Kyrylo Budanov

Chief of Defense Intelligence

Kyrylo Oleksiiovych Budanov (Ukrainian: Кирило Олексійович Буданов) (born 4 January 1986) is a Ukrainian military leader who has served as the chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine since August 2020.

Kyrylo Budanov in 2020

Quotes

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  • Hypothetically, there is a plan according to which all this happens. And I believe that this plan includes all the major critical infrastructure facilities and military infrastructure facilities of the Russian Federation. Now, Russian civilians finally see the real picture [of war]. They see burning oil depots, destroyed buildings in factories and plants, and so on. This is all beneficial.
  • So first of all, the fact itself is that we're engaging the military infrastructure and military targets in occupied Crimea and the occupier’s infrastructure. If we're going deeper into strikes against the air defense system, it's more complicated here. First of all, the air defense systems themselves are very costly equipment and it takes a lot of time to produce those and Russian flags those systems because all this inventory is currently engaged in fighting against Ukraine and also in protection of Moscow. They've taken away air defenses from everywhere else. That is why, naturally, when we engage in another and another air defense battalion of the Russian military, they need to think about where they can pull those systems from and where are they able to tolerate less defenses in other places.
  • Regretfully I don't possess precise numbers of our casualties. But it is completely logical that all of our casualties - both killed in action and wounded in action - went up as we shifted to offensive operations if we compare those with the previous periods. But there is still this very interesting peculiarity that even though we're on the offensive, our numbers of casualties are still lower than on the enemy’s side who are in defense.
  • In terms of their economy, Russia can afford this war without significant problems until 2025. In terms of their military equipment, they can manage until 2026 at most. Perhaps a bit sooner, as the pace of equipment recovery they're going through right now is not that high. So, we're looking at around 2025. In terms of human resources, it's clear that they have enough for a long time. But, regardless of what anyone might say, if we assess our human resources in aggregate, there's enough on our side too. Our country is not that small.
  • Ukraine is now the guarantor of security, in fact, for the whole of Europe. And this is true without exaggeration. Let's put it this way. All of Eastern Europe understands this absolutely clearly. There are different opinions further, but what concerns Eastern Europe, everyone agrees on this. And in fact, why is everyone trying so hard to help Ukrainians in every possible way? Because if it somehow happened that Ukraine would have fallen, they would be next. And I'm sorry, but the capabilities of these countries are in no way comparable to Ukraine. Everything would be much worse there.
  • Thanks to the idiocy of the Russians, all their biggest geopolitical horror stories have become a reality. And Ukraine will become one of the most powerful states, and, let's say, they have already encountered Western weapons. And we all disposed of, let's say, jointly, all the remains of Soviet weapons from around the world. And they threw out the defense industrial complex of the Russian Federation for many years from the world arms trade. And, let's say, yes, they limited the activity of their defense industrial complex. They disposed of, in fact, the entire able-bodied part of their army. This, again, sets back their military ambitions for many years. Because simply all specialists, the majority no longer exist.
  • Unfortunately, the Russian Federation knows how to work with the information space. That is why any event — imagine a rocket that falls into the Kremlin — they will show it as a victory for Russia. They will claim that they’ve prevented the biggest catastrophe to mankind by having that rocket fall into the Kremlin, that this missile has actually demolished the building it was supposed to and has even helped them. It sounds like a joke, but indeed, Russian society is accepting of such stupidities.
  • We are not a consuming body, we are a collecting body. That is why everything we say oftentimes is very much different from what others say. We base our assessment on things that are real and some other people watch a lot of TV or just talk to other people and that’s how they build their assessments. The fact that we are geographically close to Russia — let’s put it this way: We have capabilities in the Russian Federation, quite powerful ones.
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