Ukrainian spy chief’s wife was poisoned, officials say

The wife of Ukraine’s military intelligence chief has been poisoned and is recovering in a hospital, Ukrainian intelligence officials said Tuesday, an incident that has led to widespread speculation that Russia was stepping up efforts to attack Ukraine’s senior leadership.

Andriy Chernyak, a Ukrainian military intelligence official, said Marianna Budanova had been poisoned and was being treated. Her husband, Kyrylo Budanov, is the head of the organization known as GUR and is one of the country’s top military leaders.

Mr Chernyak declined to speculate on the perpetrator or the type of poison used and provided no further details, citing the ongoing investigation.

Agency spokesman Andriy Yusov later issued a statement with a similar account of the incident and said more information would be released as the investigation continues.

Ms Budanova’s suspected poisoning was first reported by Ukrainian news channel Babel. It said doctors found a large amount of heavy metals in Ms. Budanova’s system that “are not used in any way in everyday life and military affairs.”

Mr. Budanov had not fallen ill, Ukrainian officials said.

Reports that Ms. Budanova had been poisoned led to immediate suspicion in Ukraine that Russia, which has a long history of using poison as a tool to exact revenge and eliminate perceived enemies, may have been responsible.

Mr. Budanov has often stated that Russia intended to kill him, and an intelligence spokesman, Andriy Yusov, said this summer that Russia had made at least 10 attempts to do so.

The circumstances of the poisoning and how Ms. Budanova was affected were not immediately clear. But Mr Budanov told Radio Liberty earlier this year that since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, his wife, a psychologist who worked as an anti-corruption adviser to Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko, had effectively moved into her husband’s home . office.

If Russia were able to poison Ms. Budanov, it would indicate that its agents were operating closer to the inner circles of power in Kiev than previously thought possible.

Viktor Yahun, former deputy head of the Domestic Intelligence Service, Ukraine’s security service, has taken part in previous investigations into poisonings and said more information was needed before it would be possible to assess the Budanova case.

But Mr Yahun said he would be surprised if Russia had agents in Ukraine who could get close to Ms Budanova or her husband.

“There are simply not the necessary agents on the territory of Ukraine who can poison someone,” he said.

However, Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said in an interview before the poisoning was announced that Russia was activating sleeper agents and stepping up efforts to destabilize the government in Kiev.

“In 2003, Putin set himself the task of destroying our country, and all this time their tasks have not changed,” he said. “Given that the Russian Federation is unable to win by military means, it is now using all its agent networks, which unfortunately still exist. And now we observe their maximum activation.”

According to Ukrainian officials, Russia has in the past targeted senior Ukrainian leaders, including President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Mr. Zelensky has said he is no longer shocked when he hears about new conspiracies in his life.

“The first one is very interesting,” he said in one recent interview with The Sun, the British tabloid, “and then it’s like Covid.”