{"id":1452868,"date":"2024-01-24T18:33:15","date_gmt":"2024-01-24T23:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1452868"},"modified":"2024-01-24T18:33:15","modified_gmt":"2024-01-24T23:33:15","slug":"the-il-76-shootdown-by-a-us-patriot-missile-could-lead-to-zaluzhnys-replacement-with-budanov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/the-il-76-shootdown-by-a-us-patriot-missile-could-lead-to-zaluzhnys-replacement-with-budanov\/1452868\/","title":{"rendered":"The IL-76 Shootdown By A US Patriot Missile Could Lead To Zaluzhny’s Replacement With Budanov"},"content":{"rendered":"

The IL-76 Shootdown By A US Patriot Missile Could Lead To Zaluzhny’s Replacement With Budanov<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

All things considered, blaming Zaluzhny \u2013 perhaps by claiming that he should have verified alleged intelligence about the IL-76\u2019s cargo before shooting it down in order to make this seem like an unfortunate accident \u2013 is the most politically convenient option at Zelensky and his US patron\u2019s disposal. It could shift the blame from them to him and facilitate Zaluzhny\u2019s replacement with the much more politically reliable Budanov without much resistance from the armed forces or civil society.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Kiev\u00a0shot down<\/a>\u00a0a Russian Il-76 military transport plane carrying 65 Ukrainian POWs as it was flying over the border region of Belgorod on Wednesday. Patriot missiles were reportedly used during the attack, which was carried out with the aid of American instructors. The regime was informed of the flight ahead of time and was aware that it was carrying its detained troops. The planned swap has now been called off and questions are swirling about why Kiev would kill its own POWs.<\/p>\n

CNN<\/a>\u00a0ridiculously suggested that it might have been a case of friendly fire by drawing attention to a prior air alert and drone interception an hour before the incident, while\u00a0some Ukrainian sources<\/a>\u00a0circulated the conspiracy theory that the plane was allegedly carrying only S-300 air defense missiles onboard. The first narrative is meant to smear the reputation of the Russian Armed Forces while the second is a \u201cface-saving\u201d deflection from Kiev\u2019s culpability for what happened.<\/p>\n

A more realistic interpretation is that American proxy war tactics are shifting as the conflict began to\u00a0wind down<\/a>\u00a0late last year after Kiev was\u00a0pushed back on the defensive<\/a>\u00a0following its\u00a0failed counteroffensive<\/a>. That theory also has its faults, however, since five Russian military aircraft were\u00a0reportedly shot down<\/a>\u00a0by Patriot missiles over the border region of Bryansk last May so there isn\u2019t anything new this time except that 65 Ukrainian POWs were killed after Kiev knew they were on board.<\/p>\n

The specifics of this incident therefore lead to suspicion that these detained troops were deliberately targeted by those American-advised Ukrainian air defense controllers who were operating the Patriot air defense systems on Wednesday for the reasons that will now be explained. <\/strong>The backdrop to what happened was that Russia\u2019s foreign spy agency predicted an\u00a0impending bureaucratic reshuffle<\/a>\u00a0on Monday a day before a former Pentagon official\u00a0reported on rumors<\/a>\u00a0that Zelensky might oust Zaluzhny.<\/p>\n

Stephen Bryen<\/a>, who served as staff director of the Near East Subcommittee of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as deputy undersecretary of defense for policy and is currently a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and Yorktown Institute, published the article on his Substack. According to him, the Ukrainian leader wants to replace the Commander-in-Chief with military intelligence head Budanov, and he\u2019s planning to do so by blaming Zaluzhny for recent battlefield losses near Avdeevka.<\/p>\n

Zelensky\u2019s top rival<\/a>\u00a0commands immense respect among the armed forces and civil society, the first of which are growing so angry with their leadership\u2019s military plans that there was even a\u00a0whiff of mutiny<\/a>\u00a0in the New York Times\u2019 report last month about the Kyrnki debacle. Aware of how much Ukraine\u2019s already fragile military-political dynamics had been destabilized by the failed counteroffensive, an expert from the influential Atlantic Council called on Zelensky to form a \u201cgovernment of national unity<\/a>\u201d a month ago. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Adrian Karatnycky\u2019s demand was made through his article for Politico and sold as the best way to\u00a0preemptively avert potentially forthcoming protests<\/a>\u00a0with the innuendo being that it could also neutralize any possibly impending plans for a military coup that could occur independently of those protests. The dilemma that Zelensky found himself in is that complying with Karatnycky\u2019s proposal could signal weakness and lead to the end of his political career while removing Zaluzhny could lead to a mutiny.<\/p>\n

Delaying any action also has its detriments too since grassroots and military pressure could reach uncontrollable proportions in the coming future, further worsening the strategic situation that he found himself in. Russia\u2019s foreign spy agency didn\u2019t mention any military reshuffle plans in their statement earlier this week, however, which might be because they were unaware of them or wagered that it\u2019s better not to comment since doing so could influence the process in ways adverse to their interests. \u00a0<\/p>\n

In any case, the sequence of events from mid-December up until Wednesday\u2019s IL-76 incident \u2013 especially the aforementioned statement that preceded Bryen\u2019s report about Zelensky\u2019s plans to replace Zaluzhny with the much more politically reliable Budanov by a single day \u2013 suggested\u00a0deepening intrigue in Kiev<\/a>. <\/strong><\/p>\n

After what just happened following Kiev\u2019s downing of a plane full of Ukrainian POWs by American-advised air defense operators, the public pretext has now been created for replacing him if he wants to.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that Zelensky will certainly do so since any such a move is fraught with the very real risk of blowback due to how popular Zaluzhny is among the armed forces and civil society, <\/strong>but both categories of his supporters might only put up mild resistance if he\u2019s blamed for this incident. It\u2019s not implausible that Zelensky will either directly blame him or do so via media surrogates since he himself wants to eschew responsibility and he definitely doesn\u2019t want anyone pointing fingers at America.<\/p>\n

All things considered, blaming Zaluzhny \u2013 perhaps by claiming that he should have verified alleged intelligence about the IL-76\u2019s cargo before shooting it down in order to make this seem like an unfortunate accident \u2013 is the most politically convenient option at Zelensky and his US patron\u2019s disposal. It could shift the blame from them to him and facilitate Zaluzhny\u2019s replacement with Budanov without much resistance from the armed forces or civil society.<\/p>\n

As for why the US might want him to go, it could be that he\u2019s deemed more amendable to the peace talks that America\u2019s leading\u00a0liberal<\/a>–globalist<\/a>\u00a0policymaking faction is still\u00a0reluctant to relaunch<\/a>, in which case they could fear that a possible coup would stop their proxy war plans and doom Biden\u2019s re-election. They might of course also calculate that the risk of a coup, which could possibly be preceded by large-scale protests across the country in his support, would spike with his removal and thus call it off.<\/p>\n

Whatever ultimately ends up happening, it\u2019s important for observers not to extend credence to CNN and Ukraine\u2019s conspiracy theories about Russia accidentally shooting down its own plane and it supposedly only carrying S-300s respectively, since Kiev definitely knew that there were POWs on board. <\/strong><\/p>\n

It therefore remains to be seen why its American-advised air defense operators still shot it down, but more clarity is expected as time passes and the military and\/or political consequences of this incident become known.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nWed, 01\/24\/2024 – 13:33<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bRead More<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The IL-76 Shootdown By A US Patriot Missile Could Lead To Zaluzhny’s Replacement With Budanov Authored by Andrew Korybko via Substack, All things considered, blaming…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1452868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1452868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1452868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1452868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1452868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1452868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}