Kyrylo Budanov is a man of peace who has been fighting all his life. A great story, told for the first time

The history of the Administration on Bankova in photos.

«Babel'»

A large chessboard in the office.

Behind Budanov, an icon stands on a shelf. His family is religious.

Childhood and education

Kyrylo Budanov was born forty years ago on the left bank of Kyiv on Boychenko Street (now Anatoliy Solovyanenko Street) in Darnytsky district. There is almost no information about his parents in the public domain.

Kyrylo is willing to tell little. His father Oleksiy Budanov died a few years ago. During the Soviet era, he worked as an engineer at the Kyiv Radio Plant, manufacturing parts for the space industry. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the plant went into decline, and his father started his own business related to the recycling of batteries. His mother Tetyana Budanova is a housewife who previously worked at the civil registry office. As Budanov himself says, he had a "normal, happy childhood".

He studied at school No. 128 on the left bank. It was not a school near his home — the road took a lot of time, but for good reason. In the difficult 1990s, the Jewish community created Jewish classes at its own expense in the school. Additional funding meant not only mandatory Hebrew study, but also a better education in general. Budanov still remembers Hebrew, and is also friends with the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Moshe Reuven Azman, and communicates with the Jewish community. There is a menorah in his reception room in the Office.

As a child, Kyrylo often spent the summer with relatives in Crimea. He was engaged in underwater orienteering, had sports classes. In the future this hobby would save his life. From childhood, he dreamed of being a soldier: he loved to watch heroic films and listen to family legends that his grandfather told.

There were scouts in the Budanov family. It was his grandfather who had the greatest influence on the boy in his childhood and on his choice of profession. He was not a soldier, but in the 1950s he served five years in the navy.

After graduating from school in the summer of 2003, Budanov immediately went to Odesa to enter the only military institute at that time that trained future paratroopers. There he had to grow up quickly. First, he had to pass a medical examination, psychological tests, pass physical standards, and take exams in mathematics and languages.

As a result, 40 out of 200 applicants were selected, including Budanov. Two more cadets were added to the group for their sporting achievements, one of them was a general and deputy head of the National Police Oleksandr Fatsevych.

The young fighter course and the first year turned out to be the most difficult: the cadets slept little, ate quickly, and suffered from hazing.

“The rules at the airborne faculty were strict. You had to learn to stand up for yourself,” recalls Fatsevych.

The training was also not easy — higher mathematics, the basics of thermodynamics, the resistance of materials. Budanov studied well and helped others, there were queues for him. If someone from the course was attacked by locals, they also fought in groups.

"We went to Kulikovo Field and fought by the whole course several times," recalls Fatsevych. Since the phones did not have video cameras, the cadets escaped punishment.

During the holidays, Budanov went to Crimea to train. He walked 30-40 kilometers with a backpack, climbed rocks. Years later, he would head GUR and build a climbing wall there so that the guys and he could train.

The instituteʼs library had a so-called secret section — a section with restricted-access books that could not be taken out. Despite this, Budanov secretly took them to read while on duty or during vacations, says one of his friends. In those days, this could get him expelled from the institute.

In the last years, it was necessary to decide what to do next. “Buyers” from various special forces came to the institute to look at the recruits, invite them to pass the selection and later take them to their place. Not only the airborne brigades were interested in the airmobile faculty, but also, for example, the SBU special forces unit “Alpha”.

Where Budanov planned to go, no one knew, he kept quiet. Fatsevych recalls that when they found out after graduation that it is GUR, everyone was shocked. No one even dreamed of intelligence. Budanov ended up in the special forces. The memory of the military institute remained with Budanov for the rest of his life. During training, he broke his nose there.

Since the second half of 2007, Budanov has served on the “island” — as GUR is called due to geography. The headquarters is located in Kyiv on Rybalsky Island, at 33 Elektrykiv. At that time, GUR was the only unit that could carry out combat missions abroad — in Iraq, Afghanistan, but before the start of the war in 2014, Budanov did not participate in any operations — he was studying and preparing.

Marianna

In 2013, an important event occurred in the life of Kyrylo Budanov. For him personally, perhaps the most important. On his way back from Odesa, he saw a fragile girl on the train. They talked and exchanged phone numbers.

“It was God’s will that we met at that very moment. I wasn’t supposed to be there, he wasn’t supposed to be there, but it all worked out,” Marianna recalls of their first meeting.

Budanov came to their first date with flowers, a book by Stefan Zweig, which Marianna mentioned, and scales. At that time, she was studying psychology at the “Ukraina” University, and was also actively training — she needed the scales to control herself, and Budanov remembered it. Marianna didn’t know where her new friend worked:

“I thought he was doing work that wasn’t related to military affairs, and it didn’t matter to me what position he held.” Pretty soon, they decided to live together.

Budanov proposed marriage several times, Marianna refused several times.

“I knew it would be forever, but I kept up appearances,” she says. When asked if Budanov was one of those who gets offended and leaves after the first refusal, he immediately says, “I’m not one of those.”

For Budanov, this was his second marriage. He had a son from his first. The wedding was on October 25, 2014.

“I think we’ve been together since August 17, 2013. Since we met on the train,” Budanov recalls.

He doesn’t remember some of the “political” dates we ask about, but not the date he met Marianna. Budanov is sometimes called a henpecked person behind his back. We ask what he thinks about it. He asks who is calling him that, and after thinking about it, he replies, “Most people actually say: whatever a woman says, that’s what I do. That’s more or less true.”

When asked about their main value, the couple, without hesitation, in parallel interviews, answer — family. For Budanov, family is Marianna.

She is brave, loves cold weapons, often calls her husband “Oleksiyovych”, and she is with a “deformed perception of danger”.

“When you connect your life directly with a person like Kyrylo Oleksiyovych, you are responsible not only for your life, but also for the lives of his comrades, the wives of his comrades, and their children,” says Marianna.

War, "Group 40"

The year they met coincided with Euromaidan. Marianna, according to Budanov, went there regularly. He doesnʼt say anything about his participation, he only says, "I was there".

When the protesters won, Russia began its invasion of Crimea. In March 2014, the acting president Oleksandr Turchynov reported partial mobilization. This also applied to the Main Directorate of Intelligence, and mobilized people came to the unit. From them, groups were formed at will and sent to the borders with the Russian Federation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Around that time, Budanov had a conflict with the then head of the GUR special unit Maksym Shapoval. We do not know why. But after that, Shapoval sent Budanov “into exile” to the Kyiv region “forever”. So when the first groups of GUR soldiers left for combat missions, Budanov was left “at home”. The deputy commander of the group helped him escape from “exile” with one of the next groups of mobilized soldiers – he personally asked Shapoval about it under his own responsibility.

Over time, their relationship with Budanov improved. Meanwhile, Budanov joined the so-called “Group 40”. Forty is the average age of the group members, GUR pensioners who volunteered to go to the front. Budanov and one of his brothers were among the young people in the group.

In the summer of 2014, the group went on its first mission. The tasks were different: to search for information, the right people, to go behind enemy lines, to organize sabotage. One of its former members tells Babel that the group moved along the entire perimeter from Mariupol to Stanytsia Luhanska.

According to Marianna, the first mission lasted five months. In order not to lose touch, she made her husband promise: if anyone from the group was killed or injured, they would inform her at the first opportunity, and that is what happened.

Budanov was wounded for the first time in early March 2015. His groupʼs target was the Krasukha electronic warfare complex, which the Russians were using in the occupied territories of Ukraine in the east. The GUR fighters did not have time, cause the Russians took the station to another place.

On the way back in the Horlivka area, the group came across a minefield, an explosion occurred. Three fighters, including Budanov, were wounded — fragments hit his neck and shoulder blade. The group had to leave quickly, and Budanov asked his comrades to leave him.

"We unwound him, examined him, bandaged the wound, injected painkillers, lifted him up and left. We hid at a height, and a Kamaz with the enemy had already arrived where it all happened. They were looking for us, running, but they were afraid to pursue [us]," recalls one of the group members on condition of anonymity. After some time, the fighters went down to their own, and then the ambulance took the wounded to the hospital in the district center.

"They couldnʼt get the fragment out of his neck there. Later, they did an operation in Dnipro," recalls Budanovʼs comrade.

The second injury was on Mariannaʼs birthday. The call was from the ambulance.

"He calls me, and I hear some noise in the background. I ask: ʼHave you started celebrating my birthday yet?ʼ And he laughs and says so easily that he was injured and is being taken to the hospital. He even jokingly counted whether all his fingers were left. And all of this is calm, routine. Nothing can throw him off balance," recalls Marianna.

Budanov is often said to be an adrenaline junkie and not afraid of death. There is a legend that a fortune teller predicted to him that he would die of natural causes, rather than being killed in battle. Budanov himself says that he will live to be 90. One of the soldiers who has been through a lot with him says that in reality everything is more difficult:

“He is not reckless and does not rely on chance. He is self-restrained. If something is unknown, he reads, finds out, understands, and prepares. And when you are ready, in a critical situation, without thinking, you will do everything you need. You will think [about it] later.”

His comrade says that another feature of Budanov is that he always tries to go to the end: if something goes wrong during an operation, adjustments can be made, but for now “we are combat-ready — supplies are not running out, there is food, there are no wounded — we are completing the task.”

In mid-spring 2015, the first wave demobilized — “Group 40” disbanded, and CIA instructors began training the GUR special forces and Budanov himself. This was part of the deal and an American “thank you” for the intelligence agency obtaining samples of Russian weapons for the Americans.

Operation in Crimea

In 2016, the Russians were sure that Crimea was under their complete control. In the north of the peninsula, in Dzhankoi, they concentrated a large number of weapons, including helicopters. GUR assumed that the Kremlin could use them for landing troops, for example, to seize the dam of the Kakhovka HPP and let water into Crimea.

Intelligence decided that the equipment should be destroyed. Budanov was entrusted with leading the operation. He personally selected the people. When the group was formed, training began: the fighters learned to swim underwater, honed all their actions to automatism. Before each complex operation, Budanov played a song by the group "Shadow of the Sun" — "Sword of Arey", and each member of the group had to drink 20 grams of rum. Budanov loves traditions. He says, they are valuable because they do not change.

Firstly, weapons were brought to Crimea on an inflatable boat, and hidden places were made. The group swam independently, underwater. Another group entered the peninsula legally through checkpoints. Its members were supposed to prepare evacuation routes and places where they could wait after the implementation.

Budanov himself selected a group for the operation. He simply suggested to one of the fighters: "Do you want to go to Crimea?", and he agreed.

The group trained for a long time before the operation.

At first, everything went according to plan — Budanov’s group swam to the peninsula under water, got out, and reached the village of Suvorove near Armyansk. There, the fighters were supposed to be picked up by a car. But the driver Andrey Zakhtey was intercepted by the Russians on the way. Without knowing this, Budanov changed the meeting place, and moved it to a cemetery near Suvorove.

It would have been easier to leave there if something went wrong. Instead of Zakhtey, the elite Russian special forces unit of the FSB “Vympel” arrived at the meeting place. In the darkness, they jumped out of the car, shouting: “Everyone, down! FSB is working!”

“It didn’t help them. No one lay down except them. I later calculated that I fired 13 rounds at one of the capture group at point-blank range,” Budanov said in a film dedicated to the operation. Recalling those events, Budanov explained: "I understand very well the psychology of people and what is happening to them at that moment. If you attack first, the chances are very high."

The first to be killed by the GUR fighters were FSB lieutenant colonel and the head of the operation Roman Kamenyev. For a moment, this demoralized the Russians, and the group scattered.

Budanov and his comrade fled towards the sea, and when they reached the shore, they jumped off a cliff into the water. There they checked each other for injuries. It turned out that one of the bullets had hit Budanov’s satellite phone.

The Russians began a search, helicopters flying over land and sea. Budanov and his comrade waited a day in the water and swam almost ten kilometers more through the Perekop Isthmus to the mainland. Within a few days, the entire group had left Crimea.

They had two Russians killed, but they were unable to complete the operation. Andriy Zakhtey and Yevhen Panov, a volunteer who had been detained in Crimea and suspected of sabotage, ended up in the hands of the Russians.

Andriy Zakhtey was the first to join the Russians.

militarnyi.com

Later, Yevgeny Panov was detained.

militarnyi.com

When the group returned home, the then head of GUR Valerii Kondratyuk asked President Petro Poroshenko to immediately award the fighters.

“At two in the morning, we went to the Presidential Administration and presented them with orders,” Kondratyuk told Babel.

When Poroshenko asked what the plan was in case of exposure, the GUR fighters replied that there was no need to worry — they had agreed not to surrender alive to captivity and would make sure that the Russians would not be able to identify them if something happened.

Budanov was experiencing the failure of the operation hard. His comrade from GUR Roman Mashovets tried to cheer him up. In his opinion, the operation reminded the world, which had turned a blind eye to the Russian occupation of the peninsula, that Ukraine had not given up Crimea.

“Moscow was screaming that we had allegedly scratched its car. But the car was stolen. We said it again,” Mashovets recalls.

The “unsuccessful” operation had a big resonance. Putin increased the number of troops in Crimea, Ukraine strengthened its forces near the isthmus. The West traditionally declared the risks of escalation. Kondratyuk was dismissed from his post, and Vasyl Burba came to his place. The group was demoralized.

“As it happens with us: when everything is good, it’s good, but when something is bad, you have to give a runaround. And then it all came down to why it was even there. At first, everyone was confused, but then we got through it, got thoughts together and worked on,” says one of the group members.

For a while, the group was not allowed to take on combat missions.

Attempts

There are many legends in and about GUR. One of them is: at the funeral of FSB Lieutenant Colonel Kamenyev, who was killed in Crimea, someone from his entourage swore to take revenge on the killers. Marianna recalls that somewhere in October 2016, a story was shown on Russian television with the names of the participants in the Crimean operation, including Budanov. At that time, Kyrylo was in the ATO. He called, and they agreed on security measures.

“I limited my movement around the city, every contacts. We changed all the phones,” she says, adding that she was ready for such a turn from the first day of their life together.

In December 2016, during another mission, Budanov was wounded for the third time — a bullet shattered his right elbow. After twenty operations, his friend Roman Mashovets arranged for Budanov to undergo rehabilitation at one of the best military hospitals in the United States — Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

The treatment was covered by the American side, food and accommodation — by private donors, and Mashovets also raised money. Budanov and Mashovets, who accompanied and helped him, arrived in the United States six months after the injury.

At the end of June 2017, Mashovets was to be replaced by Marianna. On the day she arrived in the States, tragedy struck — on the morning of June 27, 2017, the car of the head of the GUR special forces unit Maksym Shapoval exploded in Kyiv. He died on the spot.

Maksym Shapoval headed the GUR special forces. In May 2014, he commanded the group that liberated Donetsk airport. The Russians were hunting him.

Головне управління розвідки МО України / Telegram

On the morning of June 27, 2017, Maksym Shapovalʼs car was blown up on the street. The head of the so-called special operations center of the Ministry of State Security of the "DPR" Vasyl Yevdokimov, nicknamed "Lenin," was behind the attack.

In the winter of the same year, the special services established that the Russians were monitoring the apartments of the former head of the State Security Service Valerii Kondratyuk, who was already working in the Administration of President Petro Poroshenko, and Budanov.

In front of his entrance, saboteurs parked an old car. The SBU employees did not know whose car it was, but they saw a strange picture: every day a man approached it, cleared the snow and went back to the apartment. They soon realized that the car had a camera that recorded who came and went when.

The SBU operation was like a blockbuster, but during the surveillance phase there was a puncture — the Russians realized that they were undercover, and in the last days of the year they were able to leave the country.

Around this time, Budanov returned from the States, and despite the obvious threat to his life, he was not assigned bodyguards. After his third injury from the special forces unit, he switched to operational work, which also involved going behind enemy lines, but quietly. It was more about recruiting and planning sabotage.

On April 4, 2019, a Chevrolet Evanda car exploded on Williams Street in the Holosiivsky district. It was Budanov’s car, but he was not inside. The car exploded accidentally when one of the two Russian hitmen was planting an explosive — the mine exploded and tore off his hand.

Budanov rushed to the scene and, having heard from witnesses about another attacker, ran to look for him with a gun. They failed to catch up — the hitman was taken away in a car, but was later detained.

A year later, the Russians received sentences — seven and eight years in prison. One of them — Timur Dzortov — was handed over to Russia in 2024 as part of an exchange. Ironically, the headquarters that coordinated the exchange was headed by Budanov. In 2025, Dzortov joined the Ingush battalion “Erzi” and returned to the war against Ukraine.

The head of GUR

In 2019, when Volodymyr Zelensky came to power, he, like his predecessors, set about changing the power vertical. One of the few who remained in office was the head of GUR Vasyl Burba.

One of the former high-ranking intelligence officials says that Burba was more focused on internal processes than on intelligence or sabotage operations. Budanov did not fit into such a system, and Burba planned to take him into his disposal, that is, to formally leave him in service, but actually write him off. So that the valuable personnel would not be lost, Budanovʼs former boss Valerii Kondratyuk, who headed the Foreign Intelligence Service on June 5, 2020, summoned him to his place. In the Foreign Intelligence Service, Budanov headed the department that dealt with Russia.

Burba held the position for a year, until August 2020. He was fired a week after a group of “Wagnerians” was detained in Belarus. The president was looking for a new chief intelligence officer. Babel’s source in intelligence circles says that around this time, Budanov was invited as an expert to one of the specialized meetings with the president. We do not know who invited him. According to Babel’s interlocutors in intelligence, Budanov impressed the president at that time, and his name was included in the list of candidates for the position of the new head of GUR.

The final decision in the Presidentʼs Office was made collectively, or rather, the last discussion was collegial. The corresponding meeting was convened at the end of August. Among the participants were the president, the head of the Office Andriy Yermak, the head of SBU Ivan Bakanov, Yermakʼs deputy Roman Mashovets, and others. Several candidates were discussed in turn at the meeting.

Yermak announced Budanovʼs name, then one of the characteristics was read out: capable, not noticed in destructive actions against the authorities, participates in the most dangerous operations, but does not yet have a strategic vision, one of the meeting participants told Babel.

The main question was whether the lack of such a vision was critical for the head of GUR. Budanov himself said in conversations with colleagues that he would definitely cope. In the end, his candidacy was approved. He headed GUR on August 5, 2020.

At the same time, Marianna decided to try her hand at politics. In the fall of 2020, she ran for the Kyiv City Council with the “UDAR” party, running for her native Holosiivsky district. Budanov supported this decision. According to Marianna, she ran for office at her own expense. She lost the election, but she was not disappointed in politics.

In the summer of 2021, Marianna became the mayorʼs advisor on corruption prevention on a voluntary basis. And after the start of the full-scale invasion, she joined the National Police, defended her thesis, and now heads one of the departments of the National Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Budanov had no time to take office when the “Wagnergate” scandal broke out in mid-August 2020. Several media outlets published information that GUR had planned an operation that would have resulted in several dozen members of the PMC “Wagner” falling into the hands of Ukrainian special services. And when the President’s Office learned about the operation, it was foiled.

A former high-ranking intelligence official from the Poroshenko era, in a comment to Babel, says that Burba was trying to keep his place with this operation.

“All these militants were documented in GUR a long time ago, Burba decided to come to Zelensky and tell him that there was a plan to seize the plane,” he recalls.

However, according to him, Zelensky did not trust Burba, whom he considered Poroshenko’s man, and therefore did not approve the operation. Burba threw the documents at him and said that the operation was in progress.

“This was not a request for permission, he was informing,” says the interlocutor. He considers the decision to accommodate the group in a hotel seven kilometers from Lukashenko’s residence to be a key mistake in planning the operation.

“Budanov, although he had no political experience at the time, had enough moderation not to add fuel to the fire, but, on the contrary, to put it out,” says the former intelligence officer.

The newly appointed Budanov, as expected, supported the version promoted by the authorities. A few weeks after his appointment, he gave an interview to Oleksiy Arestovych. All the questions in that conversation were about the fact that the opponents of the authorities were making up nonsense about the operation, and their arguments were illogical. Budanovʼs position was as follows: he did not deny that such an operation had taken place, but hinted that it all looked more like a Russian operation.

In September 2023, Arestovych left Ukraine. NGL.media wrote that the reason for this was a letter from GUR. The intelligence service unofficially says that it was a letter from the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine. There is no confirmation of this.

One of those who publicly spoke out against Budanov in that story was Burba. In an interview with LIGA.net, he stated that Budanov had met with him and negotiated on behalf of the Office. The offers for silence allegedly varied, from the post of Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia to threats.

Budanov does not want to comment on Burbaʼs words: he says that he never discusses the essence of his conversations with third parties. The only thing he confirms is that he met with Burba, and more than once, and "I can only say that he added a little of himself."

Full-scale invasion and the assassination of Kireyev

In the fall of 2021, Ukrainian journalists at press conferences and in private conversations tried to get their interlocutors in various law enforcement agencies to answer a single question — whether Russia was planning a full-scale offensive.

Almost all speakers, both publicly and privately, argued that Western partners and the media were exaggerating the threat. These words were heard in the General Staff, the Ministry of Defense, the National Security and Defense Council, and the Office of the President. Budanov was the only person in a position of this level who publicly spoke about the global threat.

On November 21, 2021, an article was published in the influential American publication Military Times, where he described in detail what the offensive would be like and when. In general, the forecast came true, Budanov was also almost not mistaken with the date — he said about the beginning of February.

In the Kremlin, his statements were called “hysteria”, and not only in the Kremlin.

When asked how he felt when almost all officials and politicians denied his words and called him a panicker behind his back, Budanov points to the painting “Boss and Leader”. He says that this is his philosophy, and he is not interested in the opinions of others about him. This seems to be true, but there is an exception. Knowing that before the meeting we talked to many people from his close circle, Budanov asks about the feedback of one person — Marianna.

On February 18, 2022, Western partners informed Budanov of the Russiansʼ detailed plan: to land at the Hostomel airfield and attack Kyiv from there. This information helped to partially prepare in the last minutes, but still did not guarantee victory in Hostomel. It hung in the balance until the last moment.

On February 22, 2022, two days before the invasion, Budanov participated in a meeting with the leaders of all parliamentary factions. The meeting was also attended by the President, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhny, and the head of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov.

There, Budanov once again explained where the Russians could attack from, spoke about the threat to Kyiv, and warned that an attack could come from the direction of Chornobyl. At that time, the majority already understood that a full-scale war could not be avoided.

Shortly before the full-scale invasion, Budanov was almost fired. According to one version, it was the Officeʼs initiative — the authorities were annoyed that he was constantly going against the general line that there would be no invasion.

The second version is that the Russians demanded it, convincing them that there would be no war and saying that this would strengthen relations between the states. Together with Budanov, they offered or demanded the dismissal of the then head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine Valerii Kondratyuk and the deputy head of Presidentʼs Office Roman Mashovets.

The Office did not go along with it, but Budanov was informed of the threat of his dismissal. He himself does not deny this information, but does not specify the reasons. In any case, on February 24, 2022, the issue became irrelevant — Russia went on the offensive. Budanovʼs prediction came true.

Budanov and his wife met the full-scale invasion in GUR. Marianna lived in her husband’s office, saw how the first groups of special forces were preparing and leaving for Hostomel, and how the wounded (including Russians) were brought in.

Budanov did not fall into the narrow circle of those who survived the first, most difficult weeks in hiding with the president. This was a minus for his further career, but not for Budanov. In GUR, he was in his right place.

“[He was] in his element: with weapons, grenades. He is a man of war,” says the interlocutor of Babel, who was with him in those days.

In March 2022, the Russians launched a missile attack on the GUR headquarters. Budanov was in a meeting at the time. After a powerful explosion that stunned those present, he checked on his wife [is sheʼs okay], shook off the dust, and went outside to look at the damage and debris.

One of Budanovʼs life credos is to look for friends, not enemies. With most people he has "equal working relations". For example, with Oleksandr Syrsky. When at the beginning of the war he was looking for specialists to blow up the dam in Kozarovychi, Budanov quickly helped him.

The only structure with which Budanov entered into a loud open conflict is SBU. This happened in the first weeks of the invasion, when on March 5, the serviceʼs employees killed banker Denys Kireyev.

Budanov had known Kireyev since 2009. They met at an event where Kireyev was with the then head of GUR Viktor Hvozd, and began to communicate. In the spring of 2021, Budanov asked Kireyev to try to join Russian intelligence, using personal connections. Previously he had been a member of the board of directors of the Klyuyev brothersʼ company for a long time and had access to generals of Russian special services. Kireyev agreed. And since then he has regularly traveled to the Kharkiv region, where he crossed the border with Russia, returned and passed the collected information to Budanov.

The day before the invasion, according to Budanov, it was Kireyev who informed him about the time and direction of the Russian attack. Subsequently, at Budanovʼs request, Kireyev joined the Ukrainian negotiating group, which had been conducting peace talks with the Russians since February 28. In fact, Kireyev represented GUR in the group.

Budanov told his version of Kireyevʼs murder. Before the second round, Kireyev received a call from the office of the head of counterintelligence of SBU Oleksandr Poklad. He went to the Kyiv train station with his bodyguard, warned the guards that he could be arrested, and ordered them not to interfere.

Kireyevʼs car was intercepted by the SBU agents near St. Sophia Cathedral, taken to a minibus, and an hour and a half later his body was found in the center of Kiev. Budanov said that Kireyev was a regular GUR fighter, and SBU said that he was a Russian spy.

Babelʼs interlocutors in intelligence say that the real war of the special services broke out around Kireyev not by chance, as SBU is trying to present. GUR pinned great hopes on him and counted that with Kireyevʼs help, a peace agreement would be reached with the Russians in March 2022. His death put an end to these hopes. Budanov confirms these words.

Kireyev’s death significantly undermined relations between the two special services. The president, and not only him, had no interest in this conflict in the midst of the war — he publicly asked to take a step forward.

Then the first deputy head of SBU Vasyl Malyuk invited Budanov for coffee. This is how their joint photo appeared and the news that “The heads of SBU and GUR of the Ministry of Defense discussed future special operations that will bring victory closer”.

In fact, that photo was not just a formal signal of peace. Budanov and Malyuk always found a common language and, as Babel’s interlocutor in SBU states, “were in sync at all NSDC meetings”.

Relations with Oleksandr Poklad, who in January 2025 became the first deputy head of SBU and strengthened his position in the service, never improved.

Exchanges

On April 18, 2022, the “Azov” commander Denys Prokopenko appealed to world leaders. He asked to organize a “green corridor” so that women, children, and wounded fighters could leave “Azovstal”.

Tens of thousands of people were waiting for evacuation in Mariupol, which was blocked and destroyed by the Russians. The then Deputy Prime Minister for Integration of the Occupied Territories Iryna Vereshchuk was supposed to resolve the issue with civilians. In March 2022, she headed the newly created Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War. She had no contact with the Russians.

“The Main Intelligence Directorate began exchanging people from the beginning of the full-scale invasion. The first exchange took place either in the last days of February or in the first days of March 2022 without any coordination headquarters,” an interlocutor familiar with the situation tells Babel. Budanov was looking for ways to withdraw the military from “Azovstal”.

In the second half of April, he was approached by the MP Oleksandr Kovalyov. He said that he was ready to travel to the occupied city on several buses, deliver a humanitarian aid to “Azovstal” on Easter, and pick up civilians and children. Budanov agreed and asked to also take out the seriously wounded “Azov” soldiers.

Using his own contacts in Russia, on April 24, Kovalyov drove into the completely surrounded Mariupol, reached “Azovstal”, but was unable to pick up civilians — the two sides could not agree. On the way back, he asked the Russians to let Vereshchukʼs column pass, so it was able to evacuate almost 100 civilians.

Here is a long interview with Kovalyov.

The second time, Budanov asked Kovalyov to go to Mariupol to negotiate the release of the “Azovians” into captivity. This time, he was accompanied by a representative of GUR Dmytro Usov. The negotiations went according to plan. The Russians even let Kovalyov see the conditions in which the prisoners lived in Olenivka.

The “Azovians” left the factory dungeons in mid-May, and that same month, the Cabinet of Ministers appointed Budanov the head of the Coordination Headquarters. Dmytro Usov became his secretary. The decision to transfer the Coordination Headquarters to GUR, according to Babel’s intelligence sources, was made in one day.

In addition, says Kovalyov, he introduced Budanov to the right people in the UAE. That’s how a platform for exchanges appeared in the Emirates. The headquarters has already conducted over 70 successful exchanges. The last one was on April 24. Over 8 000 people returned home.

Budanovʼs name appears next to good news from time to time.

Budanov sent Dmytro Usov, who would later become the secretary of the Coordination Headquarters, to negotiate with Kovalyov about the release of the "Azov" soldiers. Usov is on the right in the photo, opposite the commander of "Azov" Denys ("Redis") Prokopenko. "Azovstal" in the background.

З особистого архіву Олександра Ковальова / «Бабель»

The base where negotiations were held on the release of the "Azovians". In the pic, from left to right: Russian General Alexander Zorin, First Deputy of the Russian GRU General Vladimir Alekseev, Colonel Kryzhanovsky. On the right are Kovalyov and Usov (with a phone in their hands).

З особистого архіву Олександра Ковальова / «Бабель»

Andriy Yermak and the war with NABU and SAPO

When the Russians withdrew from Kyiv, Bankova Street began to pay attention to ratings again. Trust in the Armed Forces and the military increased sharply. In May 2022, according to KIIS, the Armed Forces of Ukraine were trusted by 98% of the population, and the president by 91%.

Along with the army, the rating of Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhny grew. The media activity of the first persons was controlled in the Office of the President. Zaluzhnyʼs interviews were not welcomed, the Commander-in-Chief knew about this and did not want to aggravate the situation.

Instead, Budanov received carte blanche. He gave dozens of interviews, even to "non-profile" glossy magazines, such as Ukrainian Vogue. People who worked in the Office and in Budanovʼs entourage at that time say — he spoke a lot not in order to bring down Zaluzhnyʼs rating, but to emphasize the role of GUR and show that not only the Armed Forces of Ukraine are at the front. This is how the term "Defense Forces" came into circulation over time.

Partly, the publicity harmed Budanov. He made a whole series of false predictions: that soon the Russians would run out of missiles, that the war would soon end, and that Crimea would be returned. He also spoke about Putin’s serious illness.

“He was wrong because he made those predictions based on the situation at the moment, but with the expectation of further development in ideal conditions,” explains Budanov’s friend and comrade.

Another interlocutor of Babel in GUR says that some of Budanov’s statements were aimed not at the inside of the country, but at the outside.

Budanovʼs relations with the Presidentʼs Office (or rather, with its head Andriy Yermak) initially developed quite well. A person who witnessed their communication for a long time says that they complemented each other.

Yermak is a person who always went to the end, Budanov is about strategy and meaning. It was to Budanovʼs GUR that Andriy Yermakʼs brother Denys was transferred from the Territorial Defence Forces in June 2022.

The interlocutor in the Office says that over time, Yermak began to do with Budanov what he had previously done with other inconvenient people, for example, with Dmytro Kuleba — first he devalued the work, then blocked it in individual projects.

“People who had direct contact with the boss [meaning the president], in such situations, immediately stood up and tried to conflict. Kyrylo behaved differently, he tried not to escalate and not to butt,” says the interlocutor.

Budanov tried to stick to his principle of “looking for friends, not enemies”.

According to The Economist, by the summer of 2025, Yermak had tried to remove Budanov from the post of head of GUR at least nine times. His good relations with the president saved him. People in the Office and around Budanov say that there is some kind of chemistry between him and Zelensky — Budanov can convey an alternative point of view to the president, and the president listens to it. And in general, Zelensky treats intelligence with respect.

In January 2024, Budanov was among the main contenders for the post of commander-in-chief. According to Babel, some GUR employees were literally packing their things to move to the General Staff. But on February 8, 2024, Zelensky appointed Oleksandr Syrsky as the new commander-in-chief.

If it is true that Yermak was guided by ratings in important personnel issues, this was the right choice. According to a February KIIS poll, Zaluzhny was trusted by 94%, Budanov by 66%, Syrsky by 40%, and the president had 64%. Syrsky was the safest.

Budanov called the presidentʼs decision to dismiss Zaluzhny the right one in an interview, but his relations with the former commander-in-chief remained normal. When Zaluzhny arrived in Ukraine from London, where he had already worked as an ambassador, in the second half of 2024, they met and talked. The Office received this meeting with hostility. A pause of several months occurred in the presidentʼs relations with Budanov.

In September 2025, the Office issued an ultimatum to Budanov: he had to change his deputies, dismiss former NABU employees Andriy Kaluzhynsky and Oleksiy Petrov (who previously headed the special importer company “Spetstechnoexport”) from GUR.

Budanov also had to abandon his political ambitions and stop his media activities. He did not plan to insist on such conditions and at first decided to resign, but changed his mind. “Mindichgate” saved him from resignation or war with the Office.

The NABU investigation, which concerned embezzlement at “Energoatom”, found itself at the center of not only the presidentʼs friend Tymur Mindich — Yermakʼs name was increasingly heard in history. Some MPs from the “Servant of the People” party began to demand his resignation. At that moment, the president met with Budanov.

Despite the tension between them, Budanov was the right negotiator. He, one of the few, had good relations with the heads of the SAPO and NABU. Budanov offered the president a plan to overcome the crisis. An interlocutor in GUR tells Babel that now his document included Yermakʼs resignation and a number of economic, geopolitical and communication decisions.

Budanov traditionally avoids direct questions about his participation in the anti-corruption crisis, but theorizes a general rule. He says this has nothing to do with anti-corruption activists:

“Many of our figures cannot understand the simple truth — you cannot fight with the power structure in order to change its leader. The structure will always defend itself. If necessary, you can fight with individual people.”

On November 22, 2025, the president included Kyrylo Budanov in the negotiating group authorized to conduct peace talks with the US and Russia. At that time, this group was still headed by Yermak.

On November 28, 2025, NABU and SAPO came to Andriy Yermakʼs house with searches. The president was practically left with no chance of keeping Yermak in office. On the same day, news appeared on Russian websites that Russian law enforcement officers had exposed criminals who were forging passports.

The news was illustrated by an interesting photo — it showed a Russian passport in the name of the head of SAPO Oleksandr Klymenko. According to Babelʼs interlocutors in the special services, certain Ukrainian services wanted to use this photo in the fight against anti-corruption agencies. More specifically, they wanted to accuse Klymenko of having Russian citizenship, release him on this basis, and later take SAPO under control.

Babelʼs interlocutors say that Budanovʼs old enemy in SBU could have been behind this operation, but they prefer not to name him. The service also unofficially denies this information. But what is known for sure is that GUR helped Klymenko in this story and thwarted an operation that could have cost him his position.

On November 28, Yermak left the Office and lost his place in the negotiating group, which was headed by the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Rustem Umerov. For more than a month, the Office worked without a leader, as the president chose a candidate.

Among the candidates were the Deputy Head of the Office Pavlo Palisa, the Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, Kyrylo Budanov, the Minister Denys Shmyhal, and the Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko.

On January 2, 2026, when it seemed that Budanov’s candidacy had already been rejected, the president appointed him head of the Office. At that time, a ghostly but looming possibility of a truce loomed ahead — everyone who could be affected had the elections on their minds.

Office work

The decision to move to the Office of the President was not easy for Budanov.

“It didn’t happen in one day or even in a month. It was weighed all the pros and contras. It’s emotionally difficult to leave part of our big family — the guys in the units, those with whom we are in touch 24/7. But here the issue was the survival of the state,” recalls Marianna Budanova.

Babelʼs interlocutors say that Budanov, who initially did not want to go to the Office, had no choice. He was given an ultimatum — either he simply leaves GUR, or he leaves GUR and heads the Office. He tried to agree that his person be appointed to the position of head of GUR, but the president decided otherwise. Zelensky also allegedly insisted that the deputies should remain in their places. Budanov says that this is conspiracy theory. He accepted the position because for him it is ʼnew opportunities and new developmentʼ," because he headed GUR for almost 6 years.

Immediately after his appointment, Budanov spent a lot of time on business trips and in negotiations. He was not seen on Bankova Street or in parliament for several more weeks.

When he arrived at the Office, he held a meeting with each deputy and asked in detail about the main tasks, working conditions, ambitions and wishes. He persuaded one of the deputies, who wanted to leave, to stay.

Everything that happened after Budanov’s appointment to the Office can be briefly called a thaw. Budanov, unlike Yermak, does not sit with the president all the time and does not limit his access. He is not inclined to cabinet intrigues. He literally opened the Office to MPs, heads of administrations and business representatives — they do not need passes to get inside.

Budanov has his own style of work and decision-making algorithm. He asks that complex issues for consideration be presented according to a certain scheme: a problem, several options for its solution with the positive and negative consequences of each option. He has a large table on his desk.

Another thing that Budanov brought to the Office is “army style”, but in a very simplified version for real military people. For example, he demands that military ranks be written next to his name and the name of his deputy Pavlo Palisa, in documents — both [of them] are still serving.

And Budanov is clearly not used to his decisions being discussed and challenged. His friend and comrade says that he is stubborn and is unlikely to admit if he was wrong, but he can make concessions.

One of the first meetings that Budanov held concerned AWOL and TRC, and it was convened in one evening.

“He made it quite clear that he was giving two weeks for bribery in TRCs to stop. He warned that if after that he became aware of bribery in a particular TRC, the entire vertical would collapse,” says an interlocutor in OP, familiar with the content of the meeting.

Budanov does not dismiss, but adjusts the work of his deputies. For example, he limits the functions that are not typical of Oleh Tatarov as the deputy head of the Office for Law Enforcement Affairs. It is about the courts.

"His deputy for regional policy Viktor Mykyta has not left the regions for three months. He came up with an additional job for Iryna Mudra — to deal with the Business Council. She needs to develop, because her topic with international justice is already taking up less time," says a high-ranking interlocutor of Babel in parliament.

"It is clear that he is still inexperienced, but he wants to learn to be a good political staffer. He adjusts his rhetoric to suit the audience. He does not interfere in internal matters, does not want to enter the governmentʼs field, does not tell them what to do, and has productive communication with Svyrydenko," says another interlocutor in the Office.

After the parliamentary crisis began, Budanov was tasked with reviving the Verkhovna Rada. The first attempt was unsuccessful. On January 13, the parliament voted on rotations in the Cabinet of Ministers: Denys Shmyhal was to move from the position of the Minister of Defense to the position of head of the Ministry of Energy, and Mykhailo Fedorov from the Ministry of Digital Economy to the Ministry of Defense.

Budanov was assured that the vote would go without any problems. But a problem still arose. The MPs dismissed the ministers, but did not appoint them to new positions. Budanov perceived this as a throw-off from the parliament. The head of the “Servant of the People” faction Davyd Arakhamia says that in reality there were no political intrigues there, the vote on the appointment was put off for the afternoon, and the MPs simply dispersed.

"The next day, all the votes were in. These are ordinary parliamentary weekdays, there is a rule — nothing is ever put off for Thursday and Friday, especially after lunch," Arakhamia says.

Budanov has also been blamed for the peace talks with the US and Russia.

“Therefore, the failure will be blamed on him,” says one of Babel’s interlocutors. However, formally and in fact, the negotiating team is not headed by Budanov, but by the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Rustem Umerov.

“Budanov is a man of peace in the negotiations, because for him the priority is not the peace talks themselves, but the achievement of peace,” says Davyd Arakhamia.

Babelʼs interlocutors, who are familiar with the negotiation process, say that Budanov has his own niche in the group: when it comes to threats or the power of armies, he keeps the context and does not allow the Russians to manipulate, including the opinion of the Americans.

And thanks to his years of work in GUR, Budanov has good contact with Russia along the intelligence line — this is his exclusivity.

One of the main questions is whether Budanov will lose his popularity and rating as head of the Office, which has been associated with negativity for decades, and whether he correctly calculated all the risks. Several interlocutors of Babel in various state structures say that at the time when Budanov agreed, he believed in fairly quick elections.

That is, he hoped that the Office would not have time to kill his rating. In addition, the Office is a good place to improve political and administrative skills.

"Polls have shown that so far the negative does not stick to Budanov, he is quite Teflon in this regard. On the other hand, this is the first head of OP in the history of the country, whose rating has increased threefold in the first months and has slightly stabilized the presidentʼs rating. There is a public demand for young war heroes, and he falls 100% within this demand," says Babelʼs interlocutor in parliament and cites figures — in polls, 60% say that the best solution to the crisis was the release of Yermak, and 55% say the appointment of Budanov.

According to Babelʼs interlocutors in the Office and in GUR, the president expects Budanov to support the system, have good contacts with the Defense Forces through Palisa, not quarrel with anti-corruption structures, and not interfere where he shouldnʼt.

When asked by Babel whether Budanov meets the presidentʼs expectations, Zelensky replied that he was satisfied with Kyryloʼs work in the areas he asked him to work on.

The rated politician Budanov has one potential weak point — the specifics of his former work in GUR. From time to time, news appeared in the media that did not add to his popularity. For example, about the fact that Yevhen Chervonenko (a figure in corruption scandals and known for his pro-Russian statements) had joined the State Intelligence Service.

Or about the award from the State Intelligence Service to the Instagram blogger, former escort Ksyusha Maneken. Such news is not approved by social networks. The progressive part of Ukrainian Facebook cannot like the real methods of intelligence work.

“The specifics of GUR imply that not only chaste and holy people can perform certain tasks or provide information,” the interlocutor of Babel in Syrsky’s entourage very delicately formulates.

He adds that sometimes the military complained that GUR units seized the places where they were deployed. This is what happened in December last year with the “Zhovten” sanatorium near Kyiv.

“Usually these are some ambiguous characters who lose their ways, using the GUR IDs. The people of GUR are educated, they are the elite, and such things are not their level,” the interlocutor says.

Budanov says heʼs not a samurai: the goal is important to him, not the path. But there is a samurai katana in his office.

Record player and collection — from "Prodigy to Beatles".

The same social networks and some media outlets call the greatest risk for Budanov the influence on the president, which Andriy Yermak still maintains. No one in the Office denies that there is contact between them.

However, Budanov does not react to this as sharply as others. He has his own system of coordinates. His comrades, with whom Babel spoke, tell how until recently, the general and head of GUR Budanov went on combat missions, shot, risked his life, and in 2023, during an operation behind enemy lines, he personally convinced 19 Russians to surrender.

This does not mean that the main thing for Budanov is the war, that he has no political ambitions or is ready to lose his place in the Office. His ambitions, as people close to him say, are very great. But he treats the intrigues and risks of civilian life differently.

Throughout the conversation, Budanov responds to questions the way he feels: sometimes he smiles, sometimes he is ironic, sometimes he is condescending, sometimes he shows displeasure. This is not the norm in the Office — negative emotions are usually suppressed here. Especially with journalists.

“Donʼt you want to be liked?” we ask after another “next question”-style answer.

"I am a General, I am a Hero of Ukraine. I can afford it," says Budanov.