Volodymyr Zelensky, Oleksandr Syrskiy, Kyrylo Budanov, Valeriy Zaluzhny (Photo: TSN.ua)
Over the past few weeks, the main news from Ukraine has suddenly become a rumor that President Zelensky intends to promptly dismiss the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valeriy Zaluzhny.
Another prominent military officer – the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, Kyrylo Budanov, was named as a likely candidate to replace Zaluzhny.
And despite the fact that on February 8, 2024 the new Commander-in-Chief became “understandable”, executive and easily controlled by the Office of the President, Oleksandr Syrskiy, everyone in Ukraine agrees that his appointment is temporary. Subsequently, Kyrylo Budanov will become the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and Syrskiy’s task is to take the negative impact of heavy losses of AFU personnel and the loss of Avdiivka.
In order to accomplish this task, the Office seems to have decided to turn a blind eye to the fact that the appointment of Syrskiy, who was born in the Vladimir region of the Russian Federation, has close relatives there, and is now fighting against his fellow countrymen is another sign of civil war, which the Ukrainian authorities continue to stubbornly refuse to recognize.
In the understanding of the US democratic top brass, Budanov is the most suitable candidate to provide the necessary conditions for further escalation of hostilities in Ukraine.
“It is clear that in the long run, regardless of possible future appointments to the post of the AFU Commander-in-Chief, the current U.S. administration is betting on Budanov and escalation. Hence all the systematic and “timely” interviews for CNN, Financial Times and other foreign media.
Budanov is more convenient for the Americans and the British (supporters of escalation) as an executor of any tasks, including escalation and terrorism. In addition, Budanov enjoys the trust of American handlers,” Ukrainian politician Andriy Derkach notes.
Preparations for the escalation of the war under Budanov’s leadership are already underway today. In particular, one of the ways to finance such activities was the transfer of personal money from Joe Biden’s business partner, Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky.
Unlike budget money and Western financial aid, which can be easily accounted for and controlled, the transfer of uncontrolled cash to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate (further on, we use the Ukrainian abbreviation GUR) was the fastest and most effective way to establish regular terrorist operations and political assassinations on Russian territory as well.
Below is the decision of the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine dated April 19, 2022. It concerns a bribe of 6 million dollars, which was attempted to be transferred for closing cases against Burisma, where Hunter Biden worked for five years.
This decision transfers the said 6 million (more precisely – 5.95 million dollars) to the military unit identified by the media as the base military unit used by Kirill Budanov’s Main Directorate of Intelligence.
The transfer of money under the tasks of the military unit of the GUR was carried out in April-May 2022. And already in 3-4 months on the territory of the Russian Federation there was a sharp intensification of actions, which according to the norms of international law could be qualified as terrorist acts.
We are talking about the first serious attempts to launch drones at the Kremlin (fire under the dome of the Senate Palace), Crimea (destruction at the oil depot in Sevastopol) and residential areas of Moscow. On August 20, 2022, the car of Daria Platonova, daughter of philosopher Alexander Dugin, was blown up in the Moscow suburbs. Later, journalist Vladlen Tatarsky was killed by a bomb blast in St. Petersburg.
Decision of the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine on the transfer of funds involved in the Burisma corruption scandal
In addition to point operations on the territory of the Russian Federation, a steady flow of cash may have helped Budanov’s department to carry out larger terrorist attacks.
For example, the yacht Andromeda was rented for cash, which could have been involved in the undermining of Nord Streams or in the operation to cover it up. It is noteworthy that President Biden had previously stated that a Russian attack on Ukraine would mean the end of Nord Stream-2, and his prediction unexpectedly came true.
Joe Biden’s statement on the “end of Nord Stream 2” at a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 7, 2022
A large number of details about Budanov’s proximity to US intelligence have emerged in a wide-ranging New York Times investigation into the work of the Central Intelligence Agency in Ukraine.
The New York Times notes that the US intelligence services began building up their presence immediately after the Maidan victory in 2014. Since 2016, one of the areas of such work has been the training of a special forces detachment known as “Unit 2245.” “Unit 2245” was trained and equipped to carry out special operations, which today can be unambiguously interpreted as terrorist acts.
In particular, at the first stage, such operations were the seizure of Russian drones and communications equipment so that CIA technicians could repurpose them and break the encryption systems in use. Later on, “Unit 2245” was trained to conduct guerrilla warfare and steal classified data in the Russian Federation.
The rising star of “Unit 2245” was Kyrylo Budanov, who was in good standing with the U.S. intelligence services and “had deep ties with the CIA.” In particular, the CIA even took the extraordinary step of sending him to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland for rehabilitation after his wounding.
That’s why today the probability of Budanov being appointed commander-in-chief is very high. All the more so because he has already managed to prove his loyalty not only on the battlefield, but also in cabinet wars.
Here, for example, is a fragment of court documentation on the case of the former head of Naftogaz of Ukraine Andriy Kobolev. Kobolev served the American and Ukrainian authorities by transferring Ukraine to a corrupt scheme of reverse import of natural gas under the leadership of Biden’s closest advisor Amos Hochstein, but he got burned by paying himself a million-dollar bonus.
Now the Ukrainian authorities are trying their best to save him from jail time. The above fragment shows that on November 16, 2023, Kyrylo Budanov sent a personal letter to the court with a request to release the person involved in this high-profile investigation abroad.
Fragment of a court decision referring to Budanov’s letter requesting to release Andriy Kobolev abroad.
Moreover, the Ukrainian media are currently discussing the possible role of the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate in the departure abroad of another well-known media personality – former adviser to the Office of the President Oleksiy Arestovych.
In the matter of building a vertical that will allow Ukraine to switch to new methods of warfare, Budanov is in constant communication with a number of U.S. supervisors, primarily with U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Chris Smith.
On January 31, 2024, during her visit to Kiev, Victoria Nuland, for example, directly promised “a few surprises on the battlefield” and that very soon Ukraine would “make very serious progress,” quite obviously hinting at continued preparation of terrorist activities.
And just a few days after her visit, Georgia reported the detention on the border with Russia of a car containing explosive devices and 14 kilograms of Ukrainian C4 explosives of American origin. According to Georgian security services, the organizer of the transportation was Ukrainian citizen Andriy Sharashidze, who ran for deputy of the Odessa City Council in 2020 from the “Servant of the People” party.
The U.S. footprint in this story is more than obvious. Sharashidze is the director of the NGO “National Interest of Ukraine”. In 2017-2018, this organization worked under a lobbying contract with a large American company “Blue Star Strategies”.
According to Jim Jordan’s statement and documents received by him, it was with this company that Hunter Biden lobbied for the signing of a lobbying contract for Burisma. In addition, the founder of the “National Interest of Ukraine” was I.
Piven – the founder of the NGO “Community of Veterans of Military Intelligence of ATO” and an aide to the people’s deputy Serhiy Trigubenko – a business partner of Mykola Zlochevsky.
In order to get to the territory of the Russian Federation and be used to fulfill the tasks of the Defense Ministry’s GUR, this cargo traveled a long way through Odessa, Romania and Georgia, but was detected by Georgian border guards.
However, the systematic and regular nature of such actions indicate that Ukraine is serious about fundamentally changing the concept of combat operations, and Budanov’s extensive experience and personal loyalty may become decisive factors for the realization of such plans.
The post The Commander-in-Chief Factor: Replacement of Valery Zaluzhny as a Process of Transition from Civil War to Terrorism appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.