Larry Johnson of The Son of the New American Revolution blog is a well-informed and eloquent critic of the official US government and media line on Ukraine. In this interview, Larry Johnson casts severe doubts on much of what we’re hearing from the media, including the claims that “Ukraine is winning”:
“What you would expect to see if the Ukrainians functioned as an effective army: number one, in the east, they would have broken out. They would have actually launched a counterattack against the Russians and pushed the Russians back to the border. That hasn't happened. In fact, the reports show steady progress by these Russian backed forces in Donetsk and Luhansk in pushing back the Ukrainian military.
“Number two, the Russians have basically they have sealed, completely shut down, the southern coast of Ukraine and their access to the Black Sea. Again, if the Ukraine had a viable, capable army that could fight against that, they would be launching counterattacks to push the Russians out and to open those ports. They haven't done that. What we're seeing is that this group of neo-Nazis that are in the steel plant area of Mariupol are slowly being encircled and killed. So again, if Ukraine had a functioning army, you'd expect to see artillery strikes coming in to try to push back the Russians. We're not seeing that. You'd expect to see air strikes, some sort of air operation, whether with fixed wing or rotary wing. We're not seeing that. Cruise missiles. We're not seeing that. So do they not have it or are they just incapable of using it in an effective manner? And I think it's the latter. Because it's irrational for them not to use it if it's still viable. I do know that their ability to conduct air to air intercept with fixed wing combat aircraft was curtailed the first 24 hours of the war on February 24th because the ground radars were blown up and those ground radars were what the pilots needed in order to vector themselves in on a target.”
Below is a full transcript of our April 11 interview. -KB
Larry Johnson interviewed by Kevin Barrett
Kevin Barrett: Welcome to Truth Jihad Radio. Kevin Barrett here, looking for the ugly truth hidden underneath the festering piles of lies. And the lies just keep on festering, getting worse all the time, from 9/11 and the 9/11 wars to COVID to the current Ukraine situation. It's gotten to the point that the mainstream media is almost a parody of itself, infinitely worse than it was back during the Cold War days that I grew up in. I don't know what to compare it to. So now I have to bring on independent experts who actually know what they're talking about to dissect the situation and tell us what's really going on. And one of those is today's guest, Larry Johnson. Larry has a background in military special ops and strategic analysis and stuff like that. He's got the Son of the New American Revolution blog or sonar21.com. It's one of the best go-to sources for off-script reporting on the Ukraine situation. So, hey, welcome, Larry. It's good to have you.
Larry Johnson: Hey, thank you. Good to be with you.
Kevin Barrett: Okay. So let's start just quickly get your background. You obviously seem to know what you're talking about and have a certain amount of military and strategic analysis background. So where did you get that? And then how did you come around to these off-propaganda-script views?
Larry Johnson: I started working with the Central Intelligence Agency in 1985. I was there until 1989, moved from there to the US Department of State's Office of Counterterrorism. I was there for four years and then moved off and began again doing consulting in 1993-94. And I worked for 24 years with the U.S. military special operations forces. So one of the unique insights I've had is being able to integrate CIA, State Department, FBI and the rest of the intelligence community with military operations and capabilities.
