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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday named military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov as the new head of the Office of the President, following the resignation of his previous top aide amid a corruption scandal.
Budanov, 39, has led Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence service and is widely credited inside the country with overseeing a series of high-profile operations against Russia since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.
“I had a meeting with Kyrylo Budanov and offered him the role of the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine,” Zelenskyy said in a statement on social media.
The nomination comes at a critical stage of the nearly four-year war. Zelenskyy said Wednesday that a U.S.-brokered deal to end the conflict was “90 percent” ready.
“At this time, Ukraine needs greater focus on security issues, the development of the Defense and Security Forces of Ukraine, as well as on the diplomatic track of negotiations,” Zelenskyy said. “Kyrylo has specialized experience in these areas and sufficient strength to deliver results.”
Budanov said he accepted the nomination and would “continue to serve Ukraine.”
“It is an honor and a responsibility for me to focus on critically important issues of strategic security for our state at this historic time for Ukraine,” he said in a message posted on Telegram.
Zelenskyy’s adviser Dmytro Lytvyn told journalists that procedures to formally appoint Budanov as head of the presidential office had been launched. Zelenskyy also said Budanov will be replaced as intelligence chief by Oleg Ivashchenko, the current head of Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service.
Budanov will succeed Andriy Yermak, who resigned in November after investigators raided his home as part of a sweeping corruption probe. Yermak had been Zelenskyy’s closest ally but was a divisive figure in Kyiv, with critics accusing him of concentrating power, controlling access to the president and sidelining dissenting voices.
The war, the deadliest in Europe since World War II, has killed tens of thousands of people and devastated large parts of Ukraine.
Budanov, a secretive figure sometimes described in Ukrainian media as “the man without a smile,” rose from relative obscurity to become one of the country’s most recognizable security officials.
Originally from Kyiv, he studied at a military academy in Odesa before being deployed in 2014 to fight Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. He was largely unknown to the public when he was appointed head of the GUR in August 2020.
One of the few confirmed details of his early career is his participation in a 2016 commando raid in Russian-annexed Crimea in which Russian agents were killed. Budanov has said little publicly about his service, other than acknowledging he was injured three times, including once by shrapnel near his heart. A gunshot wound to his elbow has left him with visible stiffness in his right arm.
A GUR spokesman has said Budanov has survived more than 10 assassination attempts. In 2019, his car exploded in Kyiv in an attack attributed at the time to Russian security services. He became one of Ukraine’s youngest generals at age 35.
Months before Russia launched its invasion in February 2022, Budanov publicly warned of a large-scale attack, at a time when many Western officials were skeptical of Moscow’s intentions. Supporters describe him as a master of asymmetric warfare, though some predictions, including that Ukrainian troops would enter Crimea in 2023, did not materialize.
Budanov has claimed responsibility for several operations deep inside Russia, including a drone strike on an oil refinery in Saint Petersburg in January 2024. He is also linked by Ukrainian officials to the 2022 explosion on the Crimean Bridge.
The operations have made him popular among Ukrainians. At an international conference in Kyiv in September 2023, he received a standing ovation before speaking, and in 2024 Zelenskyy awarded him the title “Hero of Ukraine.”
In Russia, however, Budanov is considered a top target. Moscow has repeatedly claimed to have killed him, including after strikes on Ukraine’s military intelligence headquarters in 2023. His wife survived a poisoning that year, according to the GUR.
Despite the threats, Budanov has remained defiant. On Feb. 1, 2024, he warned that attacks on Russian infrastructure would likely increase. Hours later, his agency said it had sunk a Russian warship in Crimea.
Now set to assume one of the most powerful roles in Ukraine’s government, Budanov will have direct access to Zelenskyy and a central role in shaping security and diplomatic policy as the war enters a potentially decisive phase.
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