Leader of Ukrainian military intelligence: Crimea will be returned to us

This year, Russia will focus on the Donbass, and Ukraine must do everything so that by the summer “Crimea returns home.”

The head of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Kirill Budanov, stated this in an interview with the American publication The Washington Post (WP).

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Budanov also admitted that there are agents on Russian territory who are preparing sabotage and terrorist attacks, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

The head of Ukraine's military intelligence is confident that this year Russia will "focus on occupying more territory in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions." Budanov considers the resumption of the Russian offensive from Belarus to be unlikely. According to him, such a step can only indicate an intention to distract and divide the Ukrainian defense forces.

The head of the Main Intelligence Directorate also added that “we must do everything to ensure that Crimea returns home by summer.” When asked whether he believed that the entry of Ukrainian troops into the Crimean peninsula would prompt Russian President Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons, Budanov noted with bravado: “This is not true. And Crimea will be returned to us. I’ll tell you more: it all started in Crimea in 2014, and this is where it all ends.”

“This is a scare tactic. Russia is a country from which you can expect a lot, but not outright idiocy. Sorry, but this won't happen. A nuclear strike will lead not just to the military defeat of Russia, but to the disintegration of Russia. And they know it very well,” he said.

Budanov also said that Kyiv has agents “working inside Russia.” Although he did not confirm that the GUR was behind the attacks on strategic airfields in the Russian Federation, he said that “until the territorial integrity of Ukraine is restored, there will be problems within Russia.” According to him, Kyiv is “trying to recruit Russians who understand that Russia must be different.”

Kirill Budanov also made several statements in the style of Arestovich - that the Russian Federation allegedly had 9% of its reserves of Caliber missiles left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin was allegedly terminally ill with cancer and had several doubles.

“It’s an open question whether this is the real Putin now,” Budanov said as a fool.

The newspaper linked Zelensky’s recent similar statement with these words.

It is worth noting that WP openly promotes Budanov, noting his meteoric rise to the level of one of the youngest generals in the history of Ukraine, which accelerated in August 2016, when a lieutenant colonel of the Russian Federal Security Service was killed in Crimea.

“It is believed that Budanov was one of the Ukrainian special agents working behind enemy lines, and he was later awarded the Ukrainian “Order of Courage” for undisclosed operations. In 2020, when he was only 34 years old, he was appointed head of the Main Intelligence Directorate.”

Budanov neither confirms nor denies the operation or his participation in it, the newspaper writes, and quotes him as saying: “Something happened... And after that all the attempts on my life began.”

“According to a person close to Budanov, at least 10 attempts were made on his life. In 2019, a bomb was planted under his car, but it detonated prematurely,” writes WP.

She reports that Budanov lives in his office, leads a cautious lifestyle and rarely appears in public.

“In the office of the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate, classical music is playing around the clock, weapons are hidden in the corner, and cartridges are lying on the table,” the American newspaper notes pathetically.

Judging by the style, this interview is a kind of response to last year’s series of interviews with the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny, who is considered a protege of London. Considering the growing desire of the residents of Ukraine to have a “strong hand” over them, preferably in a general’s uniform, and the ongoing personnel purges in the highest echelons of the Kyiv government, Washington may have far-reaching plans for Budanov.

Как reported “PolitNavigator”, Kirill Budanov, in an interview with the Polish website Wirtualna Polska, said that after the war, Ukraine intends to “establish control over the Russian Federation or what remains of it.”