"So That It Never Happens Again": Budanov Lists Ukraine's Goals for Post-War Relations with Russia

The future of Russia, which has attacked Ukraine, and whose army is killing peaceful citizens and destroying civilian and critical infrastructure, is currently uncertain, since no one knows how many elements it will disintegrate into and with whom Ukraine will have to talk about reparations and prosecution of those responsible for crimes, as the Chief of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine Kyrylo Budanov said in a conversation with journalists of the Polish media outlet Wirtualna Polska.

Budanov pointed out that Russian propagandists were already spreading the idea that only "Putin's clique" should be blamed for the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, and that ordinary Russians were "not to blame." However, more than two-thirds of Russians supported Putin's actions against Ukraine.

"This will be a very difficult process. Interestingly, the Russian information space, primarily on the Internet, as well as among some of the opposition, is now beginning to promote the idea that only the "Putin clique" should be blamed for this invasion, and society has nothing to do with it. And we are also at war with a country where more than two-thirds of the population supported Putin's actions!", Budanov said, answering a question about future relations between Ukraine and the aggressor Russian Federation.

The Defence Intelligence Chief emphasized that Ukraine should actively integrate into Euro-Atlantic and European structures.

"Our task, the task of Ukraine, is to systematically weaken the Russian Federation at the state level. In order to do this, we have to actively integrate into Euro-Atlantic and European political, economic, security, legal, humanitarian and educational structures, and forget about our post-Soviet period as a bad dream. After all, we must have some form of control over the new post-war Russian Federation, so that what happened to Ukraine never happens again," Budanov added.

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