by Francesco Battistini
The chief of military intelligence has not appeared in public for 21 days: the Russians claim he was injured in the May 29 rocket attack on the capital. Kyiv denies this and speaks of propaganda
FROM OUR REPORTER
KIEV – Of course you just don’t see it anymore. And who insists on not showing up now that everyone is wondering if he’s still alive. What happened to Kyrylo Budanov? Reading Russian social media, the number one Ukrainian intelligence service is dying. When he listens to the leaders of Kiev, who have already denied his death four times in three weeks, he is fine. According to a diplomatic source in Kiev, there are no talks: the boss of 007 was allegedly seen at an unofficial meeting of European ambassadors with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. But where did it go? And why isn’t it showing? Of course, there is one more certainty: that the detective story about Budanov’s fate will become yet another case of informed disinformation. Capable of turning the plausible into a facsimile and the false into something resembling the real.
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The facts. On May 29, there is a heavy Russian rocket attack on the capital. The headquarters of the Gur Military Service in Rybalsky, an area everyone calls “the island,” is hit. Traffic remains blocked for a long time and even a Ukrainian MP, Ilya Kiva, confirms that something serious happened. On the same day, in the very hours of the attack, Budanov appears in a video: a general message intended only to say that “another Russian attempt to carry out terrorist attacks has failed”. In reality, as an ultra-Putin Moscow agency like Ria Novosti explained a few days later, “a rocket hit an office next to him” and Budanov suffered a very serious head injury. According to the Russians, the officer is in a deep coma and was taken by helicopter to the Polish military base in Rzeszow. Hence the urgent hospitalization in a Berlin clinic on board a C-21A provided by the US Air Force.
News of Budanov’s death circulated for a few days. Kiev denies it and nobody seems to take it too seriously. Also because the Ukrainian government releases another short and strange video of the head of Ukrainian services, filmed silently and motionless: “It is an invitation – they explain – to keep silent about the ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensive.” However, the Russians insist : How can the story be revived? The source is “supported” by a more meaningful quote and confirmation from the German weekly Stern, which would have found more details, begins to circulate on the internet. The name of the hospital where Budanov is said to be stationed in great secrecy and under a false name – the Bundeswehr Berlin, at Scharnhorstrasse 13 – emerges, with “closed mouths from the health authorities” and “very high security protocols”. credible? A little bit more: So much so that the story is also picked up by other media. Too bad it’s up to Stern to point out that he’s never published anything like this: what’s floating around is a false article.
We know that a denial is a message given twice and that would be enough to end it here. But the inexplicable reluctance of the Ukrainians remains. Always able to cast bait in the information world to understand who is a friend and who is not. And to create copyright forgeries discrediting the enemy: even before the war, the story of Arkady Babchenko, a Ukrainian anti-Putin journalist, was “murdered in his house” (Babchenko is still very much alive today and Kiev services admitted they to have spread). scam to expose a network of Russian agents).
Today, Kiev’s silence on the Budanov case is understandable: for nine years, the general was the strategist of the war in Donbass, the author of the truck bomb on the Kerch bridge in Crimea, the organizer of the sabotage of recent months in the Russian territory. The Kremlin considers him “the most dangerous Ukrainian terrorist after Zelenskyy” and also accuses him of murdering Darya Dugina, the daughter of the “ideologue” of Putinism. Inspired by the Israeli Mossad’s punitive expeditions, Budanov theorizes that it is necessary to “kill Russians around the world”: losing one would be a severe blow to Ukrainians.
And therefore silence: On Saturday evening Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted the pictures of the war council in his secret bunker. We see Generals Syrsky, Tarnavsky, Shaptala and Zaluzhny (he too was declared dead by the Russians) and other “undercover” officers. The headline of the video is in Sibylline: “I will not name these men yet,” writes the Ukrainian President, “all in due course.” Our progress is the most important thing. Each of our soldiers, each of our new steps is the most important thing. And there was Budanov…». Budanov was there, but he didn’t show up. Why?
June 18, 2023 (change June 18, 2023 | 21:07)
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