The wife of Kirilo Budanov, head of the Military Intelligence of Ukraine (GUR), is hospitalized after being poisoned, in what appears to be an attempt on her life. A few months ago, Budanov implicitly acknowledged that his department is behind several clandestine operations against relevant Russian forces and personalities.
After being diagnosed with heavy metal poisoning, Marianna Budànova suffered a “serious and continued deterioration” of health. As a result, she had to be hospitalized. Ukrainian media were the first to report the attack, although it had not been made public when it happened. It was later confirmed by Andrí Iússov, spokesman for the GUR.
Faced with this situation, the police authorities started a criminal investigation to clarify the attempted murder. A research source explained to the Babel media that “these substances are not used in any way in everyday life or for military affairs. Their presence would indicate a deliberate attempt to poison a specific person.”
State agency Unian and media outlets such as Ukrinform also cited official sources as confirming the poisoning. But none of this information indicates who would be behind the poisoning.
According to Ukrainska Pravda, the poison could have been administered to Marianna Budanova in the foot, a method that would have been used previously to poison other members of the GUR, albeit with less serious consequences.
Kirilo Budanov, 37, is a particularly hated figure in Russia, as the GUR is blamed for several attacks on Russian soil. According to Russian media, in April a Moscow court ordered his arrest in rebellion on charges of terrorism.
In May, in an interview with Ukrainian blogger Sergey Ivanov, Budanov acknowledged that the agency he heads had been involved in several bomb attacks targeting “very high” Russian public and media figures in Russia itself, but He did not want to give specific details.
Some of the victims of attacks that Budanov could be referring to, and whose authorship Moscow attributes to the Ukrainian intelligence, could be the journalist Daria Dugin, daughter of the prominent philosopher and nationalist ideologue Aleksandr Dugin, the August 2022, and war correspondent and blogger Vladlén Tatarski, attacked in a St. Petersburg cafe restaurant in April 2023. Both died. And also the writer and politician Zakhar Prilepin, who was injured in an attack in May.
At the same time, the head of the Ukrainian GUR has declared that he has been the victim of at least ten attempts to kill him. The first was in 2019, before he took up his current position and three years before Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the Russian army against Ukraine in February 2022 and started the current dispute between the two Slavic neighbors .