Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, Chief of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, spoke about the role and development of the intelligence service during the full-scale russia's invasion in an exclusive interview with The Telegraph.

“We have significantly increased our staff since the beginning of the war, primarily combat, and operational combat units, as well as technical intelligence and cyber intelligence. We significantly strengthened cyber intelligence,” Kyrylo Budanov said.

He added that due to the increase in the volume of information received, the Ukrainian intelligence service has strengthened the analytical direction and introduced new services based on artificial intelligence for technical data processing.

Ukraine also makes extensive use of the capabilities provided by the intelligence agencies of the partner countries.

“For example, information about missile launches from frontiers that we cannot cover with our radio electronic and electronic intelligence is critically important to us. This help is invaluable for us,” the DIU chief stressed.

The chief of Ukraine's military intelligence also spoke about cooperation with guerrilla groups operating in russia.

“We help guerrilla groups, support them, interacts with them, sometimes expresses our requests or sets certain tasks. But this is not such a massive phenomenon as it sometimes seems,” Kyrylo Budanov explained.

Agents also play a serious role in the process of confrontation with terrorist russia: during the war, they are assigned the task not only to obtain information but also to carry out special active measures.

Thanks to human intelligence, Ukraine was able to obtain data in advance about the russian attack on February 24, 2022.

“If we had relied solely on electronic, radio engineering or cyber intelligence data, we would not have been ready, would not have realized that an invasion was going to take place, and would not have had time to prepare,” Kyrylo Budanov said.

To learn more about the work of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine during the full-scale war, as well as about the intentions of moscow's special services to disrupt the steady supply of weapons to Ukraine from the West, watch the full video of the conversation.