Reuters reports:

The wife of Ukraine’s military spy chief has been poisoned with heavy metals and is undergoing treatment in a hospital, a spokesperson for the agency said on Tuesday.

Marianna Budanova is the wife of Kyrylo Budanov, who heads Ukrainian military intelligence agency GUR, which has been prominently involved in clandestine operations against Russian forces since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

“Yes, I can confirm the information, unfortunately, it is true,” GUR spokesperson Andriy Yusov told Reuters, without clarifying when the poisoning took place.

The BBC’s Ukrainian service cited Yusov as saying that several GUR officials had also experienced milder symptoms of poisoning.

Budanov’s public profile has risen in Ukraine and the West, where he is portrayed as a behind-the-scenes mastermind of operations to strike back at Russia. In Russian media he is a hate figure.

The 37-year-old has himself been the target of several attempts on his life, including a botched car bombing. [Continue reading…]