Russia definitely knew about the preparation of the terrorist attack at least since February 15, - Kyrylo Budanov
The head of the GUR of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, during a conversation at the Third International Forum on Strategic Communications, stated that Russia knew in advance about the preparation of a terrorist operation on its territory.
"At least, on February 15, 2024, the Russian Federation knew about the preparations. I will tell you more, this information passed through the intelligence of the group in Syria. From there she went to Moscow. And let them not tell fairy tales that this all materialized in a strange way out of nowhere," said Kyrylo Budanov.
According to him, Russia knew where the combat groups would come from, through which two countries they moved to the territory of the aggressor state.
"There are several options for why they allowed this to happen. The first is, as is their custom, a battle of "towers" to remove several high-ranking officials now. Another option is that they actually underestimated the scale of what would happen. They thought that it would be more local, and they wanted to blame Ukraine for everything," said the head of the Department of Internal Affairs and Communications of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
️ He noted that the Kremlin has already changed three versions of what happened in "Crocus City" near Moscow, trying to at least somehow link the so-called "Ukrainian trail" to the terrorist attack.
"The explanations of Patrushev and Bortnikov appeared, who accused me personally and that Ukraine did all this in general. This is nonsense. By the way, if we touched on this painful issue, even though it is an enemy, I do not approve of terrorist acts against civilians in principle," said Kyrylo Budanov.
The chief of Ukrainian intelligence added that Russia itself sowed chaos and self-confidently believed that it could control it.
"There is such a stable expression, even the truth. It always functions in the environment of special services: everyone tries to create controlled chaos. Absolutely all more or less serious organizations have tried to do this at different times. And the axiom is that none of them could make it controllable. The same thing happened here," concluded the head of the Department of Internal Affairs and Communications of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.