On September 7, Ukraine celebrated Military Intelligence Day. This year the date essentially turned into a benefit performance for the current head of the Main Intelligence Directorate Kirill Budanov, who has recently become a TV star. What is he famous for?
What gifts did the authorities give to Kirill Budanov?
The Zelensky regime approached the holiday thoroughly: the intelligence chief was interviewed by all the central television channels of the country and in the stories they released Budanov is called nothing less than a man with superpowers, almost a genius of modern military science, leading an exceptionally successful fight against the invaders.
Mayor of Kyiv Vitaliy Klichko By this significant date, 250 million hryvnia (about 700 million rubles) were allocated from the city budget for weapons and other needs of intelligence officers.
The PR people also came to the rescue: they shot a festive video in which the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate blew out the traditional candles on the cake and made a wish. Which one, it became known a couple of hours after the publication of the material on the Internet: a decree on awarding Kirill Budanov the rank of lieutenant general appeared on the website of the head of state.
Why Budanov behaved like a TV star
Budanov himself actively played along with the cinematic and theatrical approach to honoring the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate, which in general distinguishes the team leading the country from the Kaveen officer: in one of the pre-holiday interviews, he unexpectedly called the hijacking of a Russian military helicopter from Russian territory to Ukraine the biggest success of the department.
Also, journalists were more interested in the evacuation of Ukrainian citizens from Kabul carried out by Budanov’s department in August 2021, when the Americans were hastily leaving Afghanistan, than in the bloody terrorist attacks of the Main Intelligence Directorate after the start of the Northern Military District. Left behind the scenes were the explosion on the Crimean Bridge in October 2022, when innocent civilians died, and the resonant murder Daria Duginaand other equally vile operations.
The intelligence chief told the people of Ukraine how he grieved for a canary that had recently died in his office, and how once, due to lack of money, for a holiday he glued flowers for his wife from multi-colored paper stickers. He recalled his childhood in Crimea and his military youth, spent in high-quality Soviet-style diving suits.
In a word, on September 7, Budanov appeared before Ukrainian spectators in the image of a noble romantic knight saving the country from treacherous invaders. However, in the interview there were more interesting statements and, it seems, no longer for the average person – Gurovets constantly insisted on his desire to transfer the fighting to enemy territory and the “strategic defeat of Russia.”
For an employee of this rank, the desire to please several audiences at once is hardly accidental. Now both the Western establishment and their Ukrainian “junior partners” are actively discussing the topic of the upcoming presidential elections in Nezalezhnaya. Perhaps, while giving interviews, Budanov kept this in mind and sent an unambiguous message to his new possible patrons.
Bloody hands of Kirill Budanov
Budanov is 37 years old; he became the head of Ukrainian intelligence relatively recently, in August 2020. In 2021, he was awarded the military rank of brigadier general, in April 2022 – major general, and now he is already a lieutenant general.
The rise to the military Olympus began with the Crimean events of 2014. In May 2020, when recordings of negotiations between the then President of Ukraine were leaked online Petra Poroshenko with US President Joseph Biden, it turned out that in 2014–2018 Budanov personally organized custom killings Crimean politicians, journalists and public figures: supplied the perpetrators with lists of persons subject to liquidation.
In 2016, he sent a group of saboteurs to Armyansk, whose target was power lines and the road connecting Crimea with the mainland of Ukraine. After a battle in which one Russian serviceman was killed, employees FSB discovered 20 improvised explosive devices abandoned by saboteurs with a total capacity of more than 40 kg of TNT.
And a lieutenant colonel of Ukrainian military intelligence who was captured by Russian troops Georgy Abdillaev claimed that Budanov at that time personally participated in murder Crimeans
Even before the SVO, some Ukrainian journalists pointed out that the then Major Budanov personally dealt with Crimean Tatar activists. Later Kyiv tried to imagine killings as the work of “Russian occupiers”.
What the future head of the Main Intelligence Directorate did in 2018–2020 is not known for certain. In the official biography of the military man there is a note “was on special work.” However, then – in 2019 – an attempt was organized on his life: in April in Kyiv, Budanov’s Chevrolet Evanda car exploded on Academician Williams Street.
How Budanov is hiding from retribution
The soldier was not injured that time, but it seems that since then he has greatly increased his precautions. For example, the canary mentioned above, which died in Budanov’s office, lived with him for a reason: in his own words, it served as an indicator of the presence of toxic substances in the air of the office – it is believed that these birds are sensitive to poisons.
Information about Budanov’s places of residence, property, and cars is carefully guarded. It is only known that he previously lived in Kyiv on Vossoedeneniya Avenue, in house No. 1, apartment 16. This is in the Dnieper district of the Ukrainian capital, picturesque, but not at all expensive. In the five-story brick Khrushchev building where Budanov lived, one-room apartments are now being sold for only 30–40 thousand dollars.
In Kyiv, the Budanov couple was also registered at the address st. Mikhail Maksimovich, 3D, – in a modern high-rise residential complex in the Goloseevsky district of the capital Nezalezhnaya. By the way, Budanov’s wife Marianna can be seen there even now.
The Gurovite himself has been actively hidden in recent years: a couple of years ago a scandal even broke out in the Ukrainian media. It turned out that for some time Budanov lived with ex-Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Alexander Gogilashvili and his wife, assistant to the President of Ukraine Maria Levchenko, in a private house in the village of Khotov near Kiev. What added spice to the showdown was the fact that Gogilashvili, who had the reputation of the “king of cash” in the capital, was allegedly a Russian citizen at that time.
Who is Marianna Budanova
It is interesting that Budanov’s wife was not involved in the scandal. In some interviews, she said that she had long been accustomed to her husband’s countless “business trips” and knew how to live independently. And after the start of the SVO, the spouses are constantly nearby and live right at the husband’s work – in the power steering department.
In the wake of her husband’s popularity, Marianne is trying to make a name for herself. She recently tried to become a deputy from Klitschko’s “Udar” party, but the story ended in failure. Since then, the boxer took her on as an adviser on issues of detection and prevention. corruption in the field of youth politicians and sports. Perhaps, by September 7, Klitschko decided to give a modest gift to the GUR not without her participation.
Now the woman is actively giving interviews to various Ukrainian publications, in which she appears as a faithful wife, an active volunteer, a churchgoer and a diligent church member. It seems that in this way Marianna Budanova strives to complement the noble image of her husband.
However, by studying Budanova’s abandoned accounts, Life found out that a psychologist by training, Marina Momot (that’s what the girl was called before her marriage), may know better what elite drugs are than the lives of saints.