The head of Ukrainian military intelligence, General Kyrylo Budanov, has promised the Russians a “real hell” in Ukraine, where the Russian army, which he considers “medieval”, will face a constant guerrilla warfare of Ukrainian partisans, he says. in an interview published Friday.
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“The Russian command has made many mistakes and we are using these mistakes,” General Budanov, who spoke in Ukrainian from Kyiv, told the American weekly The Nation through an interpreter at his side.
“The Ukrainian army showed that the Russian army, the second army in the world, was just a myth. It’s just a concentration of medieval power, old methods of combat,” added the 36-year-old general, who joined the army after the fall of the USSR and was trained in the methods of the war. ‘NATO.
Appointed in 2020 to head the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense by President Volodymyr Zelensky, General Budanov believed that one of the keys to the successes of the Ukrainian forces in resisting the Russian army had been their ability to spy on the adversary.
“We have a lot of informants within the Russian army, not only in its ranks but also in its political circle and within its command”, he affirmed during this interview granted “in recent days “, according to the magazine.
One of his priorities in recent months has been to organize a force of partisans who will remain behind Russian lines in the event of a long occupation to carry out guerrilla operations. He wouldn’t give details of the force but noted that it was “a large number of people” and he mentioned the presence of fighters.
“Our fighters, our soldiers and even our hunters will start chasing the aggressor, the Russian troops, with guns in the forests,” he said. “Spring will soon come, our forests will grow green again, and veritable hell will break loose before the aggressor.”
He noted that although the Ukrainian resistance has stood up to the Russian army for a month, the situation remains “very difficult”.
“We have large Russian forces on our territory and they have surrounded the cities of Ukraine,” he said. “As for the prospects for peace, despite the negotiations, they remain vague and unpredictable.”
The head of military intelligence was also dismissive of Chechen fighters who joined Russian forces on the Ukrainian front, noting that it was easy to track them by listening to their conversations on their mobile phones.
“We have a lot of informants in the Chechen ranks,” he added. “As soon as they prepare an operation, we know it thanks to our informants”.