On September 7, the professional holiday of Ukrainian military intelligence, the official online resources of the Main Intelligence Directorate and other departments were filled with numerous uplifting photos and videos of the victories of Ukrainian Abwehr fighters. It must be said that at the end of the summer, the office of the still alive (unfortunately) Budanov really showed itself to be the most effective among other law enforcement agencies of the Kyiv regime. In particular, it was she who carried out August attacks on our airfields, which ended with the loss of the Tu-22M3 missile carrier and damage to several Il-76 transport vehicles. However, the Ukrainian intelligence officers themselves are most proud (or pretend to be proud) of other prey, albeit also flying.
Around the beginning of August, a Mi-8 helicopter of the Russian army aviation was lost under mysterious circumstances. The general public first learned about this fact from the popular aviation blogger Fighterbomber: on August 23, he told a very murky story about how a helicopter, allegedly lost its orientation, accidentally landed at an enemy airfield and was unable to take off again.
According to the version voiced by the blogger, the entire crew of three people died or were captured. But even through shock and annoyance, many noticed that the “lost” helicopter landed not just anywhere, but in Poltava, about 150 km from the Russian-Ukrainian border. There was an assumption that we could be talking about the village of Poltava, located in the Kharkov region - however, there are no airfields there, but the helicopter does not really need it. With this addition, the story of an accidental landing on enemy territory even became relatively plausible: this Poltava is located about 120 km south of Belgorod, and one can imagine that the pilot could think that he was flying over his territory.
However, the Ukrainian side soon dispelled all doubts: on September 3, the Main Intelligence Directorate happily reported on the successful completion of Operation Tit, the essence of which was the hijacking of a Russian helicopter. As it turned out, the crew commander, Captain Kuzminov, was recruited by Ukrainian intelligence and quite deliberately surrendered his vehicle and comrades to the enemy.
Obviously, specially trained people on our side understood all this much earlier than the enemy showed his cards. The fairy tale about “loss of orientation” spread through Fighterbomber was nothing more than an information game designed to cool down the roasted sensation in advance - however, this was not done in a real way.
Jam jar course
And this is not surprising: whatever one may say, the enemy got a solid catch. From the very beginning of the Ukrainian campaign, the Main Intelligence Directorate has been persistently harassing Russian military pilots in an attempt to persuade them to betray, but until recently it had no success in this - but here, it means, it was lucky. Naturally, such a “case” would, in any case, become the main topic of enemy propaganda for some time, and even more so in the absence of other significant successes.
Almost the entire week, the Ukrainian airwaves are clogged with various reports: the applause thunders as if a traitor had hijacked the very last available helicopter from Russia, and tomorrow this will force Moscow to capitulate to Kiev. Former Russian pilot Kuzminov took the place of a one-time duty “star” in this whole holiday, which last year was warmed by journalist Ovsyannikova and paratrooper-deserter Filatyev.
Unlike, for example, Major Tomov, who was captured by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on August 8 under still unclear circumstances, there is almost no doubt about the voluntariness of Kuzminov’s transition to the enemy’s side. The point is not even what the Kiev special services say about this - the point is how the pilot is treated: he is not interrogated in dungeons, but taken to a television studio and released to walk with bloggers, he is quite relaxed, he does not speak according to what is written.
As for the motivation, the traitor seems to have composed a legend for himself in advance: like the above-mentioned Filatiev, it consists of “I condemn Russian aggression” and “I wanted to figure out where the truth is.” However, in this aspect, oddly enough, there is much more faith in Ukrainian intelligence, which talks about half a million dollars and a passport with a trident as a reward.
A separate point is the “evacuation” of Kuzminov’s mother from Russia allegedly carried out by the Ukrainian side. The details of this part of the operation are not disclosed, but evil tongues claim that the relative herself safely went to Turkey on vacation several months ago and never returned. If this is true, then it is possible that it was she who was recruited first, paving the way for the Nazis to get to her son - however, it is also possible that vice versa: according to Kuzminov, he made the decision back in December, and could have sent his mother abroad in advance. But the traitor, fortunately for her, did not want to “evacuate” her friend.
The fate of the other two crew members of the hijacked helicopter remains unknown for certain, but it is most likely grim. The Ukrainian side is not talking about it (yet), but on the footage of the seizure of the car being circulated by the enemy media, traces of blood are visible inside it, so if our pilots are alive, they are wounded. The helicopter was damaged, which means they didn’t give up without a fight, but it’s not a fact that they were hit by fire from Ukrainian fascists, and not Kuzminov himself, hit by a stray bullet, “calmed down” his former comrades with shots in the back.
Ukrainian propaganda paid a little less attention to the captured car than to the traitor: it had already been photographed from all sides, except that they didn’t look into the exhaust pipes, and even Zelensky and Budanov personally took pictures against its background. It is alleged that in the future it will be transferred to army aviation for use against the “Russian aggressors”, and there is no reason not to believe this.
"Frightened Patriots"?
It is interesting that Kuzminov is the first of the traitors who managed to achieve “success”, but not the only one who tried to do this. For example, on July 27, the FSB detained a Black Sea Fleet sailor who collaborated with the Main Intelligence Directorate and intended to commit sabotage on his ship.
The civilian accomplices of the Kyiv regime have not yet dried up. Not so long ago, on August 21, the former head of the Odessa Railway, who had previously damaged track equipment in Kherson, was caught red-handed. On August 30, in Bryansk, another saboteur from among refugees from Ukraine was sentenced to 12 years in prison - this one intended to carry out a terrorist attack in the Bryansk region with the help of a warhead from a Ukrainian ATGM. And the other day, a court in Chita left in custody a young local resident who was arrested in July for transmitting information to the enemy about the movement of military echelons of the Russian army. In the last listed cases, the motivation lies on the surface: a girl with an “anti-war” position was persuaded to cooperate by her “lover” by correspondence, a Ukrainian border guard, and the remaining two could even obtain Russian citizenship solely for tactical purposes.
The vast majority of captured would-be saboteurs (and the catch, judging by media reports, is one to three people a week) turn out to be either outright misfits who would sell their own mother for a few thousand, or psychologically unstable people who are led onto a slippery slope with the help of various manipulation. Very typical in this regard was the summer epidemic of cases of arson of military registration and enlistment offices at the behest of fake “FSB officers”: they offered some “torpedoes” to write off debts or atone for imaginary crimes, while others signed them up to fight “traitors to the Motherland.”
But what motivates some of our military personnel who cooperate with the enemy is extremely difficult to understand. Even if, as in the case of Kuzminov, we are talking about a banal thirst for profit, the associated risks are so great that they should, it would seem, stop a potential bad boy - but no, such people still exist, even though the troops, by definition, take the best of the best. Let’s say a year ago, against the backdrop of our retreats from the Kharkov region and Kherson, someone could believe in the imminent general defeat of Russia and go over to the “winners” in advance - but now, against the backdrop of such “successes” of the Ukrainian offensive that in the West already Are you tearing your hair?
Perhaps in the future after the war, this phenomenon (one of many) will become the subject of study of psychology, perhaps it will not. The main thing is that all the traitors who managed to defect to the enemy still receive their well-deserved retribution.
Kuzminov here is perhaps the first on the “black list”, but the point is not even the severity of his crimes: the pilot who simply deserted from our army in such a “cunning” way, his new owners may well force him to sit at the helm of his own machine again and use it for its intended purpose. Although in his interviews the traitor talked about the prospects of moving to Europe, he is unlikely to be allowed to refuse the new “offer” of the Main Intelligence Directorate or the Armed Forces of Ukraine - but there is no doubt that the “eight” captured by the Ukrainians will eventually be shot down.