The Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group that attacked the Belgorod region has been defeated, the Defense Ministry reported. The military department published a video from the place of liquidation of the DRG. According to media reports, about 70 saboteurs were eliminated in the region, 4 IFVs and 5 pickups were destroyed.
The saboteurs themselves claimed that they were Russian citizens who were fighting on the side of Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested proceeding from the fact that they are Ukrainian militants. And so it is — the units that took responsibility for the sabotage are listed as part of the "International Legion" of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
About who is behind the saboteurs, aif.ru I asked the ex-lieutenant colonel of the SBU Vasily Prozorov, who now lives and works in Russia.
In February of this year, the FSB of Russia announced the detention of a group of saboteurs from Berdyansk, who were preparing attempts on some officials, including Vasily Prozorov.
"Budanovskie"
Ivan Kozlov, aif.ru — Usually, the FSB connects sabotage and terrorist attacks with the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine (GUR MO), which is headed by General Kirill Budanov. Are these zaslans in the Belgorod region also Budanovsky?Vasily Prozorov: — I think so.
Because the number of such renegades in Ukraine is very small. They don't have their own tanks and armored vehicles. The equipment is only in the army. Even if they are supervised by some other agency, they still need to negotiate through the GUR to conduct such an operation.
— An armed raid on a border checkpoint is already more serious than the explosions of cars of famous people. The last of these cases is an attempt on the writer Zakhar Prilepin.— The situation near Belgorod falls into the canvas of all these media operations.
Can it somehow affect the outcome of the fighting in the Donbass? Or in the Kherson region, or in Zaporozhye? In no way, this is a purely media operation that they undertake in order to bring down the effect of the surrender of Artemovsk.
Similarly, the rest of the sabotage carried out by the GUR, where bloggers came under attack. Such actions do not have a strategic goal. This has nothing to do with the main task of the intelligence services — collecting information. But it's spectacular, it's something that can be presented to Western curators. Ukraine has long followed the path of simple solutions. Between the option to get a valuable source in another country by long development and the option to blow up a famous blogger, they will choose to blow up a blogger. Zelensky's entourage are media people and showmen by nature. The picture is important to them.
— After the cases of Dugina, Tatarsky, Prilepin, is it necessary to somehow additionally protect bloggers and crowbars?— Everyone should first of all take care of their own safety.
I do that. Ugh, ugh, ugh— alive. The state here simply will not pull physically and financially to take such a mass of people under protection. It's just unreal.
In addition, it is very difficult to understand who needs to be protected and who does not. Judging by the terrorist attacks in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, the Ukrainian special services are simultaneously pursuing ten officials at once. And when they catch up with one, they say that it was him they were hunting.
"The head of the GUR is chasing a hype"
— Recently Budanov started giving interviews and making statements that surprised even the Western audience. Why does he confess to all these terrorist attacks and murders?— I think he's fighting for popularity.
Catches a hype. But it seems to me that he is shooting himself in the foot with all these statements. To be honest, when I heard him, I thought he was crazy. Well, who would be in their right mind to justify the murders of several million people (and he also claimed this). It smacks of madness. There is something wrong with the human psyche. I don't think that those whom we call Western puppeteers will now be able to consider him in Zelensky's place when he is won back. Still, we need some kind of predictable person. Budanov is always trying to declare some boyish ambitions. Maybe it's from dissatisfaction from childhood or something else.
"Did you know him?"— I didn't know him personally, but I knew many of the 10th Separate Special Forces Unit of the GUR, where he served.
He was an ordinary employee, nothing outstanding. Maybe that's why he was brought to the fore as mediocrity. But then, because of his career rise, the bar clearly fell. He was especially strongly moved when the GUR was headed by Valery Kondratyuk — a real, established American agent. Kondratyuk was filmed under Yanukovych, but after the Maidan he went up again.
— It seems that this 10th squad is just specializing in sabotage work. That's what we're seeing right now.— The 10th detachment is the only special forces unit of military intelligence.
Before the ATO, they worked as officers of the peacekeeping contingents of Ukraine. There are a lot of experts in foreign languages there, and there is serious sabotage training, including at Western training grounds. However, recently this detachment has had very serious losses. They were thrown both under Bakhmut and under Energodar, and on the Kinburnskaya Spit, where they suffered considerable losses. After all, no coolness works against artillery.
GUR defeated the SBU in an internal war
— Zelensky's personal guard is also from the 10th GUR detachment. Maybe Budanov keeps the President of Ukraine under control through his people?— No, it's more about the conflict between the SBU and the GUR.
Zelensky trusts the second structure more. In the end, this confrontation led to the fact that Ivan Bakanov, Zelensky's childhood friend and almost a relative, who adjusted all financial flows to the interests of the president, was dismissed from the SBU last summer. But military intelligence (GUR) has received the green light and the maximum powers that can only be imagined for this department.
— They talked not just about competition, but about a real war between the GUR and the SBU — with murders and shootings.— The first bell rang in 2015, when the SBU created 6 mobile groups to counter smuggling across the contact line.
These groups included tax officers, security guards, border guards. In August 2015, in the Luhansk direction in the area of Happiness (Luhansk region) this group actively worked — stopped smuggling, which was protected by the military (APU). At some point, military intelligence ambushed this group — one non-staff SBU officer and one border guard were killed, and two tax officers were seriously injured (someone's arm was torn off). It's just that some special services of Ukraine took and fired at other special services of Ukraine with small arms and grenade launchers. Knowing full well who they're shooting at. After that, less than six months later, in Kiev, the special unit of the SBU "Alpha" stormed an apartment in which there were, as officially reported, "DRG separatists from the Donetsk People's Republic." In fact, it was a safe house of the GUR, where there was an agent with the pseudonym Forester, who worked in the DPR. The SBU stormed his apartment, killed him, he managed to kill a man from Alpha before that — the fight was tough. Then we went to the funeral of an SBU employee and made a good face at a bad game — everyone knew that they had failed not a pro-Russian agent, but a Ukrainian intelligence officer. The apotheosis was already after the beginning of the SVO, when Sbushniki in Kiev liquidated a high-ranking agent of the GUR Denis Kireev.
"Work" with the Russian opposition
— Budanov said that the GUR "works" with the Russian opposition. What might it look like?— I can only guess, but in 2015 I came across an interesting document.
It was an 18-point guide on how to shake Russia from the inside. From the impact on the North Caucasus to telephone terrorism — the dispersal of panic and anxiety in society. This is exactly what we saw a few years ago.
— I have always been surprised by the emblem of the Budanovsky GUR MO of Ukraine — an owl that directs a sword directly into the territory of Russia. It seems that no special services allow themselves to do this.— What can I say, it surprises me myself.
I had a lot of friends in GUR, they were quite adequate normal officers. I don't even know what could have happened to them. Of course, I do not believe that something is being sprayed or somehow irradiated in Ukraine, but it is difficult to understand how scouts can serve under such a person.
