Kherson is the most significant city that Russian forces captured during their initial invasion of Ukraine. Capturing it will allow Ukrainian forces to advance onto Crimea, which the Kremlin annexed in 2014.
Budanov also said the Russian forces were looting Kherson and using a supposed humanitarian evacuation as cover.
“Cash is being taken out as well as servers,” he said. “They are trying to discharge those who can walk as soon as possible from hospitals.”
Budanov’s comments on the battle for Kherson came as the Russian ministry of defence presented what it said was more evidence of a “dirty bomb” being planned by Ukraine and its Western allies. These accusations have been rejected as absurd and designed to set up a so-called “false flag” attack.
In his newspaper interview, Budanov downplayed the threat of Russia firing a nuclear missile at Ukraine.
“It is always real since our neighbour is a little sick and has nuclear weapons,” he said. “But the threat is the same as it was three months ago, and eight months ago, and two years before.”
Last week Russia attacked Kyiv with a swarm of drones, killing five civilians and spreading fear.
The Kremlin has signed a deal with Iran to buy a constant supply of cheap drones to attack Ukraine because it is running low on missiles, Budanov said.
He estimated that Russia had depleted its supply of Iskander missiles down to around 13 per cent of its pre-war stocks.
“They order them all the time,” he said. “But our air defence is basically coping with 70 per cent shot down.”
Budanov also confirmed that Russian forces had mined a dam 35 miles upstream of Kherson city.
“It is partially mined, that’s true,” he said. “Blowing up this dam will definitely cause an environmental disaster.”
And he said that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine had not only weakened the Russian security forces but damaged political cohesion inside the Kremlin. Insiders there are now jockeying to position themselves as a successor to Vladimir Putin.
“Medvedev has no chance,” Budanov said. “Kiriyenko sees himself in the chair.”
Dmitry Medvedev is a former Russian president and deputy head of Russia’s Security Council. Sergei Kiriyenko is deputy head of the Russian Presidential Administration.
Separately, Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, will call for a “new Marshall Plan” to rebuild Ukraine at a meeting of international aid organisations.
Writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, Scholz and Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, wrote: “The issue here is nothing less than creating a new Marshall Plan for the 21st century.”
The original Marshall Plan was set up by the US in 1948 to rebuild Europe after World War II.
