KYIV — Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov’s glowering face is barely visible in the half-light of his office. He likes to work in the dark, as befits the chief of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, the GUR. Behind him in the gray gloom, you can see a painting of a giant owl, the symbol of his service, savagely devouring a bat that is the motif of its Russian counterpart.

Budanov is the dark prince of the Ukraine war. His drop-dead stare has become an icon for Ukrainians — a symbol of bravery and defiance in this third year of conflict with Russia. Ukraine’s NV news outlet calls him the man “without a smile.” A meme that circulates on the internet shows nine identical pictures of his scowling face, labeled “happy,” “angry,” “troubled,” “excited” and so on.

War always has an element of theater, and Budanov might be this conflict’s most colorful character. He’s just 38, and he’s famously courageous in battle. He fought behind Russian lines between 2014 and 2016 in Donbas and was injured three times, including taking shrapnel in his heart, neck and back. In 2016, he led a raid that killed a lieutenant general from Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB.

Budanov’s celebrity in Ukraine stems partly from the fact that he was the only senior leader to warn unequivocally that the Russians were coming before they invaded on Feb. 24, 2022. He led his special forces at Hostomel airport in the early days of the war to help repel a Russian landing there that nearly led to the capture of Kyiv.