President Volodymyr Zelensky presents (L) Hero of Ukraine award to military intelligence chief Kirill Budanov, Kiev, FEB. 9, 2024
Strana, one of the top online newspapers in Ukraine, which is banned in Russia since 2022, reported on Friday that Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is planning to dismiss Defense Minister Rustem Umerov and the powerful military intelligence chief Gen. Kirill Budanov from their posts as part of his continuing purge of the military establishment in Kiev.
Umerov is a political lightweight and a non-military man by profession and may become the ‘fall guy’, as the Ukrainian military is losing the Battle of Donbass. But Budanov belongs to an entirely different planet — a professional soldier with a career entirely in the special forces of the Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) ever since he graduated from the Odesa Institute of the Ground Forces in 2007 (originally, the elite educational institution of the Soviet Armed Forces for the training of officers of military intelligence units.) Ironically, his expertise in operations against Russia has put him today at the top of the list of wanted men in Moscow.
At the end of the day, what makes Budanov indispensable are three things.
First and foremost, Budanov is an exceptionally audacious intelligence officer of a rare breed in any country and, therefore, a ‘strategic asset’ to the regime in Kiev. Second, he supervises three anti-Kremlin Russian militias fighting for Ukraine, the largest being the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC) led by Denis Kapustin, whom German authorities once described as “one of the most influential neo-Nazi activists on the European continent today”. (See the academic paper titled Ukrainian Nazism today: origin and ideological and political typology on the Russian foreign ministry’s website.)
Kiev struggles to maintain that RVC acts independently and its success only testifies to the Kremlin’s loss of control of the security situation in the country. But in reality, RVC’s raids are closely coordinated with the HUR, which provides logistical assistance, vets the operational plans and arms and bankrolls them. In fact, RVC is formally part of the Ukrainian armed forces, enlisted in the so-called International Legion. By the way, Kapustin has links with American neo-Nazi groups as well.
Third and most crucial, Budanov’s links with the CIA are a legion. The New York Times in a sensational report detailing for the first time the vastness of the CIA presence in Ukraine, said: “General Budanov, was a rising star in Unit 2245. He was known for daring operations behind enemy lines and had deep ties to the C.I.A. The agency had trained him and also taken the extraordinary step of sending him for rehabilitation to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland after he was shot in the right arm during fighting in the Donbas.”
The Times described Unit 2245 as a top-secret “commando force that received specialised military training from the C.I.A.’s elite paramilitary group, known as the Ground Department. The intent of the training was to teach defensive techniques, but C.I.A. officers understood that without their knowledge the Ukrainians could use the same techniques in offensive lethal operations.”
The stunning thing here is that this nefarious nexus between Langley and Budanov goes all the way back to the Obama Administration — much, much before the Russian operations began in February 2022.
Later, Budanov himself recalled in 2020 that the links with the CIA “only strengthened. It grew systematically. The cooperation expanded to additional spheres and became more large-scale.”
Times added, “The relationship was so successful that the C.I.A. wanted to replicate it with other European intelligence services that shared a focus in countering Russia.”
President Trump was unwilling or unable to stand up to the CIA, but as Biden entered the Oval Office, the floodgates were opened. Times said,
“The head of Russia House, the C.I.A. department overseeing operations against Russia, organised a secret meeting at The Hague. There, representatives from the C.I.A., Britain’s MI6, the HUR, the Dutch service (a critical intelligence ally) and other agencies agreed to start pooling together more of their intelligence on Russia. The result was a secret coalition against Russia — and the Ukrainians were vital members of it.”
This also predates Russia’s special military operations in Ukraine, testifying to Biden’s maniacal obsession to destabilise Russia as an independent world power any whichever way.
The US’ proxy war in Ukraine is, in reality, spearheaded by the CIA, while the Pentagon and the State Department play subaltern roles. It is for future historians to investigate the raison d’être of Biden’s curious, unconventional choice of William Burns, supposedly a career diplomat, as his hand-picked head of the CIA in 2020.
Burns is an unusual ‘specialist’ on Russia who had a role in the CIA’s war in Chechnya in the early 1990s soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union when he was first posted in the Moscow embassy. (Burns later returned as envoy to Moscow.)
Suffice to say, Biden knew precisely what he wanted to get done and he picked the one man whom he could rely on to keep the CIA on leash, au fait with the world of cloak-and-dagger operatives and also a ‘Russia hand’.
All things considered, therefore, Strana’s report regarding Budanov may seem improbable. For, Budanov cannot be touched without CIA clearance. And there is no conclusive evidence so far that Biden is done with the proxy war against Russia where Budanov is a pivotal figure.
A dead man walking
Zelensky’s forthcoming meeting with Biden should give some clues. Zelensky proposes to present a ‘victory plan’ to Biden. Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson recently gave a preview of the ‘victory plan’ in an article in The Spectator after his most recent visit to Kiev to meet his close friend Zelensky one-on-one.
Johnson wrote that Zelensky will propose “a three-fold plan for Ukrainian victory”, the key elements being that the US should
- “allow the Ukrainians the right to use the weapons they already possess”;
- “produce a package of loans [for Kiev] on the scale of Lend-Lease: half a trillion dollars… or even a trillion”; and,
- admit Ukraine forthwith into NATO so that the alliance “could protect most of Ukraine, while simultaneously supporting the Ukrainian right to recapture the rest.”
Johnson underscored that extending NATO’S Article 5 security guarantee “to all the Ukrainian territory currently controlled by Ukraine (or at the end of this fighting season), while reaffirming the absolute right of the Ukrainians to the whole of their 1991 nation” will be the “single biggest step,” which would unambiguously convey to the Kremlin that there is nothing like a ‘near abroad’ or a ‘sphere of influence’ anymore and that “like Rome and like Britain, the Russians have decisively joined the ranks of the post-imperial powers.”
Zelensky has since confirmed the three key elements that Johnson wrote about. Interestingly, he did this after a sudden unannounced visit to Kiev by the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen — another hawkish Russophobe like Johnson — after which Zelensky told reporters on Friday, “The victory plan, this bridge to strengthening Ukraine, can contribute to more productive future diplomatic meetings with Russia. Without that, we will live the way we live now and keep fighting.”
Clearly, Zelensky rules out any near-term peace talks with Russia, which of course, necessities a dramatic escalation in the near term before the Ukrainian military altogether packs up.
In the final analysis, what the Strana report shows is that the Western strategy against Russia, as in Vietnam War, is built on quicksands. The point is, Zelensky himself is a dead man walking and must be conscious of it, as the latest bizarre move by him, a Jew himself, to act as a predator on Christianity — harking back to Old Testament.
Zelensky is still putting a brave face on the approaching defeat in the Kursk offensive as the Russian forces encircle the invaders in the forests and marshes of that forlorn region, and the killer drones begin to target them once the trees shed their leaves in autumn.
Zelensky knows that he is a marked man being the genius of the Kursk offensive, and vultures are circling in the skies. Indeed, some of Ukraine’s top army commanders, including the former armed forces commander Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, now ambassador to London, had voiced scepticism when Zelensky first broached the Kursk offensive. Those who opposed the offensive included the highly respected Emil Ishkulov, commander of Ukraine’s 80th Air Assault Brigade who was dismissed in July amid protests from high-ranking officers.
A Politico report says that Zaluzhny’s objection was that “there was no clear second step after the [Russian] border had been successfully breached by elite Ukrainian units drawn from four brigades. “He never got a clear answer from Zelenskyy,” said one of the officials. “He felt it was a gamble,” he said. Zaluzhny queried: once you have the bridgehead, what then?” ”
Clearly, the moment of truth is fast approaching for Zelensky. Such insecure men tend to be suspicious of charismatic men like Zaluzhny, who, surprisingly, took his dismissal calmly and went into exile in London but now, it transpires, with an eye on Zelensky’s job for himself some day. And Zaluzhny has powerful backers, too.
Nonetheless, do not underestimate Zelensky. Four days after Zaluzhny’s dismissal from the post of commander-in-chief on February 4, he conferred on the general the highest national decoration in Ukraine — the Hero of Ukraine. Interestingly, Zelensky awarded the same title to another general also during that very same ceremony in Kiev — Gen. Budanov. (here)