- 5/8/2025
Join Judge Andrew Napolitano in an exclusive conversation with Prof. Gilbert Doctorow, reporting live from St. Petersburg, Russia. ๐๏ธ๐
They discuss the latest geopolitical developments, U.S.-Russia relations, and the unfolding dynamics of the Ukraine conflict. ๐ฌ๐๏ธ
A must-watch for anyone seeking real insights beyond the headlines! ๐ฏ๐ง
#GilbertDoctorow #JudgeNapolitano #StPetersburg #RussiaLive #UkraineConflict #Geopolitics #USRussiaRelations #LiveFromRussia #PoliticalAnalysis #InternationalRelations #CurrentEvents #GlobalNews #WarInUkraine #EastWestTensions #RealTalk #RussiaToday #InDepthAnalysis #IndependentMedia #UnfilteredNews #WorldAffairs
They discuss the latest geopolitical developments, U.S.-Russia relations, and the unfolding dynamics of the Ukraine conflict. ๐ฌ๐๏ธ
A must-watch for anyone seeking real insights beyond the headlines! ๐ฏ๐ง
#GilbertDoctorow #JudgeNapolitano #StPetersburg #RussiaLive #UkraineConflict #Geopolitics #USRussiaRelations #LiveFromRussia #PoliticalAnalysis #InternationalRelations #CurrentEvents #GlobalNews #WarInUkraine #EastWestTensions #RealTalk #RussiaToday #InDepthAnalysis #IndependentMedia #UnfilteredNews #WorldAffairs
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NewsTranscript
00:00Transcription by CastingWords
00:30Transcription by CastingWords
01:00The President Trump's statements have been perceived in the Kremlin, but before we do, you have been sending me some very interesting observations about life in Russia today, particularly the time you spent in Moscow.
01:15As you may recall, I was in Moscow as a guest of the Russian Foreign Ministry just two months ago, but I'm interested in hearing your observations.
01:26The influence of the American and Western sanctions on everyday life in Moscow, food, clothing, travel, electronics, your thoughts?
01:38Well, the influence of the sanctions has been to change the sourcing for the things that Russians buy in their supermarkets every day.
01:48That's to say the product assortment is the same.
01:51Quality is different, frankly, often superior to what it was before they changed the sourcing.
01:56But the price levels are generally substantially below what we have in Europe, although some product categories have been creeping up in price where they rival the prices that I see in Belgium or even exceed them in some cases, but rather rarely.
02:16Nonetheless, the Russian consumer has everything you could possibly want, including some rather exotic things you might mention for personal tastes of one visitor to Western Europe, having the reminiscences of wanting to enjoy the comforts of Baileys or of Campari or things of that nature, not just the ordinary French red wines.
02:42There's no problem finding anything in a supermarket that you would find in the best West European supermarkets, and they also have graded price levels of supermarkets similar to ours, starting with an economy level and going up to super, super premium.
03:02So then in the realm of food and how you fill your shopping basket, no problem.
03:07In the realm of consumer electronics and things that most people in the audience take for granted as part of their daily lives, I mean smartphones, notebook computers and so forth, there's been a dramatic change in what is on offer.
03:26In the mass market stores, big retailers, they require regular deliveries of predictable deliveries to satisfy their network of stores across the country.
03:40And so they have had to resort to new sourcing, Chinese sourcing, but not the major brands of China, which are shy of American secondary sanctions and have left the Russian market.
03:55So there are the lesser or less well-known Chinese producers who do not sell into the American market, but are now taking up the whole of the or nearly the whole of the Russian market, except for what I found in the country's biggest retailer that has gone into marketing its own branded notebooks that are assembled in Russia.
04:21And in Russia and in Belarus are priced dramatically, cheaply using Intel, Intel, Intel chips.
04:28So in that respect, the sourcing has changed, perhaps a lower quality for the mass market.
04:34For the premium market, for the premium market, for people with, for whom money means nothing, they can buy anything they want from the American and global producers of advanced computers in specialty shops that buy fixed lots of imports from the parallel market.
04:54So for a premium, for an additional commission, shall we say, to intermediaries, they can get anything they want.
05:01All right.
05:01So let's take one or two examples, and then we'll get to the special military operation in Ukraine.
05:09How does California wine get from the Napa Valley in California to a wine shop in Moscow?
05:18Honestly, the California wines are not doing too well in Russia.
05:24All right.
05:24I can understand that, but can you find California wines?
05:28Is there some circuitous route around the sanctions?
05:32And if you don't want to choose wine, choose anything else that's uniquely American, Dell computers.
05:39No, I haven't seen any Dell computers, but I haven't seen them for a very long time.
05:42I don't think it was a conscious decision of the retailers who didn't have advantageous offers.
05:51They had Hewlett-Packard in great quantities.
05:54All right.
05:54So how does Hewlett-Packard get from Dallas, Texas, to Moscow, Russia?
05:59Probably by way of Kazakhstan or China or some other third country where there are eager beaver merchants who buy up these products and resell them.
06:15They import them into their country where there are no sanctions prohibiting the import.
06:20And then they pass them along to Russian retailers in specialty shops, as I say, appealing to consumers who are insensitive to price.
06:32Look, the Chinese have taken more than half of the new car sales in Russia.
06:38But I was surprised on this visit to see new Chevrolets on the highways.
06:44And this is particularly surprising because Chevrolets were on sale or General Motors was promoting their product.
06:51But the economy level, the compact level, that is what you had here on the roads before the special military operation.
06:59No, I see full sedans with Chevrolet logos on them.
07:05So that is, of course, coming in from third countries, parallel trading, possibly or more likely from the Middle East.
07:14Fascinating.
07:15Fascinating.
07:16You have spent time with journalists, fellow academics, even former government officials.
07:26Can you put your finger on the pulse of the collective pulse of these people?
07:31Is there a yearning for an end to the special military operation or is there an understanding of President Putin's patience?
07:43Or do you have some other analysis that you draw from your conversations with these folks?
07:51Well, I'm glad that you gave a list of contacts or possible contacts that I would have at the outset of your question.
07:58Because this is where my inputs to the program are different from that of my peers.
08:07The former government officials or present government officials with whom my peers meet or some correspondents, that is clear.
08:19What I am offering is the insights coming from conversations with the intellectual and creative community, which, by and large, my peers in these programs of interviews have no contact with.
08:35Because this is something that would go back years and they are not available, accessible to occasional visitors.
08:42And what I would say in answer, direct answer to your question, that proves my, I spent seven hours at a table talk with a partly retired journalist expert, a man who rose high to positions of administration in the ministry of the press going back to the 1980s.
09:03And he then became an editor, an editor, an editor in chief of the Union of Journalists magazine and teaches part time as a professor of journalism in one of the journalism schools in Moscow.
09:18So what he had to say was not just anecdotal or I just happened to know him.
09:23No, he's a person of considerable authority and experience.
09:25And I took with seriousness, his remarks, an answer to your question, that it gives a certain nuance or greater depth to the question of who thinks what about the war.
09:40It may amaze your audience, it surprised me, in fact, that there are actually some pacifists in Russia.
09:49They always were here well hidden and they still exist.
09:53And he is, this acquaintance friend of mine is in that category.
09:58But he, as I said, he has occupied important positions in the official bureaucracy.
10:05He's not happy with the war, not at all happy with the war, though he's fully aware of the reasons for the war.
10:12He's fully aware of the incompetence, the terrible degradation of quality of leadership in Western Europe.
10:20That he's perfectly aware of.
10:22He's perfectly aware of the neo-Nazis and the neo-fascism in Germany and in Western Europe.
10:31Nonetheless, he is not happy with the war and he would like very much for it to end as quickly as possible.
10:38And I think there are many people, not just of his age and experience, but among the creative classes in Moscow, particularly, because that's where that's the biggest market for people in all kinds of arts and in social media.
10:56There are a lot of people in that, in that stratum, who are not fifth column, they are not anti-Putin or anti-Russian, but they're not happy with the way things are going.
11:08And certainly they're not happy with the censorship that has come into force and has been strengthened during the period of the war.
11:17Censorship that takes the form of denunciation as of one or another journalist or publication as being foreign agents.
11:28Fascinating, fascinating observations.
11:31Is there a willingness to give him, President Putin, a long leash, or is there an underlying grumbling of loss of political support?
11:50These people are not oppositional in an active sense.
11:53They're not going to go out on the streets.
11:55They're not going to support the more notorious anti-Putin politicians such as still exists in the Russian Federation.
12:04But privately among themselves, they are not at all happy.
12:08And they really wish that Putin would stop this as soon as possible.
12:13That's as much as I can say.
12:15They're not politically active, but they do things that show where they stand.
12:20I'll tell you what, they subscribe to and buy the magazines that are now being published by people who are chased out of an organ like a publication like Mr. Moratov,
12:37the Nobel Prize winner, was running when he received the prize for defending press freedom in Russia.
12:45His publication was shut down.
12:46There were very many competent, as my friend says, some of the best journalists in Russia who were out in the street as a result.
12:54And some of them have formed new glossy magazines with very good material in them.
13:00And he will buy that up just to give them support.
13:04That's an example.
13:05Understood.
13:07Does the Kremlin take, as far as you can tell, does the Kremlin take Steve Witkoff seriously?
13:15Oh, I'm sure they do.
13:16They take him probably more seriously than they take Donald Trump.
13:21I mean, Donald Trump is in front of a microphone saying some outrageous things every day and flip-flopping.
13:29Steve Witkoff is not doing that.
13:32He's quite consistent in his positions with respect to Russia, which are generally friendly and hopeful for a detente with Russia.
13:42And he doesn't say these peculiar things like Putin has to come to terms because the price of oil has gone down.
13:53So in that sense, they take Witkoff much more seriously than they do Trump.
14:00Here's President Trump on Meet the Press on Sunday with a rather startling statement.
14:08I wonder what your opinion is of the Kremlin's opinion of this.
14:14Chris, cut number 10.
14:15Ukraine, there's been discussions they will have to give up some of the land.
14:18Russia will have to give up all of Ukraine because that's what they want.
14:22All of Ukraine, meaning they wouldn't keep any of the land that they've claimed.
14:26Russia would have to give up all of Ukraine because what Russia wants is all of Ukraine.
14:33And if I didn't get involved, they would be fighting right now for all of Ukraine.
14:37Russia doesn't want the strip that they have now.
14:40Russia wants all of Ukraine.
14:42And if it weren't me, they would keep going.
14:46I don't think there's a scintilla of evidence that Russia wants all of Ukraine.
14:50But please, please weigh in.
14:53What does Vladimir Putin think when he sees that?
14:57Well, I think he knows what Trump is doing.
14:59He's certainly perspicacious enough and certainly penetrating enough to see that Trump is setting up his listeners for the eventual ceding to Russia of all the territory that is taken.
15:15And then he will claim that thanks to his intervention, they haven't taken all of Ukraine.
15:20This is just a ploy.
15:22I don't think that some of the people won't believe that.
15:26There's not a scintilla of evidence that Putin wants all of Ukraine.
15:30In fact, he said he doesn't.
15:32The last thing he would want is to rule a country amidst guerrilla warfare.
15:37Yeah, but the American public has been listening to Biden and company for the past four years who are saying that Putin wants to take Poland to the Baltic as well.
15:45So I think that if Trump is saying all he wants is all of Ukraine, it sounds rather modest.
15:51So you don't think that statements like this seep their way into the Putin-Witkoff negotiations?
16:03I don't believe it all that's going on.
16:06I still think that Witkoff is discussing with Putin many other things that are on the agenda should a genuine rapprochement with Russia take effect.
16:17And I bet I mean what's going on in the Middle East and in other parts of the world, including the conflict, potential conflict between Pakistan and India, in which both America and Russia have stakes and would like to see a cooling off.
16:32So there are many things for them to discuss, and which Witkoff, some of them are in Witkoff's portfolio of responsibility.
16:41I wonder if President Putin is speaking to President Modi and to Modi's counterpart name escaping me.
16:48I guess it would be the head of the army in Pakistan.
16:52Since Russia is close to both countries, the last thing Russia wants is an India-Pakistani war, particularly one over behavior of some private individuals.
17:03It wasn't even anything either of the governments did.
17:06Well, I think that Putin is much closer to Modi than is appreciated in the West in general, in the United States in particular.
17:15And I say that I was just going over my materials, I'm doing an editing of the galley proofs of my about-to-be-published book, War Diaries 2022-2023.
17:29And I just was reading over the remarks I made back in 22 on how important Modi was for Putin's decision to unleash the special military operation.
17:46All of our attention, all of my peers are talking about the essential contribution of Xi when he and Putin met the Olympics just before,
17:57a week before, a week before the operation was unleashed.
18:02Yes, of course, that was very important.
18:04But three weeks before that, Putin had met with Modi.
18:08And the position of India was of great importance in the first weeks after the start of this operation,
18:16when the General Assembly of the United Nations had a vote condemning Russia,
18:20but in which two countries, India and China, both abstained.
18:26That was of decisive importance to Russia because it showed that more than half 4 billion out of 7 million billion of the world's population did not support the resolution.
18:38Therefore, India, from the beginning up to today, has been a much closer discussion partner with Mr. Putin than I think most of our journalists give them credit for.
18:50Do you have a feeling for how much longer the war or the special military operation in Ukraine will last, Professor Doctorow?
19:03In other words, how much longer can the Ukrainians hold out?
19:06As I was saying before, I collect information that indicates how important the drone aspect of this war has become.
19:18The Russian television was saying that the Ukrainians themselves are producing one drone every 30 seconds.
19:26They are following closely the developments of Ukraine itself produced in underground master shop, master house, shops.
19:38These are not big factories.
19:40They are small units.
19:42But collectively, they're producing a lot of drones.
19:45And that is of decisive importance in the pace of Russian move westward.
19:52It means that Russian troops are broken up into small units and not into a massive front that is advancing at once.
20:02It's a different warfare.
20:03And so for this reason, it's extremely difficult to predict the pace of the Russian advance and to say this will be the final date.
20:12I still hold that it will be before the end of this year, but not because of the capabilities of the Russian military, rather because the Ukrainian political elite will crack.
20:26Here's something of interest to you.
20:30The audience for this show is very, very pro-peace, as you know, and we've been posting some polls.
20:37This morning, we asked the following question.
20:40Will Trump finalize a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine?
20:45About 1,000 people responded during the conversation that you and I have been having.
20:51It's a fraction of those that have been watching.
20:53And the response is 87% no, 13% yes.
21:00How would you have voted on that?
21:02I would have voted no, because I believe that the parties are too distant one from the other, and the Ukrainians under Zelenskyy do not accept a peace under any other terms than essentially a Russian capitulation, which, given the circumstances on the battlefield, is utter nonsense.
21:24The only way that Ukraine will come to terms under realistic conditions will be when this government is overthrown or physically eliminated.
21:38Look, if the Ukrainians fire on the parade in Moscow as they have threatened, I think Kiev's leadership will be wiped out the next day.
21:48I would think you're right.
21:51Just before you go, are there parades elsewhere?
21:54Will there be celebrating tomorrow in Russia, like the 4th of July in the United States, maybe even grander, because it's a big round number.
22:03It's the 80th anniversary of the Russian defeat of the German forces in World War II.
22:09Will there be celebrations in St. Petersburg and elsewhere besides the grand one, which we all hoped President Trump would attend, but that's apparently not going to happen, in Moscow?
22:20Well, the whole country will have, in every one million plus city, and maybe in smaller cities too, they all have their own parades.
22:28Many of the major cities will have state-run military parades, followed by parades that are organized by the people at large, this Immortal Regiment Parade.
22:40The government is doing the most possible to ensure the security there.
22:45Here in Petersburg, I will not go to it.
22:47I won't go because they've made registration to participate in it very difficult.
22:53You have to register online.
22:55Some days ago was a deadline.
22:56You have to send pictures of who your relatives who fought in the war were, what kind of placards you're going to hold up.
23:04It's really a pain, and I think they intentionally wanted to keep the numbers down for safety reasons.
23:10But for those of the audience who want to see it in the original, let me just mention that there is a Russian internet channel.
23:20It is on Time TV, Roo, which you can find on any browser.
23:29And when you come to their homepage, it has the symbols of various of the major Russian TV channels, including Russia One.
23:37And you click on that, and you can watch the live broadcast from Moscow.
23:41So you don't have to wait for whatever NBC gives you in minutes of time.
23:47You can watch the whole thing if you want to wake up very early.
23:49Got it.
23:50Got it.
23:51Professor, Doctor, thank you.
23:53Fascinating conversation.
23:55Safe travels.
23:56Enjoy your time there, and I hope we'll see you again next week.
24:00Thanks so much.
24:01Of course, coming up, fascinating, fascinating observations about life in Russia today that the American people should know about.
24:11The sanctions have not diminished economic prosperity at all.
24:15In many cases, they've enhanced it.
24:1711 o'clock, Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
24:20At 1 o'clock, the former British diplomat in Moscow, Ian Proud, coming to us from London.
24:26At 2 o'clock, Aaron Matรฉ.
24:28At 3 o'clock, Phil Giraldi, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
24:58At 4 o'clock, the Phill ใฎ๏ฟฝ่ฏด, ฤiha.
24:59At 3 o'clock, he uses the Took to Hold in miles because of letting people enjoy it.
25:00At 1 o'clock, he needs to be kept across the water.
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25:03At 4 o'clock, he's the king in the middle.
25:05At 14 o'clock, he's the king in the middle of China.
25:05On the night, the pregnancies in the year from London.
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