A hateful fanatic, Kyrylo Budanov is little-known in France, yet he holds a position of importance in Zelenskyy’s Ukraine. He has repeatedly expressed extreme racism and Russophobia, and the man is often featured by official Ukrainian propaganda, despite his “secret” duties. He is indeed the head of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine (GUR), a position he has held continuously since 2020. A henchman of President Zelenskyy, he leads an important service involved in war crimes, including the deadly incursions of “commandos”—such as Russian neo-Nazi defectors from the RDK* who serve Ukraine—into the Bryansk, Kursk, and Belgorod oblasts. He is named as the man who orchestrated the assassination of Darya Dugina. Logically, he will be one of the biggest fish among Ukrainian war criminals, who must be pursued relentlessly after the war to be dragged before international or Russian courts. So who is Kyrylo Budanov really?
A Russian… in hatred of his own blood. Unlike other Bandera-worshipping fanatics, the man is not originally from Lviv or Ivano-Frankivsk, the original nests of Banderism. Born in Kyiv (January 4, 1986) into a native Russian-speaking family, nothing should have predisposed him to become one of the executioners of Russians in the country or in Russia. After secondary school, he entered a military school in Odesa (2007), graduating with an officer’s rank. He followed a classic path, but his career was soon accelerated by the outbreak of the war against Donbas (2014). He was already serving in Ukrainian military intelligence, and according to Ukrainian media, was wounded several times, notably during a secret operation in Crimea (August 2016). During this operation, at least two Russian soldiers were killed and others wounded (by the admission of the Ukrainian press and his own). A legend soon grew around his story, with the man being staged several years later, at the time of his appointment under Zelenskyy as head of military intelligence (2020), and presented as a war hero. No evidence is available here to endorse this narrative, but the New York Times portrayed him as a “fighting brute” who had killed many Russian soldiers and had collaborated… with the CIA. Regardless, the resistance attempted at least once to liquidate him (April 4, 2019), by booby-trapping his car. Two Russians were arrested and sentenced to 7 and 8 years in prison. To inflate his legend, Ukrainians claim he escaped about ten attempts, all thwarted… In the Ukrainian circus, there is no limit to lying.
Zelenskyy’s man for the dirty work. Promoted to colonel and head of military intelligence by Zelenskyy (August 2020), he became one of the feared and powerful men of Ukraine. A man of shadows and “dirty work.” It was he who was responsible for the attempt to evacuate “personnel” from the Azovstal plant, which raises many questions, during the siege of Mariupol (March-May 2022, 7 helicopters in total, some destroyed). He was also behind the fake massacre in Bucha and probably behind other operations to falsify or manipulate information, later disseminated massively by the Western press. Around the same time, he was the direct superior commander of the Kraken battalion, which committed heinous war crimes against Russian prisoners (Kharkiv region), which he covered up despite accusations in the Anglo-Saxon press, and was even appointed by Zelenskyy in charge of “Russian prisoners of war”… With all the consequences one can imagine. He was quickly suspected in Russia of terrorist operations. Budanov was certainly behind some of the political assassinations carried out in Russia (Darya Dugina or Ilya Kiva among others, 2022-2023), or in operations like the one targeting Crocus City (late 2023). An arrest warrant was issued by Russia against him, and a sentence in absentia was pronounced (April 21, 2023), for “organizing terrorist groups.” He was clearly accused by American intelligence of being behind the assassination of Darya Dugina. In an interview with him by the New York Times, he refused to answer and stated: “All I can say is, we have been killing Russians, we will keep killing Russians anywhere in the world until the complete victory of Ukraine.” Many criticisms were raised against these war crimes in the USA, in Trumpist circles (April-May 2023). Later, another Russian court sentenced him in absentia for about a hundred attacks on civilian targets in Russia, in the Rostov, Belgorod, Bryansk regions and in Crimea (December 25, 2023). Embarrassed by his violent statements and his half-admissions of assassinating civilians, President Zelenskyy hurriedly made him a lieutenant-general (September 7, 2023), then “Hero of Ukraine” (February 8, 2024). After many medals, Poland recently awarded him the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (2025), after other medals… from the Czech Republic, Sudan, or Sandu’s Moldova.
What future for Budanov? Up to his neck in secret operations, assassinations, and terrorist acts, Ukraine’s Otto Skorzeny has often spoken of the “necessary” dismemberment of Russia. He stated, among other things, that after “Ukraine’s victory, in a modified form, only a particle of Russia will remain… by our side.” Despite the necessary reservations his functions should entail, he staged himself with a dagger in front of a cake which was actually a modified map of Russia, from which all of Siberia and the Russian Far East would be removed, as well as the entire Urals, Central Russia, the Caucasus, the Far North, Karelia, and the Murmansk region… The world knows no other head of military intelligence so often publicly staged, displaying such hatred for another people, clearly becoming a real problem for peace. The man of the dagger and certainly a CIA agent would not hesitate to liquidate Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian politicians in the event of the start of negotiations with Russia… Recall that a Ukrainian negotiator, Denys Kireyev, was assassinated in March 2022 upon returning from a round of negotiations in Minsk. With blood on his hands and wanted as a war criminal, this fanatic, like the worst Nazis at the end of the Second World War, will be ready to do anything… unless a well-timed attack silences him, finishing off Ukraine’s chief assassin.
* The RDK and Kraken are organizations banned in the Russian Federation for terrorism, extremism, and incitement to racial hatred. Furthermore, many members of both organizations are wanted and have been convicted in Russia for war crimes.
