The wife of Kyrylo Budanov, the military intelligence chief in Ukraine, had to be rushed to a hospital and is now being treated for poisoning from heavy metals, according to a spokesperson with the GUR military intelligence agency.
Andriy Yusov of the GUR confirmed multiple media reports when talking to a local radio station that Marianna Budanova had heavy metal poisoning. She is nearing the end of her treatment as a result.
Media outlets in Ukraine also reported that other military officials in the country were poisoned, though POLITICO said it couldn’t independently verify those reports.
Budanov has been a primary target of Russia ever since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022. A court in the Communist country issued an arrest warrant for him early this year after the Kerch Bridge, which connects the Crimea region to Russia, was attacked.
Marianna Budanova, the wife of Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, has been poisoned and is recovering in a hospital, Ukrainian intelligence officials said. Her husband has long accused Russia of trying to kill him.https://t.co/xy9fOaU8VX
— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 28, 2023
Yusov has said in the past that Kyrylo Budanov has been the target of 10 assassination attempts at least.
Because of these threats, Budanov is living at his office at GUR headquarters along with his wife. She has also been involved in politics in politics in the past, serving at one point as an adviser to Vitali Klitschko, who is the mayor of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
Russian military officials have long been suspected of carrying out poison attacks against critics of their country, both in Russia as well as abroad. These poisoning reports, therefore, aren’t out of the norm for them.
Perhaps the most prominent recent example is the poisoning of Alexey Navalny, one of the most vocal leaders of the opposition in Russia.
In August 2020, he fell seriously ill while flying to Moscow. He was taken to a hospital when the flight landed and then was flown to a Berlin hospital two days later for his recovery.
A month after the incident, it was found that Navalny had been poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent called Novichok, which was developed under the reign of the former Soviet Union.
Russia has previously been linked to other poisoning attempts using Novichok against Serge Skripal in 2018. The attack happened where Skripal was living at the time — the United Kingdom. It resulted in him being hospitalized along with his daughter Yulia, as well as another British officer.
A fourth person who was affected by the incident, a citizen of Britain, later died as a result of the poisoning.
