A couple of days ago, I mentioned how Russian state television news was providing viewers with information about aspects of the ongoing armed conflict between Hamas and Israeli armed forces that you would not find in Western media during the first days of reporting. In particular, it was immediately evident from the news briefings on Vesti that Russian emphasis was on the military side rather than on the humanitarian catastrophe side.
BBC, Euronews, CNN have all focused attention on the slaughtered Israeli citizens and the apparent savagery of the Hamas fighters including today’s revelations about the hundred or more men, women and children who were decapitated in a Hamas raid on a kibbutz in the South of Israel. Russian news from day one showed pictures of the latest generation Israeli tank destroyed by a grenade dropped by a drone and of Hamas fighters approaching Israeli shores from the sea on paragliders. On two successive Evening with Vladimir Solovyov shows, images of the destruction to Israel’s billion dollar wall around Gaza and similar engineering feats by the insurgent as they moved deep into Israel proper. Solovyov’s panelists also provided expert analysis of the military threats Israel faces from the neighborhood if the war in Gaza escalates.
Why is this difference in what is reported important? Because coverage of the slaughter of civilians by Hamas fighters and interviews with relatives of those taken captive to Gaza as hostages plays into the hands of the Hamas strategists: it places enormous pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to proceed with a land invasion of Gaza which will result in many thousands of deaths among Israeli Defense Force soldiers as well as deaths of civilians in Gaza that may be an order of magnitude higher. The violence of an Israeli invasion may be so shocking as to justify outside Palestinian forces, namely Hezbollah in Lebanon and Arab fighters in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen to send contingents of armed men to join the battle on the side of Hamas in Gaza.
The Western reporting has provided a wealth of material for those who would denounce the Hamas fighters as “sub-human.” However, considering the great sophistication of the Hamas methods to overcome Israeli technical devices at the border and the wall itself intended to prevent such a raid from the enclave, considering the 5,000 or more missiles sent by Hamas into Israel that overwhelmed the “Iron Dome” Israeli defenses, it is unreasonable to speak of the executions and hostage taking as spontaneous or expressions of raw anger by Arab youths. No, it had to be planned in advance and handed over to disciplined fighters for implementation with a certain military objective in mind: namely to provoke the Israeli government and draw it into the lair of urban, guerilla warfare in Gaza.
A couple of days ago, in my geopolitical analysis of the conflict, I mentioned that the dispatch of a U.S. naval force led by the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford to the waters adjacent to Israel was likely intended to intimidate Iran and possibly to prepare for an American attack on Iran under accusations that Teheran had aided and guided the Hamas attack. However, the Biden administration has now stated clearly that it has no evidence Iran was involved in preparing the Hamas action. This confirms what the supreme religious leader of Iran said yesterday in a public speech, namely that the Palestinians themselves are fiercely independent and that they alone prepared the assault on Israel. He insisted that in the West people under-appreciate the skills and determination of Palestinians. It is only individual American politicians like would-be Republican candidate for the presidency Nikki Haley and the ever saber rattling Republican Senator Lindsey Graham who are calling for Iran to be attacked now.
Based on the information about the military capabilities of pro-Hamas forces in the neighborhood aired on the Solovyov show last night by first quality Russian experts, it is far more likely that the United States military presence is intended for use against Hezbollah in Lebanon than against Iran. This organization is now said to be the strongest pro-Palestinian force in the region with tens of thousands of fighters, with advanced military equipment including perhaps one hundred thousand missiles ready for use against Israel at any time. Israel’s last incursion into Lebanon to crush Hezbollah in 2006 ran into serious difficulties when enemy strength surprised them. Some fifty Israeli tanks were said to have been destroyed then. There is no question that Hezbollah has become more powerful since. Its war hardened forces received battlefield experience very relevant to the present Hamas-Israel conflict when they fought in the civil war in Syria.
One of the Russian experts who spoke at length about the situation in Israel on Sunday night was Yevgeny Satanovsky, who is a professor attached to two centers of Near East studies in Moscow. He appeared in the past on Russian television talk shows when the subject was Russian-Turkish relations but his core specialty is in fact Israeli politics and the economy. It was difficult to follow Satanovsky’s remarks in detail because he was speaking as if to academic friends over a cup of coffee and there was a lot of jargon. But his appraisal of the Israeli military’s degraded state was clear enough. The deplorable discipline within their army compounded the initial problems from the intelligence failures of Mossad. The common denominator both in intelligence and in military command was hubris, undeserved self-confidence, lulled by technological superiority over the enemy. But just as Hamas outfoxed Israeli intelligence by returning to 19th century methods of communications, couriers and face to face meetings in place of electronic means that Israel can intercept, so fairly rudimentary bulldozers were sufficient to break through the Israeli wall and a combination of firearms and drones neutralized the sensors and cameras protecting Israel from Gaza raids.
Said Satanovsky, the Israeli military has suffered an additional debilitating flaw, namely the succession of second quality generals who rose to the premiership of Israel over the past thirty years and the politicization of military ranks. He blamed in particular the 2005 decision by then prime minister Ariel Sharon to withdraw all Israeli presence from inside Gaza and to secure the enclave from its perimeter.
For those who want to know more about who Satanovsky is, he has a large entry in the Russian language edition of Wikipedia. Suffice it here to say that he calls himself an atheist as well as a “Russian Jew,” and for several years at the start of the new millennium he helped to create the Russian Jewish Congress and served as its president for three years. He has a teaching affiliation with the International Center of University Instruction on Jewish Civilization in the Jewish University of Jerusalem.
I mention this aspect of the man’s past and present because it brings us to the special relationship that Russia has with Israel. More than one million Soviet and Russian Federation Jews emigrated to Israel. These included people from every walk of life, including some scandalously wealthy crooks who evaded Russian justice for crimes including murder and are not extradited. Since the start of the Special Military Operation, their numbers have risen with the arrival in Israel of Russia’s ‘fifth column’ personalities in the entertainment industry, in finance, in government. With the Hamas attack some of those, like the billionaire banker Mikhail Fridman, took the first plane out of Israel for Moscow this past Sunday, as reported in a feature article of The Financial Times.. The scoundrel who assisted Yeltsin’s fraudulent election in 1996 and then stayed on in power to enrich himself, serving in a succession of high positions, Anatoly Chubais, also slithered out of Israel the same day, but not to Moscow, where he would face arrest. Their compatriots in Russia snigger over the cowardice and selfishness of these high visibility characters.
Of course the vast majority of Russian settlers in Israel are normal, hard working folks and it is they to whom the Vesti journalists turn now for first-hand accounts of the impact of the Hamas attack. They can be doctors receiving the wounded at hospitals or officials in the mayor’s office of one or another Israeli city. You will not see them on CNN.
On the other side of the coin, Russia has and needs excellent relations with the Arab world. Fifteen per cent of the Russian population is Muslim, with their cultural and religious center in Kazan, some 860 km southeast of Moscow, in a wealthy oil-producing region. Chechnya is also a Muslim center in the Russian Federation and its leader Ramzan Kadyrov is well known in the Middle East. More to the point, Russia is a highly valuable partner of Saudi Arabia in Opec+ in which they jointly set production targets and price targets for the global oil industry. And Russia has close relations with the United Arab Emirates, particularly financial arrangements. The UAE dirham is now used as a currency for settling import-export transactions by Russia. Of course, Russia is closely aligned with Iran as a fellow member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and, as from 1 January 2024, BRICS. The close ties to Syria need no explanation, since Russia singlehandedly saved the government of Bashar Assad from the radical fundamentalist fighters that Washington was arming. The closeness of Russian ties with Iraq was in full evidence yesterday during the state visit of the Iraqi prime minister to Moscow. Russian companies Lukoil, Gazpromneft and others have already invested $16 billion in production assets in Iraq.
The official position with respect to the war now raging between Israel and Hamas was stated yesterday on television by President Putin: it can be solved only with implementation of the UN resolution on creation of a fully sovereign Palestine state, i.e. the “two state solution” that has been so long discussed but never brought to fruition. However, what will follow the creation of such a state is equally important and remains terra incognita: which world powers will guarantee the security of these two states?
Even before the latest phase of the war in Ukraine, the narrative surrounding Western policy toward Moscow has focused on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Such an approach ignores the reality that Putin acts rather as the adjudicator, and ultimate stabilizer, of the country’s fractious political elite. Nevertheless, recent reporting on Russia has remained fixated on Putin, effectively dismissing the rest of society and institutions as inept and insignificant.
In March 2014, following the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger wrote in The Washington Post that “the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.” Unfortunately, this assessment has become only more pertinent since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February. As a result, the very possibility of a policy based on and directed toward Russia, not Putin, has seemingly faded from Western public “debate.” This approach, beyond skewing our perception of the more fundamental problems we face vis-à-vis US-Russia relations, allows the West to march blindly ahead without considering its own role in the current state of troubled relations.
Washington has a history of adopting confrontational foreign policy stances toward individual leaders (admittedly often less-than-savory characters), rather than toward strategic objectives that support or defend US national interests. This has been the case with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Moammar El-Gadhafi in Libya, and Bashar al-Assad in Syria. These three countries continue to suffer political, economic, and humanitarian challenges, which therefore raises the question: What has Western policy achieved?
While many in the West like to believe that the values we hold dear and that form the basis of our societies are universal, the reality is quite different. As such, by demonizing leaders who don’t adhere to our principles, we often end up misunderstanding different cultures and how their societies produced such individuals and elevated them to positions of power.
While a policy solely directed toward an individual leader does indeed make for an easy-to-digest narrative for domestic audiences, it often undermines strategic US interests and regional stability, ultimately limiting our room for maneuver. By characterizing leaders whom we dislike as the embodiment of evil (or even the proverbial Hitler) and ourselves as the benevolent democratic crusader, we not only delude our own populations, but engage in diplomatic malpractice too.
While support amongst Russians for the 2022 invasion of Ukraine remains harder to assess from a sociological perspective (although indicators point toward a general acceptance of the conflict), the example of Crimea’s annexation offers a salient point of reference. Studies have demonstrated that most Russians view the annexation of Crimea as a positive event; so too, in fact, do a majority of Crimea’s residents, according to Western-funded research surveys.
Reportedly, Putin was being pushed by hard-line members of the political elite to go even further in 2014, along the lines of what’s unfolding across eastern and southern Ukraine today. While in the West, Crimea’s annexation was a clear breach of international law, for many Russians it was a “reunification” and historically justified. Clearly, our problems aren’t limited to Putin, but rather in our overall relations with Russia.
Indeed, Putin has been at the helm of the Russian state for over 23 years, during which time he’s increasingly silenced domestic opposition and engaged in a more assertive foreign policy. However, as my colleagues Anatol Lieven and George Beebe wrote in Responsible Statecraft: “Far from being the Stalinist autocrat often portrayed in the West, Putin has generally operated more like the strong chairman of a squabbling board of directors, maintaining his own position by balancing one elite faction against another.”
Furthermore, it is important to remember that Putin came to power following almost a decade of post-Soviet economic, political, and societal collapse. During this period, Washington was deeply involved in Russian affairs under President Boris Yeltsin, as the former professed a desire to help the Russian state and its people transition to liberal democracy and a market economy. However, such actions were increasingly viewed from within Russia as damaging not only to the country itself but also to Russian-American relations moving forward. An insightful few in the US observed this trend and tried to warn that Washington’s complicity in Yeltsin’s bombing of the parliament in 1993, the war in Chechnya in 1994, and the financial crisis in 1998 were paving the way for a leader representative of this budding perspective. Therefore, Putin today is rather a useful bellwether of the political elites thinking in the largest, resource-rich and nuclear-equipped state on earth.
The centuries-long experience of Russia, not simply Putin’s “imperial delusions,” have produced specific national interests that today’s governing elite view as vital. The importance of domestic stability and the power of the state, both preserved through Russia’s sovereignty, are two such interests. Much like those in the West, Russians are strongly opposed to perceived interventions in their domestic political processes.
With regards to the crisis over Ukraine, Moscow’s unwillingness to tolerate an anti-Russian government, let alone a pro-NATO one, is explained not only by historical, psychological, and fraternal factors, but also long-standing security concerns. The invasions of Russia in 1812 by Napoleon’s Grande Armée and in 1941 by Nazi Germany have resulted in a hyper-sensitivity to potential threats on its extensive border, especially from the direction of Europe. While in no way excusing Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine, Americans should at least be able to understand these permanent national interests given Washington’s own Monroe Doctrine, which views any intervention by external powers across North and South America as potentially threatening to US national security. A doctrine those on the political right increasingly allude to when discussing perceived Chinese encroachments into the Western Hemisphere.
The lack of any clear rules of engagement, like those between the USSR and the US following the Cuban missile crisis, and the withering away of arms control agreements are just two examples of the strategic dangers currently facing US-Russia relations. With a dearth of Russia experts within the US national security apparatus, rapidly diminished access to the country itself, and the dramatic deterioration in diplomatic engagement across the board such hazards are only likely to deepen.
Unfortunately, to deal with these issues it appears that some in the West are instead betting on the weakening and subsequent disintegration of Russia, a contingency which holds immense dangers and little promise. An alternative fantasy is a regime change in Moscow that brings to power a Russian leader who would abandon the war in Ukraine, cheerfully ceding regional influence to the United States and NATO. As challenging as it may be for some in the West to appreciate, the reality is that the Russian leader who will one day replace Putin will likely be even more nationalistic, militaristic, and unpredictable—not some imaginary liberal democrat currently in exile.
As Thomas Graham, senior director for Russia on the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration, recently explained in these pages, once the full-scale fighting in Ukraine has ended, “a new opportunity could emerge” for US-Russia relations. However, this will be possible only if Washington treads “cautiously but purposely in the pursuit of American interests in a region Moscow considers essential to its status as a great power.”
Russia, in one form or another, has been there long before Putin and will most likely remain there long after he has gone. Therefore, Western commentariat and policy makers alike need to begin considering what a future Russia policy might look like, instead of holding their breath in hopes that brave Ukrainian sacrifices will render the need for such thinking obsolete.
The first time I met Kyrylo Budanov, commander of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR) and the mastermind of many a thorn in Russia’s side, was in November 2021. He was a young brigadier general, largely unknown beyond the borders of his homeland, where he was a special operations hero who was thrice wounded fighting the Russians since 2014. We sat down on couches in the middle of a busy Washington D.C. hotel lobby and he laid out how Russia was about to attack Ukraine as visitors milled about unaware of the heady discussion taking place. His prediction, which included a battle map, would prove prophetic just three months later.
Budanov, who reached out to me last week asking if I wanted to meet up with him during an otherwise secret trip to D.C., is now one of the world’s most famous sitting generals. He is the architect of the constant asymmetrical operations against Ukraine’s great foe, Russia, and has become the subject of numerous stories, including interviews with The War Zone, and ubiquitous memes (more on that later).
A top target of Russia, it is no longer safe for him to meet in a crowded hotel lobby, so I agree to meet him in his room. Outside his door stands a burly man dressed in black, clearly security.
“Do you have a gun?” I am asked.
“No, I am a journalist,” I respond and with that, I am waived in.
Budanov greets me with a smile and a handshake. Unlike our last encounter, he is dressed not in his uniform, but in a dark blue suit, blue shirt and salmon-colored tie.
Against a sweeping vista of the U.S. capitol city seen through the huge window behind us, we sit down at a table with a bowl of fresh fruit, some untouched packs of nuts and bottles of water. For the next hour, through an interpreter, we discuss everything from his blunt assessment of the ongoing counteroffensive, attacks he helped orchestrate inside Russia, the systematic campaign against Russia’s air defenses, warnings about Abrams tank usage, doubts about Prigozhin’s death, what Ukraine needs from the U.S. and, of course, his favorite Budanov meme. All the while, sitting across from me, he stares that unnervingly stoic Budanov stare, the one you’ve seen in many photos.
At his request, out of concern for his security, we agree to hold the interview until after his journey to the U.S. is finally revealed through very public visits to the Pentagon and White House with his president, new defense secretary and their contingents.
Our exclusive conversation, reported in full, has been lightly edited for clarity and context.
TWZ: It’s been a while since we actually saw each other. Is this the first time you’ve been back in Washington D.C. since?
KB: Yes
TWZ: What brings you to Washington? Who you meeting with and what goals do you have for this visit? Have US officials asked you for any advice or insights?
KB: My current visit is not actually mine. It’s part of a presidential visit and I’m assisting him on this trip. And surely there are meetings waiting for me with military leaders of this country as part of the presidential delegation.
TWZ: Is this the first time President Zelensky has asked you to come on one of these foreign trips?
KB: No.
TWZ: Can you tell me who you are meeting with?
KB: We’ll have meetings within the DoD and the special services of the U.S.
TWZ: Will you meet with the CIA?
KB: (Laughs and declines to answer)
TWZ: Are you being asked by the U.S. for your insights based upon the defense that Ukraine’s put up? Is the U.S. asking for your advice on how to fight a peer competitor?
KB: Thank God there’s not a single place across the world that has that kind of competitor and that kind of fighting, so not war on that level of intensity. But if such recommendations are required from us, we’ll gladly provide those.
TWZ: I want to talk a little bit about the ongoing counteroffensive. I know that you’re not the general in charge of land forces, but as the eyes and ears of the Ukrainian military, what’s your assessment? Do you still believe that Ukraine will retake Crimea this year or will a counteroffensive push on until next year?
KB: Our counteroffensive operation started at the beginning of summer and is still ongoing. It hasn’t stopped. And as you’ve rightly said I’m not the commander-in-chief of the General Staff. That is why questions about the tempo or progress of the counteroffensive operation should be addressed to the General Staff. But speaking of Crimea, you could not have missed that since the middle of August, there’s been a certain intensification going on with regard to Crimea, and that might indirectly give you a hint about the answer to your question.
So first of all, the fact itself is that we’re engaging the military infrastructure and military targets in occupied Crimea and the occupier’s infrastructure. If we’re going deeper into strikes against the air defense system, it’s more complicated here. First of all, the air defense systems themselves are very costly equipment and it takes a lot of time to produce those and Russian flags those systems because all this inventory is currently engaged in fighting against Ukraine and also in protection of Moscow. They’ve taken away air defenses from everywhere else.
That is why, naturally, when we engage in another and another air defense battalion of the Russian military, they need to think about where they can pull those systems from and where are they able to tolerate less defenses in other places.
The second point in engaging defenses is that we’re making those holes in the overall air defense coverage. Those holes are exploited for other things. Also, we’re depleting their air defense missile stocks because those are not limitless. And from the political standpoint, we’re also demonstrating the obvious inability of Russian air defense systems, which respectively makes them less lucrative on the world arms markets.
TWZ: And this is part of a coordinated campaign, it’s not just Crimea, right? You’re doing this inside Russia, with the strikes on air bases and other targets and on Moscow?
KB: Let’s put it like this, we have never confirmed [attacks on Moscow] officially (Budanov laughs) and I will be keeping that stance. But I can share my opinion about those strikes. All the above-mentioned factors clearly coincide with the strikes inside Russia. Especially when we’re talking about the obviously decreasing demand for Russian weapons because when the whole world sees that some drones are attacking Moscow, nobody wants to buy Russian air defense systems any longer. And that is very painful for them. And it links back to additional factors which are absent when we’re discussing Crimea.
One side note. There’s a completely opposite situation in terms of demand on weapon systems. There’s a very high demand on Ukrainian drones now. We can’t sell those now because all of them are used for warfighting, but after the war ends, this will have a lot of meaning.
Now speaking about the strikes deep into Russia, including Moscow, that are conducted by someone. There is a social side of it. Because now the Russian population and especially large Russian businesses really start to feel the impact of war. Because before that, it was just a war going on on TV. Yes, it did have some financial impact on big players, but smaller ones weren’t even touched. But demonstrative strikes, such as strikes against Moscow city – the skyscraper district in Moscow – demonstrates to everyone that now it touches upon them.
Besides that, it undermines the belief of the population in an all-powerful Russian regime that is the strongest one in the world. They start asking those logical questions, like: “where’s our air defenses that are supposed to protect us?” And they start blaming their authorities for that, for stealing all the money. The next aspect is strikes against critical military infrastructure. It includes oil refineries that supply fuel to the warfighting as well as the factories and plants that produce components for military equipment. So that’s the overall picture.
TWZ: Talk to me about the sabotage attack on Chkalovsky Air Field, located less than 20 miles from Moscow.
KB: Those were activities of sabotage groups.
TWZ: Are they connected to you?
KB: Of course all of those [groups] are in some kind of connection with us.
TWZ: Did you suggest that attack? Orchestrate it? Plan it?
KB: Of course. We’re assisting them, let’s put it that way.
TWZ: Did you select the target and help them figure out how to enter the base and blow up the planes?
KB: Let’s skip that one.
TWZ: What effect is being able to breach such a secure base having in Russia?
KB: The explanation here is the same because it was an attack conducted in a secure area actually inside Moscow because that airfield is within the greater Moscow [region]. It demonstrates the obvious inability of the regime to protect even its most critical and secure infrastructure. And if we’re talking about airframes, of course, Russia has a lot of those but some of them, such as the Il-20, are not in big numbers available.
TWZ: Did you suggest that those particular aircraft be targeted?
KB: (Laughs) So we’re going back to the spot where I didn’t want to go.
TWZ: What is the military chatter you are picking up in the wake of this attack? Is there panic? Consternation?
KB: We’re aware of the very negative reaction because they got the blame for it. This surely wasn’t the task, but it’s a side effect. And they received the blame because they were supposed to ensure security and they let those sabotage people come into that secure facility and conduct this sabotage operation.
TWZ: Who received the blame?
KB: The FSB. Besides that, of course, it’s a blow against the political leaders, and military leadership of the Russian Federation because they are not able obviously to ensure proper guarding of strategic critical airfields in Moscow.
TWZ: Do you think they have a dartboard with your face on it at the FSB?
KB: (Laughs) I don’t know, I haven’t been there.
TWZ: I want to return a little bit to the counteroffensive. It’s obviously a big part of what’s going on. And you must get tired of being asked about the pace of this. What do you tell people when they bring that up?
KB: I’m also always referring those questions to the General Staff. They’re doing the fight. I’m just assisting.
TWZ: Can you talk about how this will progress into the winter? When we first met and I asked if you were concerned about fighting in the cold, you said, ‘It’s no problem.’ So does this pending weather concern you?
KB: It’s not a problem at all. And as everyone saw last time, it’s not a problem to fight in winter for both sides – for us and for Russians. It’s not a pleasant thing to do, but it’s not a big deal. There’s one very important nuance that makes a difference between current warfighting and the previous periods of fighting. Currently, all main instances of fighting are done on foot without using any materiel. This is linked to the high saturation of artillery systems on the forefront and also portable anti-tank weapons. And that’s true for both sides. Those [armored] systems are not enough to create a gap in the orbits of the enemy – to create a powerful breakthrough as in classic doctrine. But it is well enough to deter any attempt of the enemy of any side to conduct that breakthrough with materiel and convoys.
Also, there’s a high level of saturation with both anti-personnel and anti-tank minefields. Anti-tank mines are making a lot of difference because when such a mine goes off on their wheels, it completely destroys the wheels and that piece of materiel is not able to move any further. Damage done to a piece of equipment is minimal but it still cannot move any longer. Those anti-tank mines are a big problem for those tracked vehicles. And a new feature that hasn’t been observed anywhere before is the high number of FPV [First Person Video] suicide drones on both sides which are able to engage practically any piece of equipment.
All of those above-mentioned factors reduced the possibility of using armored equipment in practically all of the main directions to the minimum. Now that hardware is only used for evacuation or to swiftly transport infantry teams to a particular spot but it doesn’t take part in the fighting.
TWZ: Given that, those 31 Abrams tanks heading to Ukraine…
KB: We’re looking forward to seeing that. We haven’t seen them yet.
TWZ: Will they make a difference given all these factors and given the difficulty of maneuvering in mud?
KB: They should be used in a very tailored way for very specific, well-crafted operations because if they are used at the front line and just in a combined arms fight, they will not live very long on the battlefield. They need to be used in those breakthrough operations, but very well-prepared.
TWZ: Are you confident that’s going to happen? Let me step back to the situation in June near Malaya Tokmachka where there were a number of armored vehicles were destroyed.
KB: Actually there wasn’t that much materiel that was destroyed. There was a lot of damaged materiel. And by now it’s repaired. The number of those that were destroyed was not that high. But it’s the very example we’ve just talked about. So if if we just deploy some battalion tank group into the battlefield somewhere, just as long as it gets under the range of artillery it will get hit.
I will share two other examples on the enemy side. Similar situations could be observed during Russian attempts to attack Vuhledar last winter. The same thing happened. They went on attack in combat convoys and there were dozens of pieces of equipment that just didn’t get through. And by the way, what is peculiar about that specific operation was that it was commanded personally by Gen. [Sergei] Gerasimov, and when all that equipment was destroyed, he blamed everyone around him and just left the frontline.
I’ll provide you with one more different example. It’s about how Wagner units advanced. When they did manage to take Bakhmut [on May 21], they were not using armored vehicles. They were only using artillery support to infantry actions on foot. So practically they were just using infantry.
TWZ: That’s expensive in terms of lives, right? Are you able to talk about the toll these kinds of attacks are taking on Ukrainian forces?
KB: Regretfully I don’t possess precise numbers of our casualties. But it is completely logical that all of our casualties – both killed in action and wounded in action – went up as we shifted to offensive operations if we compare those with the previous periods. But there is still this very interesting peculiarity that even though we’re on the offensive, our numbers of casualties are still lower than on the enemy’s side who are in defense.
But having described the overall realities of our current situation we’re smoothly coming to the conclusion that we will have to change something. The conclusion is that we’ll need additional weapons systems and capabilities that could still change this balance we have today. Because looking at the situation solely from the perspective of manpower, if we compare the Ukrainian potential with Russian potential, the Russians have a lot more human resources. That is why we cannot keep on fighting just soldier on soldier. This will not deliver the results we want.
TWZ: So what do you have to do to change this?
KB: We need to resolve the issue of increasing numbers of overall artillery barrels on the battlefield. And we need longer-range weapon systems in order to engage their command posts, their logistics storages, etc., etc.
TWZ: When you meet with U.S. officials are you going to ask for [Army Tactical Missile System] ATACMS? And what are you going to say to convince them to provide ATACMS?
KB: I think that this issue will be raised.
TWZ: What’s your argument for them?
KB: My argumentation is very simple. The majority of [Russian] command posts and logistic storages are beyond the distance of 85 kilometers (about 50 miles) which is the maximum range for our current [Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS) munitions] – for [M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems or] HIMARS that we have. The Russians just place command posts and other things beyond those distances so we don’t have anything to reach them there. And the situation is the same with Russian aviation at the airfields. Fighting Russian aviation using air defense systems is very costly and ineffective. Aviation should be taken out at the air bases.
TWZ: Are you talking about airfields in Russia?
KB: No, we’re talking about the airfields in the occupied areas of Ukraine.
TWZ: Like those bases in Crimea.
KB: Crimea is Ukraine.
TWZ: On Tuesday, a U.S. official said the new Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), a replacement for ATACMS, is coming online soon and could potentially open up the availability of ATACMS for Ukraine. Do you have a sense of how many ATACMS the U.S. has that they can give you?
KB: So let’s wait for the official announcements to be made. There are still different ways how this situation can turn out so let’s wait for [the official announcement] but I can say conditionally that if it’s 100 missiles, this won’t change the situation.
TWZ: You need thousands?
KB: At least hundreds.
TWZ: Do you think you will return to Ukraine with good news about ATACMS?
KB: I always hope for the better. We’ll do everything to make that happen.
TWZ: Let me switch to the Russian side of this war. As Ukrainian forces push through that Robotyne-Verbove salient, as there’s success near Bakhmut with the recent capture of Andriivka and Klischiivka, and as the Russians are trying to push through toward Kupiansk, how can the Russians man all these areas?
KB: It’s not actually like that.
TWZ: So tell me, because you know better than I do!
KB: The offensive operation in the south will continue as it’s been ongoing as long as we have resources. In parallel to that, of course, are operations for the de-occupation of Bakhmut. You’ve very rightly mentioned that we recently have taken back Klischiivka, which looks like it’s a very small [spot] of land, but it’s important because it’s on a hill overlooking the rest of the terrain.
The next step is to cut off all the supply routes that go into Bakhmut. Practically this operation we’re following is a track really similar to the Russian one which they used to take Bakhmut. The only difference is that they still conducted those frontal attacks on the city which led to very high casualties in manpower. We won’t be doing that. We will try and envelop the city and only after it’s enveloped will we be entering the city.
And you mentioned the Russian actions in Kupiansk. Those are just local operations that cannot be called a campaign or an offensive operation. They had certain success a few months ago but after that they were stopped at certain defense lines and there’s nothing happening since.
TWZ: Is the operation in Bakhmut designed to pin down Russian forces and keep them from reinforcing the Berdiansk and Melitopol attack axes?
KB: For sure, and it has delivered the result that we wanted. For example, the Russians recently redeployed their only reserve force – the 25th Army – which was just recently raised and hasn’t completed its creation. Now it’s redeployed to roughly the north of Bakhmut and that’s the place where it’s going to be buried.
TWZ: How many forces does the 25th Army have?
KB: About 15,000 men. It’s not that much. And besides that, the threat for Russians to lose Bakhmut makes them redeploy at all times additional and additional forces to the Bakhmut area, which of course drains their resources from other directions like the south.
TWZ: Speaking of which, are the Russians able to reinforce their defense against the Burdiansk and Melitopol pushes? Are they able to bring enough troops there to prevent Ukrainian advances, given all the stresses?
KB: So we’re going back to the previous question. All that they have already have been thrown into the fire. And now all the backbone of current Russian airborne troops is in defense and trying to deter the movement of our offensive groupings in the south. Before that, there were units of the Russian 810th Naval Infantry Brigade. That brigade was completely defeated, completely smashed, and now they have withdrawn being replaced by airborne troops.
TWZ: How do you protect that Robotyne-Verbove salient against a Russian incursion?
KB: You can’t invent anything new. You have to be powerful in defense, but you have to be constantly pushing forward. In this case, they will just physically be unable to fight back. So to continue the way it actually happens now across the whole of the front line.
TWZ: Will you strike the Kerch Bridge again and if so, what will Putin do?
KB: It’s not a question of will we strike or won’t we strike. We’re doing that regularly so we will finish it. It’s just an issue of time.
TWZ: And what will Putin do?
KB: He’ll get upset once again. What can he do?
TWZ: Did you sink the Project 22160 class patrol ship Sergey Kotov with uncrewed surface vessels (USV) and do you have any pictures to show that?
KB: It is damaged. Its propeller was damaged and also it’s got a hole on the backside of the body on the right. It’s 50 by 100 centimeters (about 5.5 square feet). So it will be sent for repairs and this ship will spend some time in the dock.
TWZ: Can you talk about some of the weapons you’ve been using – the modified Neptunes, the sea drones, the UAVs?
KB: We’re using everything we have available. The list of various drones produced in Ukraine is quite large now and we’re using everything we can. The Neptunes are in the process of development, which is still ongoing and they are being improved and improved. But the problem with those is that we don’t have the line to produce a lot of them. So the problem is in the quantity of those available.
TWZ: So when you request a strike with a modified Neptune, what kind of targets are you looking at given the limited number?
KB: The purpose of moves with those weapon systems is to make holes in Russian air defense coverage and then to exploit that hole in the air defense coverage for other operations.
TWZ: I want to do a complete shift here. Were you guys involved with the attack on a Wagner-backed militia in Sudan? CNN reported that Ukrainians were likely involved in the attack on the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) forces with FPV drones.
KB: I will only say the following: About two to three months ago I was giving an interview to one of the media, I don’t remember which specific one. I answered them back then that anywhere across the world we will be seeking and hunting down Russian military criminals, and sooner or later that time will come whenever they are. That is why we shouldn’t be surprised when in any territory, something happens to Russian military criminals.
Then speaking about your specific question about Sudan, regretfully I cannot confirm or deny. I suppose it’s not a big secret that there were and there still are Wagner fighters in the same way as everywhere in central Africa. Russia has led itself to a situation where it’s on the verge of strategic collapse. Russia step-by-step will be gradually lose what it has won. It has paid a large price in terms of men, in terms of financial resources, everywhere across the world. The more Russia fights against us, the more it loses.
TWZ: Who killed former Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin?
KB: I wouldn’t be in a hurry to say he’s killed.
TWZ: You think he might be alive?
KB: I just wouldn’t rush with that question. I don’t possess any confirmation.
TWZ: You don’t have confirmation that he’s dead yet?
KB: We don’t possess that.
TWZ: Do you trust Elon Musk?
KB: (Laughs) In what sense?
TWZ: There was the discussion over Walter Isaacson’s book excerpt and whether Musk shut off Starlink to prevent a Ukrainian attack on Sevastopol last year, or whether as he claimed he denied a request to provide it.
KB: Look, [Starlink] is a private property of a private person. Yes we really very widely use his products and services. The whole of the line of contact talks to each other to some extent using his products and services. The only thing I can say here is that without those services and products it would be a catastrophe. But it is true that he did turn off his products and services over Crimea before. But there’s another side to that truth. Everybody’s been aware of that.
TWZ: So he did turn it off?
KB: This specific case everybody’s referring to, there was a shutdown of the coverage over Crimea, but it wasn’t at that specific moment. That shutdown was for a month. There might have been some specific cases I’m not aware of. But I’m totally sure that throughout the whole first period of the war, there was no coverage at all.
TWZ: But did he ever put it on and then shut it off?
KB: There have been no problems since it’s been turned on over Crimea.
TWZ: I want to get to some personal questions. Are you still living in your office with your family? What’s that like?
KB: Yes, it’s like that.
TWZ: Are you concerned about your safety? Are the Russians trying to kill you?
KB: Why don’t you understand that [my wife and I are living in my office]? Why is that strange for you?
TWZ: It’s not strange, I just wanted to get your reaction….
KB: We’re absolutely fine. She has been living with me since the February invasion. And she’s a police officer herself. She’s actually a professor at our national police academy. She’s teaching legal psychology. It’s not a problem for her as it might have been for someone else.
TWZ: In an excerpt from his new book, Financial Times reporter Christopher Miller writes about a situation where you were in a meeting with President Zelensky, Denys Shmyhal, Ukraine’s prime minister; Valery Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine; Ivan Bakanov, head of the Security Service of Ukraine and then-Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov. You laid out a map and you explained what was about to happen. Can you talk about that moment and what it was like to convince your fellow leaders that the Russians were actually going to invade?
KB: It’s already history and frankly, currently, I cannot recall a specific meeting you’re referring to but as an intelligence chief, surely I’m reporting the information I have to the leadership of the state and all the people involved in the administration.
TWZ: Were you disappointed in not being named defense minister?
KB: Absolutely not.
TWZ: Would you even want that job?
KB: No, I love my current job.
TWZ: I read that you were attending Ostroh Academy to study political science. Are you interested in running for office?
KB: You’re wrong. I’ll explain. I’m writing my PhDs there.
TWZ: What’s your thesis?
KB: Global interaction between special services across the world, how they interact, and how they influence their domestic policies.
TWZ: Are you going to write a book after this is all over?
KB: (Laughs) I’ll write my PhD first. And under the calendar plan that they’ve provided me with I have two years to do that.
TWZ: When we first met, you were an up-and-coming one-star general – brigadier general – but outside of Ukraine not many people had known who you were. Now you’re world famous. What do you think about the memes like the Budnov eyes and the jokes?
KB: (Laughs) I cannot influence those anyhow, what can I do about those? But some of them I need to admit surprised me (laughs). Especially after I had my haircut and there was this meme with Prigozhin’s head and mine. So it was right after his insurrection attempt in Russia and the meme was four pictures. First was mine and I said I will give you the sign. And then he is kind of asking what will be that sign and I say you’ll get it. The next picture is me being bald (laughs). That was one I really kind of remember.
TWZ: Was that one of your favorites? Do you have a favorite?
KB: I like that one.
TWZ: Any message you want to give to the American public?
KB: No, I think we’ve covered everything. The only thing I can say is that Ukraine will be forever grateful for all the assistance that’s been provided to Ukraine. And the victory over the Russian Federation will be the same extent an American victory. It will be the same for Ukraine and America together. It will be our joint victory.
TWZ: When will that happen do you think?
KB: In any case it’s close.
TWZ: This year? Next year?
KB: So currently it’s hard to prognose that because there are so many factors playing in and even if we go back to our offensive operation currently, in the General Staff, no one’s being able to surely say for how long will that continue.
After the interview wrapped, Budanov and I have a few more minutes of small talk. Budanov agrees to some photographs and then goes back to his busy day. Meetings await at the Pentagon and White House. On Thursday, he accompanied President Zelensky to both. But despite being in Washington, he is never far removed from what is taking place back home.
Friday morning, there was a Ukrainian missile strike on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea. During a round of fact-check questions, I asked him about the GUR’s role in that attack.
“We just gave some intelligence assistance,” he tells me. “We always give 24/7 intel information to the General Staff.”
It’s the kind of assistance that has kept Kyrylo Budanov a hero in Ukraine and a wanted man to Russia.
1. Russian Casualties: the BBC-Mediazona research indicates that Russia has lost 40,000-50,000 soldiers – three times as many as during 10 years of war in Afghanistan and almost as many as the Americans in Vietnam. Russia’s forceconservation tactics and strategy are designed to minimise casualties but completing conquest of the Donbass may cost thousands more Russian lives. Capturing Kharkov and Odessa would be even more costly. Over-running and occupying Western Ukraine would require mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of additional troops. Ukraine’s casualties are far higher than Russia’s – a minimum of 150,000-200,000 and perhaps as many as 400,000 military dead. A precipitate Ukrainian military collapse is possible but Kiev just might, with Western support, be able to fight on for some time.
2. The Nuclear Danger: atomic war threatens the very existence of Russia as well as the rest of the world. The war’s escalation into an all-out NATO-Russia conflict remains a real possibility. Never so high has been the danger of nuclear hostilities or of a catastrophic incident involving Ukrainian (or Russian) nuclear power stations.
3. Regime-Change in Kiev: the current Ukrainian regime will last as long as the war. Peace negotiations will be its downfall. Its replacement by an even more ultra-nationalist government is possible but would further weaken Western support – without which Ukraine cannot survive as a state. The odds favour a successor regime that will swallow the bitter pill of a peace settlement that suits Russia – an outcome that Ukrainian public opinion will hate but accept as the least bad alternative.
4. Russian Public Opinion: Polling data indicates that the majority of Russia’s citizens will support the war for as long as it takes but would also like to see a ceasefire and peace negotiations as soon as possible. The westernising sections of Russian elites are quiescent but they, too, will push in the same direction if and when a possible peace settlement appears on the horizon. A small, but vociferous and not insubstantial, minority of Russians favour total war and complete victory over Ukraine and the West. Putin’s power and popularity means he can over-ride these so-called turbo-patriots, though they could hamper any peace negotiations.
5. Pressure from the Global South. Russia’s friends, allies, partners and wellwishers in the Global South oppose a long war and want a ceasefire as soon as possible. If and when Ukraine and the West begin to court peace, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and other independent actors will be a formidable lobby urging Putin to pick up the ball and run with it.
6. Reconstruction of Incorporated Territories: the retention of Crimea and the four other incorporated provinces are the minimum Russian war aim. While its achievement is now virtually guaranteed, it will be a pyrrhic victory if Moscow is unable to rapidly reconstruct and re-populate the devasted lands of southern and eastern Ukraine. The longer the war, the more mammoth that task. Putin went to war to destroy the growing Ukraine-NATO military bridgehead on Russia’s borders but also to protect pro-Russia Ukrainians. Ending the war may be the best way to guarantee their lives and livelihoods
7. Slavic Solidarity: Putin’s July 2021 claim that Russians and Ukrainians are essentially the same people provokes outrage in some quarters, even though it was a statement that at the time was supported by 40% of Ukraine’s citizens. Russia has fought the war under the banner of multi-nationalism not mono-ethnic nationalism. It has, for the most part, treated its Ukrainian opponents with respect. The identified enemies are Ukrainian neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists, corrupt officialdom, exploitative oligarchs and sell-outs to Western interests. Ideologically, Russia is committed to healing the wounds of war it has inflicted on what it still considers a brother nation. At best, healing will take a very long time; a long war could make the gulf between Russia and Ukraine unbridgeable for generations.
8. Restoration of Russo-Western Commerce: Russia has weathered the Western sanctions war very well. Russia’s war-economy is booming and significantly out-performing Western arms manufacturers. New relationships and markets have been forged with the Global South. Russia has more economic and technological sovereignty than it did before the war. China, Russia and the non-Western world are challenging US global financial hegemony. But Western sanctions do hurt – ordinary Russians most of all – and the pain will likely intensify in the medium to long-term. Detached from and in conflict with the West, Russia can survive and even thrive, but greater prosperity and opportunity lies in ending Western sanctions and restoring commercial and trade ties.
9. Global Co-operation. Russia and the West need each other to resolve a multitude of mutually pressing problems – nuclear proliferation, cross-border crime and international terrorism, dire environmental challenges, world health threats, global poverty and inequity.
10.Birthing a New World Order: Russia aspires to an international system based on sovereignty, multipolarity, multilateralism, mutual security, international law and the re-balancing and re-invigoration of global and regional institutions. Immanent in Russia’s vision of the future is an implicit preference for benign spheres of influence in which great powers provide stability and order and help secure justice for all states. A new global order is within Russia’s grasp – provided it avoids the nightmare of a forever war that begets the Orwellian dystopia of a permanently divided world of warring blocs.
In an interesting speech about the way US imperial aggression provokes violence around the world, antiwar commentator Scott Horton made reference to an April 2022 article from Yahoo News that had previously escaped my attention.
The article is titled “In closer ties to Ukraine, U.S. officials long saw promise and peril,” and it features named and unnamed veterans of the US intelligence cartel saying that long before the February 2022 invasion they were fully aware that the US had “provoked” Russia in Ukraine and created a powderkeg situation that would likely lead to war. [https://news.yahoo.com/in-closer-ties-to-ukraine-us-officials-long-saw-promise-and-peril-090006105.html]
“By last summer [meaning the summer of 2021], the baseline view of most U.S. intelligence community analysts was that Russia felt sufficiently provoked over Ukraine that some unknown trigger could set off an attack by Moscow,” a former CIA official told Yahoo News’ Zach Dorfman, who adds, “(The CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.)”
Dorfman writes that initial support provided to Ukraine during the Obama administration had been “calibrated to avoid aggravating Moscow,” but that “partially spurred by Congress, as well as the Trump administration, which was more willing to be aggressive on weapon transfers to Kyiv, overt U.S. military support for Ukraine grew over time — and with it the risk of a deadly Russian response, some CIA officials believed at the time.”
Policymakers “would always say, ‘If we do X thing, if we give the Ukrainians X system, how are the Russians going to react?’ And our answer would always be, ‘You can’t look at any one thing in isolation,’” the unnamed former CIA official told Yahoo News. “And we might look and say, ‘Well, it’s just a few hundred MANPADs [man-portable air-defense systems] or a few hundred Humvees,’ but it’s missing the point that the Russians are taking all of this stuff in the aggregate, and they’re drawing this picture of this ever-increasing relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine.”
“I understand the moral argument,” says former CIA official Jeffrey Edmonds regarding the weapons transfers into Ukraine, “but I also understand the argument that, well, why would you want to give these things if it’s just going to increase the chances that Russia does something?”
So while we members of the public were blindly speculating about whether or not Russia would attack Ukraine, the US intelligence cartel was fully aware that the US was taking actions ensuring that that would happen. That’s the environment the US security state knew it was operating under when it continued to taunt the idea of adding Ukraine and Georgia to NATO right up until the final moments before the invasion.
This war wasn’t just provoked, it was knowingly provoked. Off ramp after off ramp was sped past by the US war machine at a hundred miles an hour on its beeline toward a horrific proxy war, because empire managers had calculated that such a war would serve US interests. And now we routinely see US officials like Mitch McConnell openly saying that this war serves US interests.
They really couldn’t be more obvious about it if they tried.
It’s been funny to watch the response of empire apologists to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s surprising refutation of a year and a half of empire propaganda by openly admitting that NATO expansion provoked the invasion of Ukraine and acknowledging that NATO powers rejected Moscow’s proposed compromises which could have averted the war. Basically the only argument they now have after this admission is to say that Russia should not have viewed NATO expansion as an existential threat.
Their only remaining trick is to argue with reality; to basically say that yes it’s reality that NATO expansion provoked this war because Moscow saw it as a threat, but reality shouldn’t have been what reality was. They argue that Russia should have felt completely different feelings about a military threat on its border than nations like the United States would feel, since as we’ve discussed previously the last time there was a credible military threat near the US border the US responded so aggressively that the world almost ended.
That’s really all they’ve got: “Yes it’s true that all the people who’ve died and lost their homes in this war did so because we were amassing a hostile military alliance near Russia’s border, but in our defense the Russians should’ve thought different thoughts in their heads than the ones that we ourselves would think about a hostile military threat on our border.”
If all westerners deeply understood all the suffering and danger that has been unleashed upon our world by this war, and deeply understood the fact that their own governments played a role in starting it, the political status quo of the western world would be impossible to maintain. Which is why such unprecedented levels of propaganda and internet censorship have gone into preventing westerners from coming to such an understanding.
Westerners were deceived into supporting yet another evil war, which once again is showing every sign of dragging on for the foreseeable future with no exit strategy in sight. The only difference between this war and all those other wars is that this one is laden with the risk of nuclear annihilation, a risk which the US empire has been treading less and less carefully around as the bloodshed continues.
The more you think about it, the more horrifying it gets.
