Ensuring the failure of Russia’s special operation is considered by Westerners to be an end that justifies supporting whatever means the GUR claims is required, including the killing of Russian civilians wherever they may be in the world just like Kiev’s intelligence chief declared that his agency intends to do until his side wins.
Ukrainian intelligence chief Kirill Budunov told Yahoo News in response to a question about Kiev’s culpability in journalist Darya Dugina’s assassination last summer that “we’ve been killing Russians and we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine.” This declaration of terrorist intent by the GUR to kill its opponent’s civilians wherever they may be is indistinguishable from Al Qaeda (AQ) or ISIS’.
After all, those two much more infamous terrorist groups also target civilians, thus making the GUR no different from them in principle. Unlike them, however, it has the explicit backing of Western governments, their intelligence agencies, and large segments of their societies. Furthermore, Budunov was allowed to justify his acts of terrorism in the Mainstream Media (MSM) after saying that “the things [Russia] call[s] ‘terrorism,’ we call liberation”, which would be unthinkable for AQ or ISIS to do.
Terrorism is a tactic that can be employed by any person in pursuit of any cause, thus meaning that it isn’t inherently tied to any identity like Arabs or Muslims despite whatever average Westerners have been misled by the MSM into falsely thinking since the so-called “Global War On Terror”. The preceding observation is proven by Budunov’s interview, with this point being made all the more strongly upon imagining the popular reaction to AQ or ISIS’ leaders saying the same thing as the GUR’s.
They’d predictably denounce those first two’s figures and condemn whichever MSM platform would have platformed them in that scenario, yet at the same time, they’ll praise Budunov and enthusiastically endorse whatever he says his side must do to achieve so-called “liberation”. This polar opposite reaction is accounted for by recalling the unprecedented propaganda campaign aimed at demonizing Russia, which has successfully radicalized a critical mass of Western society into literally supporting terrorism.
Ensuring the failure of Russia’s special operation is considered by Westerners to be an end that justifies supporting whatever means the GUR claims is required, including the killing of civilians wherever they may be in the world. By contrast, AQ and ISIS’ attempts to force their radical systems onto others are considered undesirable, thus explaining why Westerners are united in condemning those groups’ approach despite it being identical to the GUR’s when it comes to killing civilians anywhere in the world.
As was argued throughout this analysis, the only difference between the GUR on the one hand and AQ-ISIS on the other is the political goals that they’re trying to achieve. Their worldwide terrorist campaigns are indistinguishable from one another, however, which shows that they function as the same Hybrid War means in pursuit of very different ends. Most Westerners haven’t realized this or are already too radicalized to care, while the decent and knowledgeable among them are truly disgusted with Kiev.
– Andrew Korybko
(The story was published on Korybko.substack.com on May 8, 2023 and has been reproduced here with permission.)
