The head of the Ukrainian SSR, Kyrylo Budanov, said that the threat of a renewed invasion of the Russian Federation from Ukraine's northern border with Belarus "is not inevitable", but it cannot be ruled out. He reported this to The New York Times.
"It would be wrong to discount this possibility, but it would also be wrong to say that we have any data that would confirm its existence," the intelligence chief said.
He said that now the Russian troops are not lined up in assault formations, and their training camps are filled with newly created mobilized civilians who, after training, are sent to fight in the Donbas.
In addition, there is a lack of serviceable armored vehicles for an attack on Russian training grounds, Budanov said.
Also, he does not consider the artillery shelling of the Sumy and Kharkiv regions, as a result of which dozens of people were killed and injured, to be a sign of the threat of a repeated attack by the Russian Federation.
According to Budanov, Russian military units "cannot be formed in one day" for an attack.
At the same time, the head of intelligence said that the Russian Federation is trying to convince Ukraine to transfer soldiers from the combat zone in the southeast of the country "with the help of a flurry of military operations" to the north to the border with Belarus. According to him, this activity is "common maneuvers or feints designed to confuse".
"All these are elements of disinformation campaigns," Budanov said.
