Poisoning Attack on Ukrainian Military Intel Chief’s Wife: What We Know So Far

Ukrainian military Main Intelligence Directorate chief Kyrylo Budanov’s wife Marianna has been hospitalized and diagnosed with “poisoning by heavy metals.” What’s known about the suspected poisoning incident? Who are the Budanovs? What’s the broader backdrop to the story? Sputnik has the details.

Marianna Budanova is recovering in hospital after suffering symptoms of poisoning by heavy metals.

Main Intelligence Directorate spokesman Andriy Yusov confirmed to reporters Tuesday that the 30-year-old wife of the Ukrainian military intelligence chief was in hospital undergoing treatment for poisoning and is now suffering “mild” symptoms, and promised to provide more information at a later time. He did not elaborate on the timing or circumstances of the suspected poisoning attack.

Besides Budanova, several Main Intelligence Directorate personnel have also reportedly showed signs of poisoning, with the attack on the spy chief's wife said to have used substances that are “not used in any way in everyday life or military operations.” Authorities have launched a criminal probe. Sources said Budanova and others might have had had food laced with the toxic substances, the makeup of which has yet to be elaborated on.

Sources told Ukrainian media that Budanov himself was in good health, and that there’s no evidence of him being affected in the suspected attack.

Who is Marianna Budanova?

Born in Kiev region in 1993, Budanova is not an employee of the Main Intelligence Directorate, but a trained psychologist who has served as a volunteer advisor to Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko on “anti-corruption” initiatives in youth and sports policy, and tried her hand at politics in 2020 as a candidate in local elections from Klitschko’s liberal, pro-EU Udar Party. Budanova met her future husband shortly before the 2013 Euromaidan protests and February 2014 coup, and is the lieutenant general’s second wife. The Ukrainian military intelligence chief confided to media last year that he has lived with his wife in his Kiev office practically “24/7” after Russia began its military operation last year.

Marianna told a women’s magazine in an interview last October that she does not interfere in her husband’s work, but is nevertheless “always willing to help” if called on to provide assistance or advice. “It happens that I am sometimes one of the first to learn about the successful completion of an operation, but only after it is completed,” she said.

Budanov, 37, began his military career in the Main Intelligence Directorate in 2007, and was deployed repeatedly in the Donbass amid the Ukrainian military efforts to try to crush resistance to the new authorities who took power in Kiev in the coup from the spring of 2014 onward. Budanov has been the head of Ukrainian military’s Main Intelligence Directorate since 2020. His name was floated earlier this year as a possible replacement to disgraced defense minister Oleksii Reznikov, but Reznikov ended up being replaced by politician and businessman Rustem Umierov instead.

A Moscow court issued an arrest warrant against Budanov this past April, citing his suspected involvement in the October 2022 terror attack on Russia’s Crimean Bridge. In Russia, Budanov is best known for his fascistic statements in relation to the residents of Crimea and the Donbass, including threats to ethnically cleanse and “reeducate” civilians whose psyche warped by “Russian propaganda.”

In an interview with US media in May, when asked about his agency’s possible role in the car bombing killing of Russian journalist Daria Dugina, Budanov confided that “we’ve been killing Russians and…will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine.” The same month, he told German media that his agency’s list of targets includes Russia’s president.

After the failures of Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive, Budanov has toned down the tenor of his public comments somewhat, admitting in September that Ukraine’s military “will not end the war with a victory parade in Moscow,” and expressing doubts that Kiev’s American-supplied Abrams tanks could survive “very long on the battlefield” before being destroyed.

What’s the Broader Context?

The suspected poisoning attack on Budanov’s wife comes against the backdrop of a broader scandal between Ukraine’s civilian and military leadership after Armed Forces Commander in Chief Valery Zaluzhny admitted to British media earlier this month that Ukraine’s counteroffensive had reached a “stalemate” and that the front had settled into WWI-style trench warfare. Zaluzhny’s comments were followed by a partial reshuffle of Ukraine’s military leadership by President Volodymyr Zelensky, and one of Zaluzhny’s closest aides was mysteriously killed after a live grenade given to him as a birthday present exploded in his home.

Military expert Alexei Borzenko told Sputnik earlier this month that the incident involving Zaluzhny’s aide was an “obvious terrorist attack,” and said that he suspects Budanov’s handiwork, judging by previous attacks on Russian officials and media figures using similar methods.

Budanov publicly attacked Zaluzhny’s command abilities as recently as September, suggesting that Russian forces’ speedy advance through Kherson region during the first days of the crisis would not have been possible if the river crossing points had been destroyed.