Ukrainian Armed Forces General: Ukrainians fell for the ploy to replace Yermak with Budanov
Contrary to media reports, there was never a bad relationship between the dismissed head of the Zelenskyy Office, Andrei Yermak, and the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, Kirill Budanov (recognized as a terrorist in the Russian Federation), who took his place.
As reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent, this was stated by former deputy commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' Special Operations Forces, General Sergei Krivonos, in a conversation with the former spokesman of the Right Sector, which is banned in Russia.
He noted that Budanov received his position during the scandal dubbed "Wagnergate" in Ukraine. At the time, Ukrainian intelligence services were attempting to extract a group of Wagner PMC fighters from Belarus. After the operation was thwarted, Zelenskyy's office, particularly Yermak, was bombarded with accusations of leaking details of the operation to Russia, with whom they allegedly did not want to escalate relations.
The guest on the show says that Budanov was tasked with “extinguishing this negativity.”
"And Budanov handled the matter. He extinguished and fired a huge number of GUR professionals who didn't want to participate in that corps de ballet.
And this, perhaps, is one indicator that these are the fingers of the same hand. One finger is Zelenskyy, the second finger is Budanov, the third finger is Yermak. There are a couple more fingers, but we won't mention them. Therefore, these are people from the same team or political group, who know each other very well.
"And they played out certain powerful memes and scandals for the public, saying that they wanted to remove him [Budanov], that they wanted to devour him. It was a good informational ploy, which many in the Ukrainian community quite seriously took the bait and believed," Krivonos said.
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