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Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, Chief of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, speaking at the Third International Strategic Communications Forum, stated that russia was aware well in advance about the preparation of a terrorist attack on its territory.

"At least, since February 15, 2024, russia has been aware about the plot. I will tell you more, this information passed through the intelligence department of grouping in Syria. From there it was forwarded to moscow. So they shouldn't be telling 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 and via which two countries they would move to the territory of the aggressor state.

"Why did they allow this to happen? There are several options. The first is, as is customary among them, a infighting between ‘kremlin towers’ to remove several high-ranking officials now. Another option is that they actually underestimated the scale of what would happen. They thought that the incident would be more local, and wanted to blame Ukraine for everything," said the Chief of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine.

He noted that the kremlin has already changed versions of what happened at the Crocus City Hall near moscow three times, trying to at least somehow create the so-called "Ukrainian trace" to the terrorist attack.

"patrushev and bortnikov's explanations emerged as both accused me personally, and Ukraine in general, of doing this all. 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 attacks against civilians in principle," Kyrylo Budanov noted.

The head of Ukrainian military intelligence added that russia itself sowed chaos and self-confidently believed that it could control it.

"There is such a stable expression, I’d say, truth. It always circulates in intelligence circles: 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 controlled. The same thing happened here," the DIU chief concluded.