WARZONE. During an interview with the head of the Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR), Major-general Kyrylo Budanov (37) in December 2022, two journalists from the Kyiv-based online magazine news.liga.net spotted a map on display in his office and took a photo of it.
By Kristoffer Hell
Later they found the opportunity to ask the Major-general about it.
”We saw a map of ’dismembered’ Russia in your office. On it, the Kursk, Belgorod regions and Kuban are circled with a black marker as part of Ukraine. Is this the next stage after reaching the borders of 1991?”
Major-general Budanov’s answer was cryptic: ”Everyone sees what they want to see.”
The map, which can be seen below, is in fact remarkable.
It throws light not only on the deeper military objectives of the Zelensky cabinet in Kyiv, but also calls into question the scope and meaning of the war.
Why would the Ukrainian GUR bother to put on display a map over all of Russia, the largest country in the world, stretching from the North Atlantic to the Pacific and spanning eleven time zones, in their office?
A map over all of Europe, all of its Russian parts included?
Sure.
But all of Eurasia?
Wasn’t the beef about Ukraine’s renegade provinces, which, after Russia rolled in on 24 February 2022, defected to the Federation in referendums in September 2022, Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson?
With Crimea having done so already in 2014.
The official Ukrainian position is that victory means a Russian pullback to the borders established in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed.
According to the map, however, Ukraine’s ambitions are greater and also include stealing from Moscow the undisputed regions: Bryansk, Kursk, Belgorod, Voronezh, Rostov, and Krasnodar: home to over 16 million Russians and totalling some 315,600 sq km, larger than the territory of the United Kingdom.
The Ukrainian GUR does not stop there; it also wants to dismember the Russian Federation into several chunks – which looks like a dream come through for Washington, since this would ensure that no counter-balance to NATO would ever again arise on the Eurasian landmass.
On the left on the map, future Russia envisaged by the GUR is identified by the letters ”РФ” (RF), which stand for ”Российская Федерация” the Russian Federation; what used to be the largest country in the World has been cut down to a shard of territory not much bigger than Ukraine itself.
What also concerns NATO’s war planners is Moscow’s access to the open seas, from the navy bases at Severomorsk in Murmansk in the Northwest, neighbouring Finland and Norway, and from Vladivostok in the Far East, next to North Korea and facing Japan.
Kyiv’s map may also explain why Finland and Sweden, in 2022, decided to abandon their long-standing and successful policies of neutrality and join NATO.
In the process of vivisecting Russia, the regions of Murmansk, Karelia and half of the Leningrad oblast seem to have been promised to Finland, which will have doubled its territory. It makes sense why Sweden would see this as a boon, too. Sweden and Finland used to be one country, and whatever is good for Helsinki is also fine with Stockholm. So close is the bond between the two countries that Finland has made it clear that it will only join NATO if Sweden does so too.
In the Far East, Japan gets all of the Kuril islands, a few of which have been a bone of contention between Moscow and Tokyo for decades.
The greatest surprise may be the letter ”K” in the Far East (Kamchatka?). Its borders are open to the South and run into China – which looks like it is earmarked for war as well.
What is going on in Kyiv?
Is Ukraine run by Washington, with Zelensky as a sock puppet?
Or is the map which promises so much and is put on display at the Ukrainian GUR, just Kyiv courting Washington, NATO and the EU to keep the money and weapons flowing, a large part of which will no doubt find its way into offshore accounts belonging to faceless oligarchs?
When asked, the only thing Major-general Budanov had to say about the map was:
”Everyone sees what they want to see.”
Text: Kristoffer Hell
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