The United States has opted for a prudent pause in international accusations against Russia as allegedly responsible for the blowing up of the Kajovka dam. “I cannot say conclusively what happened at this time,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters, to the exasperation of the Ukrainian government, whose presidential office “does not understand” that there are any remaining doubts about the authorship of the attack.
In reality, there is a much higher probability that the order to flood Kherson came from the Kremlin and not from kyiv. The Russians controlled the locks and the hydroelectric power station on the dam and the flood allowed them to stop the Ukrainian counteroffensive. However, the war provides arguments for everyone. Moscow blames the Ukrainian high command, understanding that it is part of its strategy to turn pro-Russian areas into “scorched earth” and because it would thus obtain a perfect excuse to carry out a counterattack with close support from the allies.
The West points to Moscow, but in sixteen months of war so many red lines have been crossed by both sides that only the most convinced rulers distribute blame without first having intelligence data in hand. The devotion of the West to the figure of Zelensky and his resistance cabinet is absolute, at least publicly, but more and more evidence is accumulating that there are no leaps of faith and that the United States is closely watching him.
Alexandr Dugin puts his hands to his head in despair a few meters from the burning car that his daughter was driving.
![](https://s3.ppllstatics.com/rc/www/multimedia/2023/06/07/Clipboard-0286.jpg)
The disclosure of dozens of secret reports by the member of the National Guard Jack Teixeira has revealed that the US Intelligence services have spied on the movements of the Ukrainian president. And some listeners have scandalized them. In February, Washington urged the Kiev government to suspend an attack plan inside Russia, which included the capital, Moscow, as the Kremlin celebrated the first anniversary of the invasion. Kyrylo Budanov, the general who heads the Military Intelligence Directorate, was also considering a major maritime offensive in the Black Sea port city of Novorossiysk to demonstrate Ukraine’s ability to penetrate the neighboring country. Budanov did not know that all his preparations were being secretly monitored by Washington until the wake-up call came.
Budanov is the kind of intelligence chief any best-selling writer wants. At 37, this Kievite trained in the special forces bears the scars of having been wounded several times in the long war conflict in Donbas prior to the invasion and was saved from an attack in the heart of Kiev in 2019 when a group of Russians he placed a mine under his car. Between 2014 and 2019, his record indicates that he participated in several special operations that are still classified today. Better not ask.
Kyrylo Budanov gives the military salute during an official act.
Reuters
![](https://s2.ppllstatics.com/rc/www/multimedia/2023/06/07/Clipboard-0290.jpg)
The respect that allies have for you is similar to your ability to unsettle them. Last May, Budanov acknowledged in an interview that agents under his command had killed several Russian propagandists since the start of the war. He did not want to clarify if his gloomy list included Darya Dugina, the daughter of Russian thinker Alexandr Dugin, Putin’s intellectual adviser, assassinated with a bomb, or the well-known blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, a first-rate agitator. Darya’s death sparked the White House’s first public display of anger with Zelensky over evidence, never confirmed by kyiv, linking the attack to a spy of Ukrainian origin.
an unknown face
The Pentagon and US agencies have followed Zelenski so closely that they keep in their possession the wiretaps of conversations in which the ruler is committed to invading Russian towns near the border or is in favor of launching long-range missiles at Moscow. . This is suggested by the documents disseminated on the Internet. The newspaper ‘The Washington Post’ published in May that, according to the analysis of the experts, these demonstrations would reveal the image of “a leader with aggressive instincts” in front of his better known profile of “calm and stoic statesman”.
Zelensky straight away denied that he had any intention of launching an offensive inside Russia. Obviously, the fact of finding out that he has been spied on has bothered the former actor, but it is also true that it has served to warn the United States about carrying out certain acts of war that would endanger global peace. Even so, Washington has impassively watched the delivery by the United Kingdom of long-range missiles to the Ukrainians and accepted that eight European countries could send them F-16 fighters, despite its declared fear that an attack on Russian soil would trigger a world conflict. He is also aware that some of Zelensky’s “fantasies” are being fulfilled as evidenced by the attacks on the Russian villages of Belgorod, which are being claimed by Russian militiamen aligned with Ukraine and opposed to the war and President Vladimir Putin.
An American Humvee destroyed after a raid in Russia’s Belgorod region.
Russian Ministry of Defense
![](https://s3.ppllstatics.com/rc/www/multimedia/2023/06/07/Clipboard-0291.jpg)
Some experts interpret that distrust is natural. What is at stake may determine the immediate future of the explosive Russian-Western tension. Furthermore, it fits within the logic of dealing with a man who is “not a politician” but a leader forced to lead a country at war and therefore subjected to a state of continual stress and uncertainty. This was indicated by a conflict analysis published a few months ago in the Kiev press: “Neither the commitments nor the decisions, nor even some measures taken a posteriori, can be comparable to the type of classic behavior in a normal diplomatic relationship between nations,” it indicated months ago. a conflict analysis study.
On the other hand, marking the Ukrainian Administration is also marking weapons. Before the invasion, the country was at the antipodes of any opportunity to join NATO or the European Union. And, in fact, despite the good wishes and warm welcomes, the EU has imposed a strict list of obligations to fulfill if it wants to be admitted among community partners, especially in the field of corruption and social rights.
the fate of weapons
With this background, international agencies try to follow the fate of the ceded arsenals as best they can; a very complicated mission in the middle of a war but which has allowed us to discover American armored vehicles and Belgian weapons in the incursions on Russian soil. Both Washington and Belgium have made it clear to kyiv that they no longer want to see their weapons involved in such operations. Ukrainian officials, for their part, assure that the Zelensky government has complied with many of the military conditions imposed by the Pentagon, which would demonstrate its willingness to receive more forceful weapons.
Gas leak produced by the sabotage to the Nord Stream in the Baltic Sea.
AFP
![](https://s1.ppllstatics.com/rc/www/multimedia/2023/06/07/Clipboard-0292.jpg)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for the creation of an international commission to investigate who is responsible for the attack on the Kajovka dam. The catastrophe has coincided with the appearance of new secret reports, according to which the US was aware of a plan to sabotage the Nord Stream gas pipeline orchestrated by six individuals under the orders of a high Ukrainian military command, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces Valeri Zaluzhny. One of his functions would be to keep Zelensky out of all knowledge of the operation.
However, who did find out was a European espionage agency, which alerted the CIA in June 2022. Just three months later, an attack practically modeled on the Ukrainian plan destroyed the underwater conduit in charge of transporting Russian gas to Europe. The documents brought to light by Teixeira could now contribute to speeding up the resolution of one of the longest mysteries of this invasion. It is to be expected that the unknowns hovering over the Kajovka reservoir after it was blown up this Tuesday will take less time to clear up than those surrounding the Nord Stream explosion. Especially if, as the experts in the field say, the most normal thing is that the military intelligence services of several countries have been monitoring the movements of Russians and Ukrainians for a long time in an infrastructure of vital importance for a country whose operation depends on the reservoirs.
#intelligence #services #spying #Zelenski