be shipped to Ukraine is debatable. Some say it’s 2,500 kilometers. Some say it’s substantially less, depending on the model of the Tomahawk that’s made available. The issue is much bigger than that. This really is a stress test for Mr. Putin’s government. How do they respond to what could be a very serious escalation of the war by the United States? Mr. Putin himself waffled on this issue last Thursday. At one moment he said that America dispatching the Tomahawks to Ukraine would destroy U.S.-Russian relations, meaning move it to war.

At a later moment, he caught himself and said, no, this dispatch of Tomahawks would do damage to the budding relationship. Well, which is it? The point is that Russia seems undecided, and that has put in question the value of Mr. Putin’s deterrence to the United States and NATO.

NewsX World:
Indeed. And where do you think, considering the fact that tactics have been evolving on the battlefield, on the ground, where do you think hybrid warfare is going to be factored in the short term, especially considering now tanks are being used to launch drones. We’ve seen certain sightings also, we’ve discussed this as well. Where do you think this is headed?

Doctorow: 4:33
Well, the nature of warfare has evolved enormously in the three years of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. At the outset, Russia appeared to have a massive advantage. And I’d say this in terms of not just the manpower, which remains the same. The correlation of populations of the two countries has worked to Russia’s advantage in the course of the war, as so many people have fled Ukraine, making the population up to 40 million, as it was at the outset, but something more like 25 million, while Russia’s population has stood at 145 million and probably has risen to 150 million, keeping in account all of the Ukrainians that are now in what is Russian territory.

5:13
So on the manpower side, not much has changed. On the hardware side, from the very beginning, Russia had something like a 10 to 1 advantage in artillery shells, artillery tubes, in what was initially, in this war of attrition, an artillery war.

In the meantime, drones have come from nowhere to become the real arms of this war. And in drones, Russia and Ukraine are much more closely matched than in the artillery, which defined the conflict for the first two years. Essentially, I mean, you see this very frankly stated on Russian state television when their war correspondents interview soldiers in the field, and the soldiers say, “Oh, well, all those birds, we have to be very careful what we do.”

Those birds, of course, those are Ukrainian attack drones. Men are dying from these drones on both sides. But as I say, The reduction from expensive tanks, armored artillery, armored personnel carriers and so forth to very cheap drones has changed the nature of the war to Ukraine’s advantage. So the signs are more balanced today than they were a year ago.

NewsX World: 6:35
Indeed, sir. And speaking of Putin, apart from, you know, sending a direct warning to the United States, he’s also sent a warning to Europe. He has stated that European nations are trying to seize ships that carry Russian oil to global markets. [It] would amount to piracy and could trigger a forceful response while sharply destabilizing the global oil market. This is something that we were discussing yesterday with regards to the French government’s action against a ship that they claim is a part of Russia’s shadow fleet that was in fact detained by French authorities.

In the meantime, the situation is also becoming tense in the Baltic Sea, as you were pointing out earlier. So could the war protract on this front factoring in Putin’s recent statement?

Doctorow:
There is no reason for the war to be protracted, if Mr. Putin would use the conventional weapons at his disposal. It is entirely within his power to end the war tomorrow by using Oreshniks, hypersonic missiles, to destroy what they call the decision-making centers of Ukraine.

That could happen tomorrow. Mr. Zelensky’s regime could disappear tomorrow if Mr. Putin had the nerve, shall we say, to end the war. Instead, he is protracting the war unnecessarily, causing deaths on both sides.

So this is the issue of the day. Does Russia have determined energetic leader as it seemed to have in the past, or does it have an over-aged and waffling leader, which appeared to be the case last Thursday at Valdai?

NewsX World: 8:16
All right. So with that, I would like to thank you for taking out time sharing your

NewsX World interview of 6 October 2025

US Patriot Missile Systems Struggle Against Russian Ballistic Missiles in Ukraine | NewsX World

This 8 minute long interview from yesterday covers the hottest issues in the Ukraine war at this moment:  what value if any does the Patriot system have in Ukrainian defense today, what would delivery of Tomahawks to Kiev by Donald Trump mean for Ukrainian prospects in the war, how drone warfare has taken over from artillery warfare in the past year leveling the playing field between Russian and Ukrainian forces, and whether Vladimir Putin has the nerve to respond effectively to the acts of piracy by France and others directed against its shadow fleet of oil tankers.

Transcript of News X World interview, 5 October

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADl-ifTpYtw

NewsX World: 0:00
–Israel to scale back operations in the Palestinian territory. All right viewers, those are the headlines and our top focus, what’s happening in Europe. The governor of Lviv region of Ukraine, Maxim Kozitsky, has now stated that a Russian drone and missile strike on Ukraine’s western Lviv region overnight killed two people. He’s also added that two other people had been wounded. Meanwhile, at a late-night attack on Ukraine’s southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, One person has unfortunately lost their life and nine others are reported to be injured.

Meanwhile, Poland, a NATO member, has stated that it scrambled aircrafts to ensure its air safety after Russia launched airstrikes on Ukraine. Ukraine meanwhile has reported that missiles and drones are raining down on the Lviv region near the Polish border.

0:55
With us on the broadcast is Gilbert Doctorow, international relations and Russian affairs expert, joining us from Brussels. Thank you so much for taking your time and speaking to us on NewsX.

Civilians are now losing their lives. We’ve seen yesterday as well, there was an attack on a train station that claimed the lives of 30 people. Apart from this, energy infrastructure is being targeted within Ukraine as well. And what do you think will be the consequences of this, particularly with regards to energy security in the global market?

Doctorow: 1:30
The Russian attacks on Lviv may not be understood properly by much of the audience, who aren’t necessarily experienced in the geography of Ukraine. So let me just say something obvious.

This is next to the Polish border. And Lviv has been a marshalling point for incoming military hardware coming through Poland, because Poland is across the border, from the West, from the United States and elsewhere. They fly in or bring in by ship the armaments into Poland, which are then transported by rail down to the border and crossing over into the region.

For that reason, because of the proximity to Poland and to avoid having an escalation and sharply worsening relations with a NATO country like Poland, Russia in the past did not hit hard the Lviv region. It was spared. And that is paradoxical, because the whole problem in relations between Russia and Ukraine [is] from that region.

The Lviv region is the home to the Ukrainian nationalists. That is to say, the Lviv region, which was various times over history, I mean recent history, going back 150 years, was in Polish-Austrian possession and then became part of Ukraine after World War II. This area was a center for the Ukrainian language. It was propagated from the land of the 19th century by the Austrians, who supported the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian nationalism as a way of undermining the Russian empire in that region.

3:26
So the Lviv region has very great historical and present-day importance, present-day as a logistic center, present-day as an intellectual or ideological center of the whole Maidan movement and the anti-Russian direction of the Ukrainian leadership in Kiev. That it is being struck in such a cruel way now is an escalation by the Russians in response to the never-ending escalation towards Russia by NATO and the United States.

NewsX World:
Indeed, and speaking of NATO, so far we’ve seen their response has been very calibrated, even though Poland did scramble jets and Operation Eastern Sentry is in place. There’s not been any major protraction of the war that has taken place. Is NATO now toeing the line very carefully in order to avoid escalating the war even further?

Doctorow:
I wouldn’t say that. The war has many different dimensions. And NATO right now is escalating in a different area, but even more dangerously than what we see in the daily news coming from the Lviv for example. What I have in mind is the Baltic. The European nations, and with France in the lead, are now trying to impose both a maritime and an air blockade on Russia over the Baltic Sea.

4:53
And that, the arrest of what was assumed to be by France a Russian gray fleet oil carrier that Europe sanctions, the interception this past week by France, who arrested the captain and one of his mates and interrogated them for some time before releasing them, that is an act of war. It was done in neutral waters, and if Russia wanted to present Europe, France in particular, with the declaration of war, it would be under the UN Charter entitled to do that. So escalation is underway, but it’s not where you’re looking. Escalation is now in the Baltic.

NewsX World: 5:37
All right. I request you to stay on with us. We’re tracking some further updates.

##################################################

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8fgLRVbvN8

NewsX World: 0:02
Lithuania’s Vilnius airport was forced to shut down late on the 4th of October. Now according to reports, authorities spotted 13 suspected contraband balloons flying towards the airfield. The airspace remained closed until 4.30 A.M. Local time.

Now flying objects were also seen near Baltogivok, just 25 kilometers from the border with Belarus. This comes amid growing concerns over repeated airspace violations across Europe. Unidentified drones have caused airport disruptions in Denmark, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands in recent weeks. Russia is increasingly suspected of being behind the incidents. In fact, just last month, Russian drones breached Polish and Romanian airspace, and on September 19, three Russian jets entered Estonian territory.

0:53
NATO officials, meantime, are on high alert. Still with us on the broadcast is Mr. Gilbert Doctorow. Interesting developments. You referred to France. There was a meeting that has recently taken place in Copenhagen, where French President Emmanuel Macron, he referred to the shadow fleet, but he also spoke a lot about the drones as well stating that NATO will give a befitting reply and will shoot down any drones or any jets that are in fact, you know, breaching sovereign territory airspace as well. In light of this and the actions we’ve seen France take recently, do you think other countries, other NATO nations will follow suit as well?

Doctorow: 1:37
Only if Mr. Putin stops playing pussycat and shows himself to be a lion. His address last Thursday to the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi indicated that Mr. Putin has lost his way and is inviting attacks like the one that you have mentioned by his “softly, softly” approach in the face of brazen acts of escalation by NATO. The talk– there’s hysteria now within Europe over the supposed violation of European NATO airspace by the Russians. And this has two dimensions to it. That is the jet fighters that you mentioned in passing and the drones.

All of this, let’s be perfectly clear. This is programmatic. It is staged. I would bet money on it. Let’s say a case of champagne with any of your listeners, that this is being staged by the MI6. The Brits are in charge of dirty tricks. This is very much an hysteria generated from London the same way as the hysteria “Russia Russia Russia” against Mr. Trump into in 2016 was facilitated by MI6 and the Steele dossier and all of that complete fabrication.

3:04
The Russians did not send any drones against Poland. That is proven to anyone who is interested in facts by the nature of the drones, which were not attack drones, but were decoy drones, and which were very likely taken from downed Russian drones in Ukraine, reconstructed very easily, and sent towards Poland, towards Romania, and elsewhere by the Ukrainians for the sake of fomenting a war, a NATO-Russia war, which would relieve Ukraine from its present travails.

So you, I know you make your efforts to be objective, but you have involuntarily, I would say, repeated the propaganda coming out of London when you say Russian drones attacked Poland. Nonsense.

NewsX World: 4:00
And so quick follow up to that, we’ve recently seen elections take place in the Czech Republic, billionaire Andrzej Babis’s populist ENO party has now come to power. The EU is slightly wary of this, considering the fact that he is adopting a more protectionist position. We’ve recently in fact seen the EU approving a tranch, many tranches of aid to Ukraine, amounting to 140 billion euros. And this was in discussion for what, a couple of years. But Hungary in particular was stalling. Are there now fears that the new government in the Czech Republic that has now come to power would follow in Hungary’s footsteps?

Doctorow: 4:46
I’m very pleased that you raised the question of Mr. Babish’s evident victory in yesterday’s elections in the Czech Republic. That is of great importance. It raises the number of EU member states who do not accept the decisions that Ursula von der Leyen and her team are forcing upon Europe, with the support and help of NATO, to do everything possible to escalate and continue the war. The 145 billion that you mentioned would continue the war for three more years.

Now, what does that mean? It means that Europe would be looking to create a bridge, a continuing war in Ukraine, while it rearms and prepares for an all-out war with Russia three to four years from now. So this is a very important development. Mr. Babich is against it, just as are his neighbors in what was called the Visegrad Four.

The three members that are in agreement on the approach to Russia and the war in Ukraine are Mr. Orban in Hungary, Mr. Fico in the Slovak Republic, and now Mr. Babish in the Czech Republic. That is very important. Poland is the odd man out in the Visegrad, but that can be changed.

NewsX World: 6:06
All right, sir. I request you to stay on with us. We’re tracking further updates coming in. We’re now learning that Russian President Vladimir Putin has congratulated Tajikistan’s leader, Imam Ali Rahman, on his 73rd birthday and has emphasized upon the importance of their upcoming meeting in Dushan.

Now Putin has expressed confidence that the meeting would strengthen the already close Russia-Tajikistan partnership, focusing on expanding bilateral, regional and international ties. The leaders will discuss various key issues during their meeting, which will coincide with the second Central Asia-Russia summit and the CIS Council of Heads of State. Putin is looking forward to constructive talks that will further enhance ties between the two nations and boost cooperation within the Commonwealth of Independent States.

6:58
Still with us on the broadcast is Mr. Gilbert Doctorow. Of course, Central Asia being in focus at the moment. You had earlier pointed out that Europe in the long term is looking at rearming and preparing for another war. In the meantime, could we see Putin sort of shifting his strategic assets, sensitive assets further east as well in order to protect them? And what role does Central Asia have to play in this?

Doctorow: 7:28
I wouldn’t say that Mr. Putin is changing or pivoting towards Central Asia. I would say the question is how Central Asia pivots or does not towards Russia. The fact is that despite their common past in the Community of Independent States, which was a successive organization to the Soviet Union, all the countries of Central Asia blow hot and cold, as respect relations with Russia.

When it looked like Russia was not doing well in the war, they were all flirting with the United States, where Mr. Biden’s administration was doing everything possible to win each of these countries away from the friendship and close ties with Russia and China. Then when it became apparent that Russia is defeating NATO and is winning the war in Ukraine, they all suddenly thought or thought again about their close friendship with Russia and drew close to them, which is what this latest news bulletin that you’ve given is all about.

When Russia is winning, they’re all good friends. When Russia doesn’t look like it’s winning, then they start looking for new romance partners in the United States and elsewhere.

NewsX World: 8:37
Indeed, and we’re seeing some rather interesting developments also take place in the Caucasus region as well. There are protests taking place in Georgia at the moment against the results of municipal elections there. In fact, the protesters are contesting the fact that the government is pro-Russia.

Doctorow:
I wouldn’t say it’s pro-Russia, it’s pro-Georgia. And that is what outsiders, particularly in the United States, have not liked at all. The Georgian administration was, in the last five years, never friendly to Russia. They didn’t– for a long time they canceled direct flights between Tbilisi and Moscow. The trade relations were minimal.

9:26
So the notion that Georgian leadership was divided between the friends of Russia and the friends of the United States is a false presentation. The country was divided between the friends of Georgia and the enemies of Georgia. The enemies of Georgia, who are out in the streets demonstrating and who probably got their pay packets each day from the Soros funds of one kind or another– formally, they receive them from USAID– they are there to overthrow the legitimately elected government of Georgia, which is pro-Georgian.

It does not want to be drawn into the war with Russia as Mr. Sakashvili was when he was in power in Georgia, and almost cost his nation its existence in 2008. So they want just to be left alone to look after their commercial and geopolitical interests.

NewsX World: 10:24
All right. So with that, I would like to thank you
for taking our time, sharing your insights with us on NewsX World.

Important interview this morning on News X World (India)

This morning, I was interviewed by this leading Indian global broadcaster in sevedal segments. The link to the first segment is provided here below. It is about yesterday’s Russian missile and drone attacks on Lviv in Western Ukraine that caused several deaths and much destruction. In the interview I explain why Lviv was spared the worst of Russian attacks till now and why this escalation by Russia is taking place.

https://youtu.be/ADl-ifTpYtw?si=ujaUzWxns8VgEY-J   5 minutes

The other segments dealt with continuing NATO complaints over alleged Russian violations of their sovereign territory; what yesterday’s victory of Andrej Babis’s ANO party means for the EU balance between the war-mongering countries in the majority and the growing minority who oppose them; the closer ties between Russia and Tajikistan; and what sense to make of the street demonstrations in Tbilisi, Georgia during this time of municipal elections.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8fgLRVbvN8   10 minutes

I salute the News X World production team for preparing a substantial discussion of the key news of the day.

Transcript of ‘Conversation with Glenn Diesen,’ 4 October

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQdNcL7XkU8

Diesen: 0:00
Hi everyone and welcome back. We are joined by Gilbert Doctorow, historian, international affairs analyst and also author of the Russia-Ukraine War or more specifically _War Diaries, the Russia-Ukraine War_. I always carry it with me. It’s an excellent book, and I really recommend it.

So welcome back to the program. We see that President Putin just gave a speech at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi. Many people had waited for this speech with some suspense because of the dangerous times we live in and also at this annual Valdai discussions he usually devotes four hours to discussing all world events. So many eyes were on this meeting, and also because of course the proxy war between NATO and Russia continues to escalate as the Ukrainian army suffers more on the battlefield. We see now discussions of Tomahawks, the US providing long-range missiles. No, it’s also long range intelligence for doing the long-range strikes.

1:07
We see _Financial Times_ reporting that the British are already engaged in attacks deep inside Russia in cooperation with the Ukrainians. So there’s a growing pressure, is my point, on Putin to restore Russia’s deterrence. And to a large extent, you feel he did not deliver on this. Am I correct?

Doctorow:
Yes, you’re correct. I was deeply disappointed in his presence at the Valdai Discussion Club meeting in Sochi. Although I watched it from afar, there was complete coverage with some delay, provided by several different YouTube channels. I can’t say that I saw all four hours of it. It took a great deal of patience to do that. And I doubt that too many other of my peers spent more than a short time watching it and using the subject to project what they wanted to hear, but in fact did not hear.

When I looked yesterday at YouTube, and of course YouTube presents, it has AI-directed proposals to you and suggestions to you, knowing what your preferences are. So each day I got a menu of YouTube channels and they were consistently speaking about Putin threatens, Putin warns, Putin denounces. And they made it seem as though he was doing what everyone expected him to do, but in fact he did not do. Or to the extent that he issued warnings, they were so vague, so indefinite, that they have no meaning. Moreover, the most important fact is that the warning, the very clear red line that he described one year ago, oh, one year, two months ago, in several interviews, there’s a red line about use of long-range American or other missiles to strike deep within the Russian Federation.

He said very clearly that any country supplying this, And first of all, the United States, because the missiles in question, they weren’t named as Tomahawks, but it was known that all of the missiles striking Russia from Ukraine are in fact targeted and controlled by NATO member states. He said specifically that if long-range missiles were supplied to Ukraine and they struck Russia, then Russia would consider the [countries] supplying, delivering such missiles to Ukraine to be co-belligerents, co-belligerents for which Russia would reserve the right to strike back militarily.

3:55
That’s not what we heard on Thursday. That very clear and very strict warning to the United States was erased. Instead, what we heard was, well, if the United States supplies these missiles, they really won’t change the situation on the battlefield, even though they’re awesome. They are outdated. And more importantly, what they will do is spoil our budding relationship, cancel out the light at the end of the tunnel. Oh my goodness, that is not calling the United States a co-belligerent. If that were all that Putin said at this meeting, I would maybe try to find excuses for him.

But things were much worse from my perspective, and none of this is being carried by my peers. My peers on some very widely watched programs are speaking about Putin as a gentleman, Putin as the adult in the room and so forth. They’re saying what they said about him for years and they’re ignoring intentionally or not, they’re ignoring what happened at Valdai, Kekwelo. Namely, his so obvious attempts to ingratiate himself with Donald Trump that I would say he sacrificed Russian sovereignty then and there.

5:18
What do we name? Well, there was his lengthy homage to Charlie Kirk, the lengthy discussion of the son of a CIA director, directoress, who died as a Russian soldier fighting for Russia in Donbass. But more to it. His answer to a question from the audience, “What do you think about President Trump’s 20-point peace plan?” And he said, that is Putin said, “This may surprise you, but I approve of it. And I think that it has a lot of merit. Of course, I would add to it that it should acknowledge specifically the two-state solution.”

And then he went on to say, because the question was also asked about the designation of Tony Blair to be on the governing board, the interim governing board, I think he called it a peace board, which he, Trump, would head that would manage affairs in Gaza until such time as it was determined that the Palestinians could govern themselves. Well, Tony Blair on the peace board. Tony Blair, the unindicted war criminal, the man who encouraged Bush to fund his murderous and illegal invasion of Iraq against all the provisions of the United Nations Charter.

7:02
This man was then praised by Vladimir Putin as an experienced statesman and a person with whom he had personal contact and rapport, going back to the start of the new millennium when he spent one or more days in Blair’s residence and they both had shared coffee while in their pajamas. A touching note. But I just wonder how we can reconcile this statement with Mr. Putin as the defender of the Third World, of the members of BRICS, of the Palestinians, it is reconcilable. It is, as I say, a sacrifice of Russian sovereignty for which Russia may pay very dear. And we also, because it puts us in line for World War Three.

Diesen: 8:06
Yeah. Well, that was, one might, I guess the critical takeaway as well was that, well, it looked like the main message he wanted to get across to signal Russia’s main objective was for Russia and the United States to continue improving their relations while at the same time making it clear that Russia is now done with the Europeans because, well, he used words like describing them as weirdos and they, well, there’s no, I think everyone now recognizes strategic vacuum in Europe and there’s, he doesn’t see any way of fixing this, but also no desire either. So this is kind of the main thing he wanted to go for.

But I did share some of your ideas or thoughts on this because I was there at Valdai, and the day before we met with Lavrov, and he was also asked about Tomahawks and he came with this dismissive attitude as well. “They’re not going to change anything.” But what happened, but this is the, you know, okay, you exude confidence, but this is not what you want to say if you want to uphold a deterrent. It almost sounds like they, invite it in. And I think this can be very dangerous because if they do have more impact than expected, then Russia will strike back, and then we have war.

9:30
If the Tomahawks go in, the Germans will then see, “Oh, maybe we can go too now.” And the Germans will definitely get hit by Russia. So I think like almost a soft tone, but it might nonetheless escalate the risk of war. Same as you mentioned celebrating the Americans. So Charlie Kirk you know is a hero just like Russian conservatives.

He praised Americans fighting with Russia in Ukraine. And Trump of course I think he leaned a bit heavy into how easy it is to work with him and authentic, all of this. I think the European experience is that you don’t want to bow too heavy towards Trump because he’s the kind of guy who will, you know, buy his enemies and sell his friends. He’s very, well, if you praise him too much, he owns you. So I think this is what the international system he’s going for as well.

10:32
And the effective thing is what the Indians did is they pushed back a little bit. So I think this can only possibly embolden Trump further. So I don’t think that was helpful either. And the one area I would maybe disagree with you is the issue of Tony Blair though, because he kind of expressed some loathing of Blair and then the only positive thing he could say was, yeah, he has good coffee. I mean, it’s a, it’s a worth, it’s not a great compliment to give to someone, but you know, maybe I was reading it wrong.

Just as a last note, I spoke to different people in the audience there before and after this, you know, a lot of ambassadors and generals, mostly foreign, and they are, you know, so academic. Many had the same takeaway though, that they expected Russia to really have to come in with a message that they’re going to restore their deterrent, authentically so. And that’s what I heard before, and that’s also what I heard afterwards was it didn’t deliver what they had expected.

Doctorow:
We are in a world of real-politik and there’s very little room for personal rapport and for nostalgia for public relations in the past or supposed cultural affinities. This is a dynamic world that is changing, constantly in flux.

And that is something that Russia’s partners have to consider and that Mr. Putin did not help by his presentation in Valdai. I was on Indian radio yesterday, and the Indians were following Mr. Putin’s remarks at Valdai, at Sochi, with respect to his backing India in the face of American secondary sanctions and making reference to their long history of rapport with Russia going back to Soviet Union, and Soviet support for India in moments of need like in 1972. All of this is fine, but if you paid attention to this backtracking that I mentioned a moment ago, from hard red lines to very mushy, fuzzy lines, you wonder what Mr. Putin’s guarantees are worth. Well, I don’t have to wonder. You don’t think they’re worth much.

And that’s certainly true of Iran. I was on Iran’s Press TV and the question is, what do you make of Mr. Putin when he is backing the Trump plan? For that matter, so is India. So Iran in BRICS is in a tough spot there. Their close allies are on the other side of the fence on an issue that’s of great importance to Iran.

13:32
But there is, the personal aspect has been brought up repeatedly, that “I had good rapport with Trump and he’s a good conversationalist and he listens.” All that’s fine. But in the big order of things, when Putin tries so hard to ingratiate himself with Trump, he can only earn contempt, which is not a good basis for a durable relationship.

Diesen:
I was also wondering if Russia is being lulled into a false sense of security a bit as well, because he spent quite a lot of time discussing why the war more or less almost is over because he looked at the attrition rates and he looks at how the losses the Ukrainian army is taking, both men and material, and why it’s not possible to replenish this. And so more or less, you know, going with numbers and statistics to show that this is coming to an end, likely sooner than later.

But I guess my pushback against this would be that I agree with this assessment, but there’s other variables at play which won’t remain constant over time. That is that the Europeans are preparing for more direct warfare, they’re also seizing ships, discussion of blocking trade routes, which is an act of war. There’s this threats against Kaliningrad. It’s this possibility that the Russian economy might start to do worse a few months from now. Who knows?

15:13
It’s possible that China and India can’t stand up to American pressures forever. I mean, I’m not saying this will happen, but there’s a lot of unknown variables. And if you’re in a good place now, which I think Russia is in this war, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to be in a good place necessarily in six months or 12 months. So it does beg the question why, why would they still slow-balling this whole thing. I mean, they’ve got current success now, but if something goes wrong, given that Russia sees this an existential threat, then they would have to break out the nuclear weapons if things would start to go terribly wrong. So I’m just saying it seems strange to me that this will be the core variable to focus on.

Doctorow: 16:00
They’d have to break out nuclear weapons or they’d have to change their leader. That should not be off the table for discussion. But I think Putin was looking in the wrong direction, so was Lavrov. The issue is not whether the Tomahawks or the German missiles, Taurus, will change the situation on the battlefield.

No, they will change public opinion, which is where war must begin and end. If Russia is struck by a Tomahawk, if a major population center is struck by a Taurus, well, who cares what’s going on on the Donbas front, that will change the whole war entirely and it will go very badly for the Russian leadership. The public, which is now living very comfortably, earning salaries three times what they got before the war started, will be enraged by a strike that kills civilians in any major city, enabled by this lax response that we heard in Sochi to American plans to send in Tomahawks. And I agree completely with you that the real threat from the Tomahawks, which may very well never be supplied, is that this opens the door to Merz to do what Scholz didn’t dare do, because they’re saying, waiting for the Americans to go through the door first. And practically speaking, Donald Trump just went through that door, even if he never supplies a single Tomahawk.

17:43
Which means that we may, there’s not a question of delivering the Taurus to Kiev. Surely they’re already there in big numbers. The question is implementing them, using them. And if that happens, yes, well, who knows what Mr. Putin will say then. Maybe it’ll just spoil relations with Germany. He backs away from destroying the one factory in Germany that makes these terrorist missiles. It opens a lot of uncertainty. And instead of a clarification from the speech that Dmitry Peskov said would be important, we have new uncertainties.

Diesen:
Yeah, there was a lot of ambiguity. Again, I’m not sure how to interpret the optimism though, because if he’s too calm, too optimistic, it kind of signals that the guard is down, we’re not really going to do anything. Or if it’s just, maybe he knows something we don’t know if this is the reason behind it. Because I go to the Valdai every year and I’ve never seen him in such a good mood. He kept making jokes the whole time. He was such a loose, relaxed attention.

And also, you know, afterwards when President Putin goes backstage, I hear he’s away from the audience and the cameras, he’s still super optimistic and positive and like happy. So I’m not sure. He’s not putting on a, I guess, a show. I think it’s authentic. But as you say, if he’s like, Tomahawk’s this, nothing is that important.

19:33
It’s kind of strange because again, back to the thing when it’s kind of praising Trump. I’m glad they get along well, and it’s important to when the two largest nuclear power they have to be able to get along and reduce tensions. But on the other hand, this is a country which is now more or less at war with Russia. It’s their missiles, with their intelligence, their targeting data, the war being planned by their generals, killing thousands of Russians. And they’re now talking about escalating, so opening the doors to flooding Ukraine with more weapons. And if the only response is, yeah, he’s a good guy, We can work with him.

I mean, it’s, there has to be a balance somewhere where, yes, we’ll be, we’ll work with him. We happy for good relations. So we can end this war. But at the same time, if there has to be a deterrent somewhere, I didn’t necessarily see that balance, I guess.

Doctorow: 20:31
Well, the, it’s not my, discovery, the Russians say, hopefully that Trump is surrounded by enemies. And although they may have a rapport with him and understanding with him, they are aware– this is what comes out of Russian state television– that Trump may not be able to carry through his programs, particularly his reconciliation with Russia. Therefore, for Vladimir Putin to put so much trust in what he believes is an agreement with Donald Trump to normalize relations is strange to say the least.

There are three, I see at least three major threats to Russia. We discussed a while ago, this is for Tomahawks. You mentioned in passing the second threat, which is the blockade of the Baltic, interruption of trade routes. And we’ve seen various manifestations of that. That’s this whole hysteria over supposed Russian drones everywhere in the states bordering the Baltic by the way, and not just in places like Romania. That is the detention of the captain and some mate on a gray fleet Russian tanker by France. This is another manifestation of the attempt to intimidate Russia, to interrupt its trade routes and to establish an air and maritime blockade on the Russian use of the Baltic Sea. That is, as you said, an act of war.

22:12
What I would have expected is for Vladimir Putin to say, “Gentlemen, you pursue this, and by international law, that is an act of war, and we will declare war on you the next day.” He didn’t do that.

Now, all he has to do is to say the obvious: “Gentlemen, if you use, as you intend to use, the 145 billion euros in Russian state assets that are now frozen in euro here in Belgium as collateral for a loan to Ukraine, which by your own terms will not be repaid unless Russia agrees to pay tribute, to capitulate and to pay war damages to Ukraine. That is effectively confiscating our state assets. Under international law, that is an act of war, and we will declare war on you if you proceed with this.”

This would be normal. That would be a threat. What he said in his Q&A, these weren’t threats. They were mulling over what should we do. It was a variation on Maria Zakharova’s constant refrain. Can you imagine? Well, yes, we can imagine almost anything now.

Diesen:
Yeah, well, I guess the same as Tomahawks can be applied to the… Well, it turned out not to be a Russian ship, but irrespective of it, a ship was seized by the French. The French thought it was Russian and their objectives are more or less open. They want to disrupt the Russian trade. That’s the same reason the Europeans are also participating in striking deep inside Russia, its energy infrastructure. They also want to disrupt this transportation corridors. But again, this is an act of war and President Trump, sorry, President Putin, he made the point that, well, this is piracy.

It’s like, well, yes, it is. But condemning it and pointing out how dangerous is one thing. But again, if the main objective was to restore deterrent, that was a little bit left out of the conversation, because if it’s just one ship and then it’s never again yeah why go down the route of escalation especially when you’re winning on the battlefield. But the whole point there is things that the precedent, he siezes a ship, he releases it soon thereafter, no foul, then there’s no reactions from the Russians. Well, now you can do this again.

I mean, this has been the lessons of sending weapons. Remember the beginning, the West didn’t want to send any tanks because this was seen as being overly provocative and, you know, making the West directly involved. The F-16s would mean World War III, but now we’re just openly speaking about participating in striking deep inside Russia. I guess my main fear is the illusion of escalation control because it seems that we might not have the same assumptions about how we move up and down the escalation ladder. For the West, we slowly go a little bit up, we pull down if there’s too many fierce reactions, but the Russians, they tend to make, do nothing and then come up, come with a big response.

I think it was around the Crimean speech in 2014. President Putin made this comment that, you know, you treat us like a spring, you pushed us further and further back. At some point, we’re just going to lash back hard. That’s not how the West escalates. We do this slow incrementalism, setting precedents.

I’m just wondering if we think that the Russians are weak, but they’re actually building up an arsenal, Oreshniks or something, preparing to hammer us. I would like to see more certainty, as you said, more specific, setting the rules for proxy war because everything is unclear and that creates a lot of risks for miscalculation, I think.

Doctorow: 26:18
The issue here is not whether or not Western military experts properly evaluate Russia’s military potential. The issue here is how political experts advising the leadership in Europe and the United States evaluate the determination and risk-taking readiness of Russian leadership. There is the weak point.

As I said, this is a parallel to the question of whether or not these missiles will change the situation on the battlefield. Let’s assume they don’t, but it will change the political atmosphere which runs the war. If there’s a strike against Petersburg or strike against Moscow, all hell will break loose in Russian political life. And as to strikes deep inside Russia, they are already going on. As you mentioned at the outset, thanks to particularly British assistance, the Ukrainians are striking, effectively destroying Russian refineries and creating local areas, particularly in the southwest as I understand in Belgorod and probably in Korsk, maybe nearby Russian oblasts.

27:39
They have created a serious shortage of fuel. Now this is not getting proper attention in alternative media. In fact, it’s getting no attention in alternative media. But it is a reality. Now why Russia’s response has been to step up its strikes on Ukrainian oil production, gas production, gas pipeline, pumping centers, and so forth.

These strikes, of course, have been denounced in Western media, as strikes against civilian infrastructure, and nobody says a word about what they’re a response to, because there is a kind of omerta, kind of conspiracy of silence, to describe in the public agora what is happening to Russian infrastructure, which Russian drivers of cars in the locale that is affected understand perfectly well. Why it’s not reported by us is an open question.

Diesen: 28:48
I think the one key thing that could destabilize is also the assumption we have in the West often that Putin is a dictator. You know, he wields all power.

Now, well, this is kind of important because if you think that he’s okay, he’s not going to retaliate in a big way, he’s going to let this one go. As you said, that’s an assumption that it’s all up to him. But you know, there’s a lot of other political forces in Russia and if they, as you suggest, get upset enough, that either creates, well, it creates an immense amount of pressure on Putin. I used to write articles around 2015-16 about how the military and the key opposition were seeing Putin as being weak because they said, you know, we see that NATO, you know, we try to reach out a hand, we see that they’re not taking it. Instead, they’re building up capabilities along the border.

They’re preparing the Ukrainians for a war. And, you know, again, this back in 2015-16, and the main argument was we should prepare for war instead because it is coming. But, yeah, forward to today or to 2014, it would be impossible for him then not to react. And I think the same happens now. If we read his body language or his words and think that we can step over a red line, it’s not up to him necessarily.

There will be a demand coming from the political system that this is unacceptable. And I don’t know, do you see him possibly put in being undermined, this political credibility by taking too soft of a stance?

Doctorow:
Well, I’ve said something that is unspeakable for the last couple of weeks, that he may be removed from power. And yes, people say, oh, how could it happen? Who would do it? He has 80% popularity ratings. Well, a year ago, I would have said that this was indeed impossible. There were people like John Helmer, who was saying back then, people like Paul Craig Roberts, who was saying back then that Putin is leading us to World War III. In the case of Helmer, he paid attention to the general staff, saying there’s a lot of unhappiness in general staff with the go-slowly, turn-the-other-cheek approach of Putin to the way the war is being conducted. I didn’t believe that for a minute.

I thought that Helmer was getting information, if he was getting any real information from very few discontents who were not actually in the active service. However, considering what’s going on now, considering that Russia is facing three major threats that we discussed on this program, [1] the extension of this $145 billion to Ukraine, which can extend the war for now three years. [2] The long range missiles, which, either German or United States, can be used for political advantage to undermine the government by creating popular hysteria in Russia. It’s kind of terrorism. [3] And of course, there’s blockade in the Baltic.

32:09
These are major threats. And I can see where Russian patriots close to the government would look for a way out. Now I have in mind where and why. I’ve done my own poll. Your program, “Judging Freedom” and a few other, one or two other very important alternative media interview programs are now being systematically translated, not translated, dubbed into Russian using AI techniques by a YouTube channel called Parusky in Russian.

And they have, they provide data as a YouTube channel on the number of hits or views and the number of thumbs up, the number of comments and the numbers come pretty big. My Wednesday interview with Judge Napolitano had, the last time I looked, 78,000 views. It had approximately 920 reader comments, which were almost all negative. That’s to say, we Westerners are idiots, we can’t possibly understand Russia, and our president is the best president of the world. Okay, fine.

33:26
So I’d say 900 no’s for the idea that the conduct of the war is going badly. But 1,800 thumbs up. That’s to say those who agreed with the notion that the war is being badly conducted outnumbered those who love Putin at any price. Two to one. That’s not reflected in the 80-percent approval ratings that the Russian state pollsters or official pollsters give us.

I’m sure those are completely accurate, but they’re asking the wrong questions. So there is, I believe, taking under 75,000, that’s a lot of people, that’s much more than any usual poll takes to find out public opinion. And two to one, the votes who bother to write in what they think, most active people, they are two to one against the conduct of the war as it is today. So could there be at higher levels of say the FSB or other agencies at the top, [objection] to what Mr. Putin is doing?

Of course there could be. I’m just an observer here, and I have no recommendations to anybody in Russia or outside Russia what should happen. But I do think that we in the West as careful observers cannot ignore the possibility that he will be removed.

Diesen: 34:55
Well, I think so far, yes, it’s stable given that he’s been, well, he’s attributed for saving Russia. Even, you know, as Gorbachev once said as well, that if he hadn’t been for Putin, Russia would probably have been destroyed. And I guess they look at other variables as well. For example, Moscow now is truly one of the nicest cities in the world. It certainly was not in the 90s. So the way that Russia has recovered and strengthened itself, to a large extent, his credit.

But I do agree with you, though. I get the sentiment that many people do not agree with this slow, attrition war. But it’s not even just the Russians. Like I said before, I was speaking with all these different ambassadors and generals from not just China, India, but also from the West. No military there, but only diplomats from the West. But nonetheless, a bit of confusion was why Russia hasn’t attempted a capitation strike.

I mean, they know where everyone [is], they have their weapons. It seems to be an issue of intent, of not wanting to do it. So, but given all the human suffering both on the Ukrainian and the Russian side that this war brings. And also that it brings us closer and closer to World War III as the Europeans are now pulling themselves into this conflict. It seems, well, as more than one of these military and diplomatic people told me that they asked, you know, why they couldn’t understand why Oreshniks haven’t rained down upon the government buildings in Kiev, which sounds brutal.

36:47
But they saw this, well, what’s the alternative? Because Russia can’t end it. That’s capitulation. So if the option is between decapitation strikes and this slow grinding attrition war, Why not even try to go for a decapitation strike like the Americans and the Israelis tried in Iran? I don’t really know the answer to this. Again, I’m not a military strategist, but it is strange, given how many casualties have been ramped up over the past three and a half years.

Doctorow: 37:22
The man has been in power for 25 years. That is a very long period. I think we’re witnessing the end of an era. His wonderful foreign minister is tired. He’s tired. The man, I don’t think he spends more than one night a week in his own bed. He’s traveling constantly. The recent images I’ve seen of Sergei Lavrov, the man is finished. So this is an end-of-era phenomenon that we’re witnessing, but I don’t see my peers recognizing that.

Doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. Maybe he’ll link, he’ll go serve his term until the end, But I see cracks, and I see non-performance. I see a lack of vigor in his response to these latest challenges from the West that [is] troubling.

Diesen: 38:17
Yeah, no, I am, well, what I found fascinating this year was usually after he gives these speeches every year at the Valdai Discussion Club, the assessments are often, you know, everyone seems to more or less end up around the same interpretation.

But what I thought this year was kind of unique is how different people perceived it. Some saw this as being the strict warning to the West, like, you know, don’t cross here, this is our deterrent, while others have interpreted it as being so, yeah, being soft to the point that they might just pull back the red lines and thus embolden NATO to escalate. So it is, it’s very, and I never left this speech as being more confused, I guess, than I was now, which is not great when you’re a country at war, you want to be very specific, you want to communicate clearly and what you’re communicating should be credible and you should have the capabilities as well to back it up. This is the three C’s of deterrence, communication, credibility and capabilities.

Doctorow:
You were there on the spot, and your reading of the audience and the notables in that audience of course is the most valuable, more than anything that I can find on television, and yet … and yet, there were things obvious.

Diesen:
But I’m wondering if there’s something, again, the way he often speaks, because he talks about the Europeans getting more aggressive and he points to the polls and then he reads a poem. He talks about how Blair is a horrible person, but he makes good coffee. And I’m wondering now if he, in this super optimistic, friendly, let’s-all-get-along, cumbaya speech, if he was at the same time– If I turn on the news, the Russians are just hammering Ukraine even harder and harder. Their missile attacks seem to have learned a way of working around the Patriot systems which can’t intersect properly and more so.

40:41
So things seem to be getting, hardening dramatically on the battlefield and at the same time he seems to be lowering his guard. So again, I’m not sure if there’s something I didn’t pick up on.

Doctorow:
The situation on the battlefield is not a hundred percent covered in the West, not in alternative media for sure. There was apparently a rather big and initially successful counter-attack by Ukraine in the Sumy region. I’ve seen very little about that.

What we see now on Russian state television is the counter-counter attack and how they’ve driven them back and recovered. They never described how they lost. So to say that this is one way that the Russians are really crushing the Ukrainians, I think it’s not quite accurate. Yes, in places the Ukrainians are falling back. They still have a long way to go to reach the Dniepr.

41:39
And this is the point. If 145 billion comes to Ukraine, they will hire any number of mercenaries. They will find ways to embolden their soldiers, and the war is going to drag on until Europe is ready to fight Russia, which would be too damn late.

42:00
Well, thank you so much for sharing your views on this. As I said, speaking with the different people there, their interpretation was so widely different that– and I must say, there were several who were leaning towards your thoughts as well, that this was definitely not what they had expected. So I’m not sure if you have any final thoughts before we wrap this up.

Doctoorow:
No, just a great appreciation to you for sharing what you saw, because you were there. And for widening to your audience a variety of views on issues that they should see from many different angles.

Diesen:
Yeah. Well, just on that, I did ask a question to Putin there about how the geopolitical consequences of Finland and Sweden joining NATO, but then specifically in terms of the Arctic and the Baltic seas, now that tensions are, or pressure is mounting on Kaliningrad.

But again, in the spirit of the good mood, he didn’t touch on the Kaliningrad. But this is the US general threatened to invade. So again, I’m not sure if his efforts to lighten the mood resulted in ignoring some of the severity of what’s happening. Again, I’m not sure how to read President Putin either in terms of his performance there. But anyways, it’s worth watching in full, even though he does go on for four hours. So, yeah. Anyways, thanks again for joining us.

Doctorow: 43:32
My pleasure. Thank you.