Interview with Mikhail Podolyak/Collage 24 Channel Our defenders bravely defend our state and drive the enemy out of our territories, but Ukraine is 6-9 months behind the schedule for military operations. First of all, the extension in time is associated with the shock of certain countries. This happened after the successful Kharkov operation, which was carried out by the brave Ukrainian Defense Forces. Advisor to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Mikhail Podolyak, explained inan exclusive interview with Channel 24what the connection is here. In addition, he described how Russia helped Hamas in its brutal war against Israel. Vladimir Putin, commenting on what is happening in Israel, allegedly said “let men decide all issues among themselves, just leave children and women alone.” I would really like to show him this phrase two years ago, before February 24th. But, unfortunately, we don’t have such a time machine. First of all, this is not about Israel and Hamas. This is purely an attempt to protect Hamas, which clearly killed civilians, went to this extent. By the way, they are still talking about this now. They completely repeat what Russia says. Allegedly, “we do not kill civilians,” but at the same time they show personally filmed footage of how they do it: they rape and kill, including children. Of course, this isan attempt Putin to protect Hamas. But the second component is a manifestation of a typical psychiatric picture. That is, the person himself openly gives the appropriate orders to kill or commit genocide against the children of Ukraine or kill the civilian population. He does this every day. Obviously, he knows all the “incidents” that occurred in the occupied territories. Even this organization, which does not really want to take responsibility – the UN – in its report on how Russia built a system of torture in the occupied territories, says that it was a systematic, well-developed technology. That is, these are not some isolated “incidents,” but Russia simply came in to genocide the civilian population. You and I understand perfectly well that if Ukraine had not resisted, we would have had 4–5 categories of population. We would have lost 1 – 1.5 million civilians directly killed. I want that when we talk about some political components of this conflict, we do not forget that Russia came to deliberately divide us into categories. The category that would be the most “aggressively inclined” – pro-Ukrainian – would be destroyed in concentration camps in a very short time. Then Russian propaganda would say, as they always say, that we are ourselves we bomb, shell, kill, etc. But Putin is a man simply in love with killing civilians. I want to make this clear. Why does he really like Hamas? Because they do what is such a great outlet for him. He sits and watches tons and kilometers of chronicles of how the Russians killed Ukrainians or, for example, Hamas killed civilians in Southern Israel. This is hypocrisy. All of Putin's statements regarding Hamas clearly show that this is a consultative, fully prepared Russian operation. I don’t mean from the point of view of global goals to divert attention, reduce military assistance to Ukraine or create another moment where there is escalation, to disperse the world’s information attention. No, it even looks much worse. What did we see? What Hamas has never done is a synchronized attack by drones, rockets in large numbers on civilian targets, just like Russia is doing in Ukraine. At the same time, Hamas had a huge number of breakthrough points, that is, they received intelligence, satellite intelligence, where there are military facilities. Full interview with Mikhail Podolyak: watch the video But in order to divert the attention of the small number of Israeli armed forces located along the border, they simultaneously attacked many settlements where there were small amounts of people – the civilian population. In particular, they knew exactly where and what kind of holidays were taking place, where there were a large number of simply young people who came for one or another holiday. They speak the same information narratives as ours. In addition, technological preparation, target designation, and information cover for Hamas’s actions in Israel have been completely changed. It is absolutely clear here that Russia is behind this in different senses of the word: in technology, in resource, in intelligence, in information, in advisory, and so on. Satellite pictures of a large-scale Hamas attack on Israel/Photo Adam Parker But it is very important that the global community reacts little to these words of Putin. They still believe that this is a person who really understands something and says some objective things. A small number of representatives of the global elite think so, but meanwhile. Instead of strengthening the evidence that Putin is a person who came to Ukraine to do what they see today, in particular in Israel. And if it is not removed today in one sense or another – primarily in the legal sense – then this will cause many similar excesses in the world, which are oriented towards the type of war that Russia is waging. Since February 2022, Russia has shown a type of modern war in which there must be a mass genocidal parameter in order to intimidate psychologically, shock people, and the like. All subsequent scalable conflicts, as long as Russia exists in this form as a donor to the global terrorist alliance, will have a mandatory genocidal component. Russia opened the door to hell and showed that a war without genocidal practices against civilians is a wrong war. That is, today the aggressor country is equal to the use of genocidal practices as a mandatory element of classical war. Regarding Israel, two parallels arise. You look and understand that in this situation there is no right option. And that option is bad, and that option is even worse. Either clean up as much as possible and come to an agreement, or destroy everything, as was stated from the very beginning. Does Ukraine have any correct option in that vein? War is always wrong. But it is very important that we say and do it correctly when we discuss the war in Israel, because these are similar actions launched in February 2022. The world is changing, and so far it is changing in a negative direction: there is more and more chaos, instability, the inability to regulate life within the framework of international law, etc., because Russia has not yet lost the war. Escalation is growing, but not through the transfer of weapons to Ukraine, but because Russia still has the resources to provoke such conflicts on different continents. Let us recall that Russia at the beginning made huge attempts to undermine Central Africa, partially succeeding through coups d'etat. But everything that is happening in the Middle East is an even greater escalation. Today we are correctly analyzing what is happening there, because this is an immediate echo wars in Ukraine. All today's conflicts are a direct echo of the war in Ukraine. If we analyze the events in Israel, then in this way we update our attention to Ukraine, because we finally raised an obvious question for you and me a year ago, but for our partners it should be updated today – while Russia exists, which donates similar processes on different continents , you will have unstable chaos, which will increase in the future. The Russians constantly say that they have victories everywhere. It's very good that they are talking about this. However, at Valdai, Putin said that they would allegedly no longer adhere to any rules. That is, he openly says that this is Russia’s strategic goal – to build a new world in which violence is a key element of dominance. As for the behavior of Israel and Ukraine . You can't compare incomparable things. This is objective, they are fighting the terrorist group Hamas. This is not a regular army and a resource-type country like Russia. We are fighting a huge country that has sent a huge regular army against us. These are completely different concepts. Moreover, we have a problem that we need to destroy the army that was talked about yesterday as an army that needs to be feared and must be negotiated with. They never said that about Hamas. Unfortunately, some political groups in different countries, in particular European ones, for some reason believed that it would be possible to pay off terrorists with humanitarian packages of money. And they supposedly will live in a civilized manner. But have you seen a developed economy and promising industries in the Gaza Strip? That is, they definitely invest money in the development of comfort? Any country that does not invest in itself – Russia is a typical example of a large country that does not invest money in itself, in its well-being , comfort – this country will always be aggressive, like any terrorist organization. The essence of terrorism is not to create wealth for our own people who stand behind us and so on. The essence of terrorism is to create problems or large-scale problems for someone whom you hate for some conventional reason. Russia has a total hatred of all post-Soviet countries. They don’t just hate us, they want to bring us to our knees, humiliate us and stand on our heads and say: “We are the main ones in this world.” Despite the fact that they will live there in the dirt, their labor camps, etc. Therefore, there is no need to compare, these are completely different wars. Yes, the war moderation model is quite similar both in Russia in terms of what they are doing against the civilian population, and in Hamas. But from the point of view of who Ukraine is fighting with and with whom Israel is fighting – these are two completely different wars. You and I will have to do the most terrible work – destroy Russia's military potential. Not some statistical small group, but Russia. Israel has the right to do, in my opinion, what they say today that they are ready to do, in particular regarding ground operations in Gaza. It's their decision. For you and me, the solution has a fundamentally different look. We must absolutely destroy this Russian occupation group, the entire military infrastructure, including the Crimean peninsula. Why can’t the island of Crimea be left to Russia? Because this is a military base, the basic element of a constant attack on Ukraine. It is very important to humiliate the military component of Russia, because this is the only thing they used to scare the world. And thus gain time to build another pan-European security concept. Everyone will invest in it. But everyone is waiting for Ukraine to do this, that is, to destroy Russian military capabilities. They also do it with a delay because they still can’t believe it for themselves. Today our partners cannot believe that they were really afraid of some fake country that could lose not to an alliance of military capabilities and armies of different dominant countries, but to our state. Ukraine, which was not considered a country with great military power, a capability that could easily be corrupted there. Today they are afraid to admit that Russia may lose to Ukraine. This constrains the provision of aid, and the volume of aid, and all the strange conversations and the like. But I will summarize:two different wars need two different solutions– both Israel and Ukraine. They need different types of weapons, different amounts of time, an understanding of the different nature of the ending. Hamas must be completely destroyed. But Putin’s vertical in Russia must be destroyed. She must go for transformation. One will not work without the other. Hamas was destroyed, Russia was not – then you have Hamas 2.0 appearing in six months. Why Zelensky personally came to Ramstein Considering that our partners fear that Russia may lose to Ukraine, and therefore are holding back the necessary flow of weapons, is that why a personal visit by President Vladimir Zelensky to Ramstein was necessary? Today, presidential visits are very effective because they update the topic. He quite firmly defends Ukraine’s position, clearly arguing for it. Zelensky specifically says that we are psychologically not ready for any other solution than losing to Russia. In addition, we are not ready to understand why assistance is not coming even within the agreed schedules. We are not ready to accept this. We are not ready to pretend that Russia came to fight for some unknown military purposes, as propaganda says. Every day we see drones that kill civilians, attacks in the center of Kherson, Kharkov or Zaporozhye. Every day we see artillery attacks on Sumy and Chernigov, attempts by the Allied Revolutionary Army to enter our territory and strategic aviation, which rises to kill the civilian population with missiles. We are not ready to pretend that we don’t see this, that we don’t remember what Russia did to Bakhmut, to Mariupol, to Bucha and other cities. Pretend there were supposedly some “incidents” that killed tens of thousands of people and raped several thousand more. Vladimir Zelensky at the Ramstein meeting/Photo 24 Channel < p>And most importantly, Ukraine is not ready to pretend that tomorrow Putin should be legalized again in the global political space. When he will mock and say that he “brought us to our knees and will soon finish us off.” We are not ready for this. And if we are not ready, then we want you to stop tolerating what is impossible to tolerate. Partners do not need to pretend that they want to return to pre-war times. They will not return, because Russia will no longer be the Russia that it was even before February 24, 2022. Russia will do what it does. Why, for example, the Middle East? What is the Middle East for Europe? A huge escalation, a huge panic of certain Arab communities, another significant wave of Arabs into European countries. Subsequently, these migrant waves begin to squander more percentages in parliamentary or local elections of far-right parties. Because they all take anti-migrant positions. What is the ultra-right? This is an extensive Russian political network in Europe. When someone talks about Nazism, I emphasize once again that the only donor of the terrorist global alliance and the Nazi network, which is not yet influential, but can become so, is Russia. So in Europe – migrants, pressure, the far right win certain elections, raise their stakes, etc. Accordingly, support for Ukraine decreases. Russia begins to dominate in the war with Ukraine, and also begins to dominate information and propaganda in other post-Soviet states. And then the resuscitation of the Soviet Union “2.0” will follow. This is obvious. But the main thing iswho gave you guarantees that if Putin’s Russia remains, you will sleep peacefully?This still gives me strange feelings. Can you generally analyze what Russia is going towards, what it looks like, what it is investing money in, why it is interested in the Middle East and African conflicts, why it is constantly provoking, provoking, provoking? This is incomprehensible after 19 months of war in Ukraine? Kirill Budanov said that Russia could transfer captured Ukrainian weapons not only to Hamas, but also to Lebanese Hezbollah. In its broadcasts, Russian propaganda spread that Ukraine allegedly sold weapons to Hamas. With all that, could there be such a story when Ukrainian equipment ended up there, but because of Russia? Captured equipment – yes, but these are single specimens. To be honest, I don’t even know how to answer this. Do you know why? We live in an information world. That is, electronic reconnaissance allows you to track all heavy weapons – where, who, how they are moving. We know how many trains and with what tanks the Far East is coming here. We see everything. Are you saying that the United States or pan-European intelligence does not use electronic means and does not know where anything is? These are dozens of copies, everything is tracked. There is total control over the heavy weapons that Ukraine received. As for small arms, or, for example, grenade launchers, javelins, etc. Yes, you can trophy and pass something on. And what? How can you not understand that two Javelins or a dozen machine guns that are found somewhere cannot be help from Ukraine. It is nonsense to believe that Ukraine provides anyone with weapons. At the same time, everyone understands quite clearly the relationship between Hamas and Russia. Just a year ago, Ismail Haniyeh, one of the horizontal commanders in Hamas, came and hugged Sergei Lavrov. That is, they receive funding through Iran, they receive Iranian drones, the ability to manufacture these “makeshift” missiles in the Gaza Strip. They receive small arms and money from Russia, constantly being in communication. And after that they found 20 machine guns from Ukraine and that’s it. It is Ukraine that allegedly “stands behind the massacre that they carried out in Southern Israel.” I understand that Russia today has lost its adequacy, but who is this aimed at? On some Dagestani guy in the village, because he will listen and say, well, exactly, this is what Ukraine is doing? This cannot be taken seriously, for example, in France, Germany, etc. Why all this talk? Hamas is a Russian proxy terrorist group that finances and advises it. Russia is using it to create a certain pressure, just as it used the Syrian conflict to put pressure on Israel. It uses Iran to put pressure on Israel so that the latter behaves accordingly. This is how she uses Hamas and Hezbollah. Regarding the disaster ofMH17, there were also obvious things, but the investigation was ongoing several years. No, I don't agree here. These are things that are obvious to you and me, but at that moment the world made a decision for itself that it would turn a blind eye to Russia’s expansion into Ukraine, that it would turn a blind eye to the fact that Russia had captured Crimea and Donbass. It will be assumed that it is not clear who is fighting with whom, and in general the regular Russian army did not go there. And most importantly, they will close their eyes that Russia is the author of all this. It was impossible to say until a certain moment that MH17 shot down a specific Buk from a specific Russian military unit with a specific officer corps. This was impossible, because conceptually in Europe then they made a fatal decision for themselves and for us – to pretend that Russia was not there. In the end, what did this lead to? To a full-scale invasion, a huge number of victims, scaling, growing conflicts, instability, breakdown of the international system and humiliation of international institutions. On July 17, 2014, in the skies over the Donetsk region, Russian terrorists shot down a Malaysia Airlines Boeing-777 plane. Then all the passengers and personnel on board died – 298 people. On November 17, 2022, the International Court of Justice in The Hague finally handed down the first verdicts on the downing of the aircraft. The court found Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky and Leonid Kharchenko involved in the MH17 disaster. They were sentenced to life imprisonment. However, the terrorists were sentenced in absentia, because they are still at large. When it was already clear that Russia was behind everything, the corresponding decision was quickly made in the Dutch court. It is clearly stated who did what and how. These were completely different times. To say today that somewhere there is a negative trace of Ukraine, when everyone understands that Russia is most interested in instability, is nonsense. This does not mean that you and I do not have the right to talk about this. Yes, they must speak, record. Kirill Budanov has the right to speak, emphasizing that it is impossible for there to be Ukrainian weapons there, that these are Russian weapons. Therefore, it would be desirable for the modern pan-European or Euro-Atlantic political class to finally begin to understand more clearly the causes and consequences of certain processes. Kirill Budanov said that this war could be ended before 2024. But in the end he said that we were behind schedule. We were behind schedule because not many tanks were transferred? We were behind schedule because after the Kharkov operation intensive negotiations to provide the appropriate equipment and the appropriate weapons, and instead of this being done quickly in the fall of 2022, it was slowly unfolding. Logistics were worked out, there were a lot of approvals, and we were already behind the delivery schedule. Let me remind you that we agreed at the presidential level, but instead of receiving it in a week, we started receiving it in 3–4 months. It’s just that the partners were still afraid to admit that it was necessary to provide everything that Ukraine needed as quickly as possible. Budanov said that we were behind schedule/Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense Next, our partners were shocked by the attacks on critical infrastructure and also decided to wait and see if this would affect Ukraine’s ability to resist. We looked, it had no effect, we resisted. Then they were again shocked (we were not) by Russia’s offensive actions. The occupiers then deliberately concentrated the appropriate number of people and launched offensive actions in the Donetsk direction. And instead of saturating Ukraine with the necessary weapons at this time, so that we could simultaneously actively counter-offensive, we waited until the Russian offensive fizzled out. And after that Ukraine:
Therefore , maybe you still need to provide something. And therefore, you and I are off schedule for 6-9 months, taking into account everything else – well-coordinated training work. Of course, this stretches over time. Here Mr. Budanov is absolutely right: if we agreed, and a month later we received everything we needed, that’s one story. If you agreed and received it 8 months later, that’s a different story. Of course, we fell behind schedule. But what do we fall off schedule? This is not a question about the de-occupation of lands, but about what Russia is doing in parallel – investing in defense products. She doesn't care what happens to these territories. She destroys everything there, simply mines them – they will be useless for anything. Russia invests in global terrorist activities, one of which is the Middle East. The second is Africa. Third – Russia invests in information programs, loosening, participation in political campaigns in different countries. “There is no need to support Ukraine – let Russia put the squeeze on Ukraine, because then you will live in silence and goodness. We will not vote for those who support support for Ukraine,” is how it sounds. Russia is investing in all this. And Russia came out of this state of shock for a minute. They fell into shock when they lost the Kyiv, Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkov campaigns, and partly the Kherson campaign. They were shocked because they found out that Russia does not have a powerful military-industrial complex, there is no powerful army, but today they invested money in other technologies. And, of course, they are now sitting and saying: “well, now we’ll have fun.” That is, 19 months of war is not enough for everyone to understand the mathematics of this war. What is mathematics? Do everything as much as possible and as quickly as possible. Russia can always be shocked. And if you attack effectively in a timely manner, Russia will be in an outsider position constantly. It will not have time to make appropriate decisions, there will be no time to diversify these decisions, there will be no time to partially reorient their military budgets towards the Middle East. If this is not clear, then you and I will have a prolongation of the war. And now about the prolongation of the war. What is Putin interested in? We do not take the classic scenario in which he is interested – this is freezing the conflict in order to remain in the occupied territories. This, of course, is a strategic task, and then pick up forces there and again go to Ukraine. Putin is now interested in us receiving fewer weapons and more slowly, because then he will be arrogant. Then even intensity no longer interests him, because he doesn’t feel sorry for people. It doesn’t matter what happens to them there, well, another 200–300 thousand will be killed. What difference does it make to him? He has no empathy at all. It is now important for him that supplies to Ukraine are slow, then this will lead to a gradual escalation in other markets in different regions. And in this way, the pressure on the conditional pan-European or pan-democratic headquarters will increase significantly. Here is the Middle East – pressure, Africa – pressure, information – pressure. Thus, at a certain point, he can break the democracy so that they admit that they are not ready to win a war against a classic authoritarian country. And then we fix the doors to hell open for a long time, which will lead to total changes in the global political process, extremely negative changes. Read the second part of the interview with Mikhail Podolyak soon on the 24 Channel website .Russia advised Hamas in Israel
Why is the war in Israel fundamentally different from the Russian-Ukrainian one.
Does Hamas really have Ukrainian technology
What is known about the MH17 disaster
Ukraine is off the war schedule
What does Putin really want now
Why Ukraine is behind the war schedule: a frank interview with Podolyak
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