“CIA and Western special ops commandos are in Ukraine, directing proxy war on Russia”, “(The CIA and special operations forces from Britain, France, and Canada are physically in Ukraine, helping direct the proxy war on Russia, overseeing weapons, training, and intelligence. Some Ukrainian fighters have US flag patches)”, Jun 28, 2022, Ben Norton, Multipolarista, at < https://multipolarista.com/
“CIA and Western special ops commandos are in Ukraine, directing proxy war on Russia: The CIA and special operations forces from Britain, France, and Canada are physically in Ukraine, helping direct the proxy war on Russia, overseeing weapons, training, and intelligence. Some Ukrainian fighters have US flag patches”
If you have trouble formatting the Multipolarista version it was reposted at Popular Resistance as, “CIA AND WESTERN SPECIAL OPS COMMANDOS ARE IN UKRAINE”, Jun 29, 2022, Ben Norton, Popular Resistance, at < https://popularresistance.org/
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“Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say”, “(A secretive operation involving U.S. Special Operations forces hints at the scale of the effort to assist Ukraine’s still outgunned military)”, June 25, 2022, Eric Schmitt, Julian E. Barnes & Helene Cooper, New York Times.
“Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say: A secretive operation involving U.S. Special Operations forces hints at the scale of the effort to assist Ukraine’s still outgunned military”
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“Exclusive: Secret CIA training program in Ukraine helped Kyiv prepare for Russian Invasion”, March 16, 2022, Zach Dorfman, National Security Correspondent, Yahoo News.
Introduction:
Here from the work of the indefatigable Ben Norton is a recent article, “CIA and Western special ops commandos are in Ukraine, directing proxy war on Russia”, with some fine penetrating analysis; and that includes an embedded video in which he discusses the situation in Ukraine. Norton sees through the propaganda and disinformation line promulgated by various Corporate Controlled Media outlets. But he uses those heavily slanted outlets to glean some real information from their pages. These types of sources include the 2nd and 3rd articles posted in this entry to The Class Struggle.
The article that provided the most information to bolster Nortons arguments was from the flagship of U.S. Imperialist Propaganda and Disinformation operation, the august New York Times, that published a report entitled, “Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say”, on June 25th. Here below I have highlighted some of the most important points covered in the New York tImes article, but the whole report is well worth a read.That article provided information such as that the efforts of the Western Finance Capitalist Bloc include that the: “ ... United States and its allies — including a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training, according to U.S. and European officials. .... But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the vast amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials. .... Few other details have emerged about what the C.I.A. personnel or the commandos are doing, but their presence in the country .... hints at the scale of the secretive effort to assist Ukraine that is underway and the risks that Washington and its allies are taking. .... The C.I.A. officers operating in Ukraine have focused on directing the intelligence that the U.S. government has been providing the Ukrainian government. .... While the U.S. government does not acknowledge that the C.I.A. is operating in Ukraine or any other country, the presence of the officers is well understood by Russia and other intelligence services around the world. But the agency’s expertise in training is in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations, former intelligence officials say. What Ukrainians need right now is classic military training in how to use rocket artillery, like the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, and other sophisticated weaponry, .... 'We’re talking about large-scale combat here,' Mr. Wise said (note that that is Douglas H. Wise, a former deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and retired senior C.I.A. Officer, d.m.). 'We’re talking about modern tank-on-tank battles with massive military forces. I can’t imagine the C.I.A. training Ukrainian guys how to fire HIMARS.' The Biden administration has so far sent four of the mobile multiple-launch rocket systems to Ukraine and announced on Thursday that four more were on the way. They are the most advanced weapons the United States has so far supplied Ukraine, with rockets that have a range of up to 40 miles, .... After a meeting in Brussels this month, General Milley and military leaders from nearly 50 countries pledged to increase the flow of advanced artillery and other weaponry to Ukraine. 'That all takes a bit of time, and it takes a significant amount of effort,' General Milley said. American troops need six to eight weeks to learn how to use the systems, but the Ukrainians have a two-week accelerated training program, he said. .... Ukrainians have struggled to evacuate soldiers wounded at the front lines. The United States could step up front-line first-aid training and advise the Ukrainians on how to set up a network of intermediate mobile hospitals to stabilize the wounded and transport them, former officials said. 'They are losing 100 soldiers a day. That is almost like the height of the Vietnam War for us; it is terrible,' a former Trump administration official said. 'And they are losing a lot of experienced people.' Army Green Berets in Germany recently started medical training for Ukrainian troops, .... From 2015 to early this year, American Special Forces and National Guard instructors trained more than 27,000 Ukrainian soldiers at the Yavoriv Combat Training Center in western Ukraine near the city of Lviv, .... Military advisers from about a dozen allied countries also trained thousands of Ukrainian military personnel in Ukraine over the past several years. .... The Ukrainian military’s most acute training problem right now is that it is losing its most battle-hardened and well-trained forces, according to former American officials who have worked with the Ukrainians. The former Trump administration official said Special Operations Command had small groups of American operators working in the field with Ukrainian officials before the war. .... Having American trainers on the ground now might not be worth the risks, other former officials said, .... 'Would the enhancement of the training be worth the possible price that is going to have to be paid?' Mr. Wise said. 'An answer is probably not.' ” (Emphases added)
The most important points are that the training and arming efforts have been long-term and are increasing. And that the Ukrainian Army is getting seriously depleted of its most experienced personnel. That leads to the observation that training is hurried and that harsh measures are used to force new men into the ranks of Capitalist cannon fodder in the ongoing struggles in Ukraine.
The other article, from Yahoo News, is entitled “Exclusive: Secret CIA training program in Ukraine helped Kyiv prepare for Russian Invasion” and this article, written in March of 2022, pointed out that: “Ukrainian snipers had a problem: Russian forces in eastern Ukraine were trying to blind them. As the Ukrainians were looking through their scopes in order to find their targets, the Russians had begun pinpointing their location using the glare of the glass, and were shooting high-energy lasers into them, damaging the snipers’ eyesight. .... CIA paramilitaries soon concluded that, in Russia and its proxies, the agency was facing an adversary whose capabilities far outmatched the Islamist groups that CIA had been battling in the post-9/11 wars. 'We learned a lot real quick,' says a former senior intelligence official — including about the Russians’ laser-blinding techniques. 'That s*** wouldn’t happen with the Taliban.' .... At least some of the fierce resistance by Ukrainian forces has its roots in a now shuttered covert CIA training program run from Ukraine’s eastern frontlines, former intelligence officials tell Yahoo News. The initiative was described to Yahoo News by over half a dozen former officials, all of whom requested anonymity to speak freely about sensitive intelligence matters. The program was run under previously existing authorities for the CIA and did not require a new legal determination for the agency, known as a covert action finding, according to a former national security official. .... Yahoo News’ prior report also revealed that CIA paramilitaries had traveled to eastern Ukraine to assist forces loyal to Kyiv in their fight against Russia and its separatist allies. .... Until now, however, the details of the CIA’s paramilitary training program on Ukraine’s eastern frontlines have never been revealed. This initiative, say former agency officials, has helped battle-hardened Ukrainian special operations forces for the current Russian assault, .... When CIA paramilitaries first traveled to eastern Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s initial 2014 incursion, their brief was twofold. First, they were ordered to determine how the agency could best help train Ukrainian special operations personnel fight the Russian military forces, and their separatist allies, waging a grinding war against Ukrainian troops in the Donbas region. But the second part of the mission was to test the mettle of the Ukrainians themselves, according to former officials. The agency needed to determine the “backbone” of the Ukrainians, said a former senior CIA official. The question was, 'Are they going to get rolled, or are going to stand up and fight?' recalled the former official. .... Accompanying the more strategic-minded, veteran paramilitaries sent by the agency were tactical specialists, like snipers, who also worked for the CIA Special Activities Center. But after over a decade focused on the war on terror, the high-tech battlefield environment was a shock to the CIA. Russian soldiers and their proxies were using drones, cell towers and other equipment to triangulate the phones and electronic devices of the Ukrainians and CIA paramilitaries on the frontlines — and then rapidly targeting them with that information, according to former officials. Ukrainians soldiers 'were using mobile phones in a trench,' recalled a former intelligence official. 'People were getting blown to bits.' .... The CIA assembled a special working group to solve the tradecraft challenges that arose from working in eastern Ukraine. The environment was unique, where 'Moscow rules' — that is, the need for extreme operational care, because of the Russians’ counterintelligence capabilities — converged with an active war zone. .... The agency impressed upon the CIA paramilitaries traveling to the front that 'the Ukrainians have very effective special operations,' recalled the former senior intelligence official. The directive was, 'Your job is to make them more effective.' CIA officials believed that “just sending six guys to be six snipers is not really going to be something that’s going to affect the battle space,” recalled this official. 'Our job is to have an exponential impact; it’s not to get our badge for shooting a Russian or something.' .... The discussion (during the Trump Administation in 2017, d.m.) about the agency’s program was part of a broader review at the Trump White House of U.S. support for Kyiv — and what Moscow’s red lines might be, recalled the former official. 'There was a school of thought that the Russians spoke the good old language of proxy war,' and that the CIA’s covert (as well as the military’s acknowledged) training programs and the U.S.'s overt supplying of weapons to Ukraine were therefore within historically acceptable bounds, the former official said. .... The Ukraine-based CIA program operated for years, according to former officials. But as the threat of a large-scale Russian invasion became increasingly acute last month, the Biden administration, still feeling the sting of the Afghanistan withdrawal, pulled all CIA personnel out of the country, including war-zone-hardened agency paramilitaries, according to a former intelligence official in close touch with colleagues in U.S. government. The administration was 'terrified of even clandestine folks being on the frontline,' says the former official.” (Emphases added)
Zach Dorfman, credited as being the National Security Correspondent from Yahoo News, has revealed some significant information, including the long-term and pervasive CIA presence in Ukraine. His articles continue to ignore, or at least not bother to discuss the fascist Coup that took place in Kiev over the late 2013 and early 2014 period. He studiously mentions only the Russian incursions and actions in the Crimea and the Donbass, but he (no doubt with official approval and permission) does report on a significant amount of activities by the CIA in Ukraine over the last 8 years.
In addition to the three articles noted in this post it is also worthwhile to read “CIA has trained Ukrainians to kill Russian-speakers since 2014 US-backed coup”, Mar 18, 2022, Ben Norton, Multipolarista, at < https://multipolarista.com/
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CIA AND WESTERN SPECIAL OPS COMMANDOS ARE IN UKRAINE
- By Ben Norton, Multipolarista.
- June 29, 2022
- Resistance Report
Above Photo: Ukrainian soldiers firing artillery.
Directing Proxy War On Russia.
The CIA and special operations forces from Britain, France, and Canada are physically in Ukraine, helping direct the proxy war on Russia, overseeing weapons, training, and intelligence. Some Ukrainian fighters have US flag patches.
The CIA and special operations forces from NATO members Britain, France, Canada, and Lithuania are physically in Ukraine, helping direct the proxy war on Russia, according to a report in The New York Times.
These Western forces are on the ground training and advising Ukrainian fighters, overseeing weapons shipments, and managing intelligence.
At least 20 countries are part of a US Army-led coalition, guiding Ukraine in its fight against Russian troops.
Some Ukrainian combatants are even using US flag patches on their equipment.
This is all according to a June 25 report in The New York Times, titled “Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say.”
The Times is a de facto organ of the US government. Although technically private, the paper closely follows the line of the CIA and Pentagon. Its report is based on statements by top US officials.
This is the strongest evidence yet that the conflict in Ukraine is not just a battle between neighbors, but rather a Western proxy war on Russia, with the direct involvement of NATO forces from several nations.
The Times acknowledged that Ukraine “depends more than ever on help from the United States and its allies — including a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training.”
The chief of US Army Special Operations Command, Lieutenant General Jonathan P. Braga, boasted of an “international partnership with the special operations forces of a multitude of different countries” that “have absolutely banded together in a much outsized impact” to help wage the proxy war on Russia.
The Times noted that, “even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the vast amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces.”
The US Army has a “coalition planning cell in Germany to coordinate military assistance to Ukrainian commandos and other Ukrainian troops,” the newspaper reported.
At least 20 countries are part of this US-led cell providing military assistance to Ukraine, “which was modeled after a structure used in Afghanistan,” the newspaper added.
And the 20-nation coalition “is part of a broader set of operational and intelligence coordination cells run by the Pentagon’s European Command to speed allied assistance to Ukrainian troops.”
In a battle in the eastern Donbas region, “a group of Ukrainian special operations forces had American flag patches on their gear and were equipped with new portable surface-to-air missiles as well as Belgian and American assault rifles,” the Times noted.
This is one of many reports proving CIA support for anti-Russian forces in Ukraine.
Ever since the United States sponsored a violent coup d’etat that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected government in 2014, CIA agents have been active in the country, training fighters to kill Russian-speaking independence supporters in the east.
Yahoo News published an investigation in March, titled “Secret CIA training program in Ukraine helped Kyiv prepare for Russian invasion,” which revealed that “CIA paramilitaries” began traveling to Ukraine in 2014, and a “covert CIA training program run from Ukraine’s eastern frontlines” was teaching Ukrainians “irregular warfare” tactics.
Another report released in Yahoo News in January, a month before Russia invaded Ukraine, admitted that the CIA had since 2015 been “overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel.”
A former CIA official stated openly, before Russia sent its troops in, “The United States is training an insurgency,” in order “to kill Russians.”
Text of New York Times article “Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say”:
WASHINGTON — As Russian troops press ahead with a grinding campaign to seize eastern Ukraine, the nation’s ability to resist the onslaught depends more than ever on help from the United States and its allies — including a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training, according to U.S. and European officials.
Much of this work happens outside Ukraine, at bases in Germany, France and Britain, for example. But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the vast amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials.
At the same time, a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine. The United States withdrew its own 150 military instructors before the war began in February, but commandos from these allies either remained or have gone in and out of the country since then, training and advising Ukrainian troops and providing an on-the-ground conduit for weapons and other aid, three U.S. officials said.
Few other details have emerged about what the C.I.A. personnel or the commandos are doing, but their presence in the country — on top of the diplomatic staff members who returned after Russia gave up its siege of Kyiv — hints at the scale of the secretive effort to assist Ukraine that is underway and the risks that Washington and its allies are taking.
Ukraine remains outgunned, and on Saturday, Russian forces unleashed a barrage of missiles on targets across the country, including in areas in the north and west that have been largely spared in recent weeks. President Biden and allied leaders are expected to discuss additional support for Ukraine at a meeting of the Group of 7 industrialized nations that begins in Germany on Sunday and at a NATO summit in Spain later in the week.
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the Army’s 10th Special Forces Group, which before the war had been training Ukrainian commandos at a base in the country’s west, quietly established a coalition planning cell in Germany to coordinate military assistance to Ukrainian commandos and other Ukrainian troops. The cell has now grown to 20 nations.
Army Secretary Christine E. Wormuth offered a glimpse into the operation last month, saying the special operations cell had helped manage the flow of weapons and equipment in Ukraine. “As the Ukrainians try to move that around and evade the Russians potentially trying to target convoys, you know, we are trying to be able to help coordinate moving all of those different sort of shipments,” she said at a national security event held by the Atlantic Council.
“Another thing I think we can help with,” she said, “is intelligence about where the threats to those convoys may be.”
The cell, which was modeled after a structure used in Afghanistan, is part of a broader set of operational and intelligence coordination cells run by the Pentagon’s European Command to speed allied assistance to Ukrainian troops. At Ramstein Air Base in Germany, for example, a U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard team called Grey Wolf provides support, including on tactics and techniques, to the Ukrainian air force, a military spokesman said.
The commandos are not on the front lines with Ukrainian troops and instead advise from headquarters in other parts of the country or remotely by encrypted communications, according to American and other Western officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. But the signs of their stealthy logistics, training and intelligence support are tangible on the battlefield.
Several lower-level Ukrainian commanders recently expressed appreciation to the United States for intelligence gleaned from satellite imagery, which they can call up on tablet computers provided by the allies. The tablets run a battlefield mapping app that the Ukrainians use to target and attack Russian troops.
On a street in Bakhmut, a town in the hotly contested Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, a group of Ukrainian special operations forces had American flag patches on their gear and were equipped with new portable surface-to-air missiles as well as Belgian and American assault rifles.
“What is an untold story is the international partnership with the special operations forces of a multitude of different countries,” Lt. Gen. Jonathan P. Braga, the commander of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, told senators in April in describing the planning cell. “They have absolutely banded together in a much outsized impact” to support Ukraine’s military and special forces.
Representative Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat on the House Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, said in an interview that the relationships Ukrainian commandos developed with American and other counterparts over the past several years had proved invaluable in the fight against Russia.
“It’s been critical knowing who to deal with during chaotic battlefield situations, and who to get weapons to,” said Mr. Crow, a former Army Ranger. “Without those relationships, this would have taken much longer.”
The C.I.A. officers operating in Ukraine have focused on directing the intelligence that the U.S. government has been providing the Ukrainian government. Most of their work has been in Kyiv, according to current and former officials.
While the U.S. government does not acknowledge that the C.I.A. is operating in Ukraine or any other country, the presence of the officers is well understood by Russia and other intelligence services around the world.
But the agency’s expertise in training is in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations, former intelligence officials say. What Ukrainians need right now is classic military training in how to use rocket artillery, like the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, and other sophisticated weaponry, said Douglas H. Wise, a former deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and retired senior C.I.A. officer.
“We’re talking about large-scale combat here,” Mr. Wise said. “We’re talking about modern tank-on-tank battles with massive military forces. I can’t imagine the C.I.A. training Ukrainian guys how to fire HIMARS.”
The Biden administration has so far sent four of the mobile multiple-launch rocket systems to Ukraine and announced on Thursday that four more were on the way. They are the most advanced weapons the United States has so far supplied Ukraine, with rockets that have a range of up to 40 miles, greater than anything Ukraine has now.
Pentagon officials say a first group of 60 Ukrainian soldiers have been trained on how to use the systems and a second group is now undergoing training in Germany.
Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the training had begun in a “rational and deliberate” manner, as Ukrainians who have historically used Soviet-era systems learn the mechanics of the more high-tech American weapons.
“It’s no good to just throw those systems into the battlefield,” General Milley told reporters traveling with him on a recent flight back to the United States after meetings with European military chiefs in France.
After a meeting in Brussels this month, General Milley and military leaders from nearly 50 countries pledged to increase the flow of advanced artillery and other weaponry to Ukraine.
“That all takes a bit of time, and it takes a significant amount of effort,” General Milley said. American troops need six to eight weeks to learn how to use the systems, but the Ukrainians have a two-week accelerated training program, he said.
Still, former military officials who have been working with the Ukrainian military have expressed frustration with some of the training efforts.
For instance, Ukrainians have struggled to evacuate soldiers wounded at the front lines. The United States could step up front-line first-aid training and advise the Ukrainians on how to set up a network of intermediate mobile hospitals to stabilize the wounded and transport them, former officials said.
“They are losing 100 soldiers a day. That is almost like the height of the Vietnam War for us; it is terrible,” a former Trump administration official said. “And they are losing a lot of experienced people.”
Army Green Berets in Germany recently started medical training for Ukrainian troops, who were brought out of the country for the instruction, a U.S. military official said.
From 2015 to early this year, American Special Forces and National Guard instructors trained more than 27,000 Ukrainian soldiers at the Yavoriv Combat Training Center in western Ukraine near the city of Lviv, Pentagon officials said.
Military advisers from about a dozen allied countries also trained thousands of Ukrainian military personnel in Ukraine over the past several years.
Since 2014, when Russia first invaded parts of the country, Ukraine has expanded its small special forces from a single unit to three brigades and a training regiment. In the past 18 months it has added a home guard company — trained in resistance tactics — to each of those brigades, Gen. Richard D. Clarke, the head of the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command, told the Senate in April.
The Ukrainian military’s most acute training problem right now is that it is losing its most battle-hardened and well-trained forces, according to former American officials who have worked with the Ukrainians.
The former Trump administration official said Special Operations Command had small groups of American operators working in the field with Ukrainian officials before the war. The American teams were sometimes called Jedburgh, a reference to a World War II effort to train partisans behind enemy lines, the official said.
The modern special operations teams mainly focused on training in small-unit tactics but also worked on communications, battlefield medicine, reconnaissance and other skills requested by Ukrainian forces. Those efforts, the official said, ended before the Russian invasion but would have been helpful if they had continued during the war.
Having American trainers on the ground now might not be worth the risks, other former officials said, especially if it prompted an escalation by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
“Would the enhancement of the training be worth the possible price that is going to have to be paid?” Mr. Wise said. “An answer is probably not.”
Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Ukraine.
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Text for Yahoo News article, “Exclusive: Secret CIA training program in Ukraine helped Kyiv prepare for Russian Invasion”
Exclusive: Secret CIA training program in Ukraine helped Kyiv prepare for Russian Invasion,
March 16, 2022, Zach Dorfman, National Security Correspondent, Yahoo News
Ukrainian snipers had a problem: Russian forces in eastern Ukraine were trying to blind them.
As the Ukrainians were looking through their scopes in order to find their targets, the Russians had begun pinpointing their location using the glare of the glass, and were shooting high-energy lasers into them, damaging the snipers’ eyesight.
The two sides were squaring off in close proximity. In early 2014, Russia had already invaded and annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula. Shortly thereafter, pro-Russia insurgents in the eastern Donbas region began a grinding secessionist war against Kyiv.
Russian troops soon entered the fray. So, quietly, did the CIA.
As the battle lines hardened in Donbas, a small, select group of veteran CIA paramilitaries made their first secret trips to the frontlines to meet with Ukrainian counterparts there, according to former U.S. officials.
CIA paramilitaries soon concluded that, in Russia and its proxies, the agency was facing an adversary whose capabilities far outmatched the Islamist groups that CIA had been battling in the post-9/11 wars. “We learned a lot real quick,” says a former senior intelligence official — including about the Russians’ laser-blinding techniques. “That s*** wouldn’t happen with the Taliban.”
Since Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine last month — which transformed a long-simmering, attritional conflict into an explosive, all-out war — the Ukrainian military has defied predictions of a rapid collapse, holding key cities against the Russian advance and inflicting punishing losses to Russian troops and materiel.
The Ukrainian military has claimed to have killed three Russian generals, including at least one reportedly eliminated by sniper fire. (Yahoo News could not independently verify whether the Russian commanders were killed by CIA-trained troops.)
At least some of the fierce resistance by Ukrainian forces has its roots in a now shuttered covert CIA training program run from Ukraine’s eastern frontlines, former intelligence officials tell Yahoo News. The initiative was described to Yahoo News by over half a dozen former officials, all of whom requested anonymity to speak freely about sensitive intelligence matters.
The program was run under previously existing authorities for the CIA and did not require a new legal determination for the agency, known as a covert action finding, according to a former national security official.
After Russia’s 2014 incursion, the U.S. military also helped run a long-standing, publicly acknowledged training program for Ukrainian troops in the country’s western region, far from the frontlines. That program also included instruction in how to use Javelin anti-tank missiles and sniper training.
Yahoo News reported in January on the CIA’s secret U.S.-based training initiative for Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel. That program, which began in 2015, also included instruction in firearms, camouflage techniques and covert communications. Yahoo News’ prior report also revealed that CIA paramilitaries had traveled to eastern Ukraine to assist forces loyal to Kyiv in their fight against Russia and its separatist allies.
U.S. officials previously denied to Yahoo News that the CIA training programs were ever offensively oriented. “The purpose of the training, and the training that was delivered, was to assist in the collection of intelligence,” said a senior intelligence official.
Until now, however, the details of the CIA’s paramilitary training program on Ukraine’s eastern frontlines have never been revealed. This initiative, say former agency officials, has helped battle-hardened Ukrainian special operations forces for the current Russian assault, which has plunged Europe into its worst conflict in decades. (The CIA declined to comment. The National Security Council referred queries to the CIA. The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not return a request for comment.)
***
When CIA paramilitaries first traveled to eastern Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s initial 2014 incursion, their brief was twofold. First, they were ordered to determine how the agency could best help train Ukrainian special operations personnel fight the Russian military forces, and their separatist allies, waging a grinding war against Ukrainian troops in the Donbas region.
But the second part of the mission was to test the mettle of the Ukrainians themselves, according to former officials. The agency needed to determine the “backbone” of the Ukrainians, said a former senior CIA official. The question was, “Are they going to get rolled, or are going to stand up and fight?” recalled the former official.
The Ukrainians, the CIA paramilitaries reported back to their superiors, were indeed ready for battle.
The CIA operatives taught their Ukrainian counterparts the best skills for irregular warfare, said the former senior intelligence official. “We tried to really focus on operational planning, then really hard military skills like long-range marksmanship — not just the capacity to do it, but to know how to do it on a battlefield, to really deplete the leadership on the other side,” said the former senior intelligence official.
Ukrainian servicemen take part in military exercises near Lviv with U.S. and other NATO soldiers, Sept. 24, 2021. (Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP via Getty Images)
Because of the sensitivities of the mission, the agency chose to send experienced, mature operatives, recalled former officials. The thinking was, “one miscalculation, one overzealous paramilitary guy, and we’ve got ourselves a problem,” said the former official. “Everything we did in Ukraine had a chance to be misinterpreted, and escalate the tensions.” Accompanying the more strategic-minded, veteran paramilitaries sent by the agency were tactical specialists, like snipers, who also worked for the CIA Special Activities Center.
But after over a decade focused on the war on terror, the high-tech battlefield environment was a shock to the CIA. Russian soldiers and their proxies were using drones, cell towers and other equipment to triangulate the phones and electronic devices of the Ukrainians and CIA paramilitaries on the frontlines — and then rapidly targeting them with that information, according to former officials.
Ukrainians soldiers “were using mobile phones in a trench,” recalled a former intelligence official. “People were getting blown to bits.”
It was “almost like SkyNet in a ‘Terminator’ movie — that’s what the eastern edge of Ukraine started looking like,” says the former senior CIA official, referring to the malevolent, self-aware, weaponized artificial intelligence system in the Arnold Schwarzenegger films. The Russians’ operations on the frontlines would evolve rapidly in response to the Ukrainians’ and the CIA’s own there, according to former officials.
CIA paramilitaries needed to make quick adjustments, recalled former officials. Agency officials were forced to develop new modes of secure communications systems so paramilitaries could “communicate and then move before you get the direction finding from the Russians” and “they start[ed] rocketing the crap out of you,” recalled the former senior official.
The CIA assembled a special working group to solve the tradecraft challenges that arose from working in eastern Ukraine. The environment was unique, where “Moscow rules” — that is, the need for extreme operational care, because of the Russians’ counterintelligence capabilities — converged with an active war zone.
Civilians participate in a beginners combat and survival training course run by instructors from the Ukraine Territorial Defense units in Kyiv. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
“We were caught with our pants down,” says the former senior CIA official. But the agency soon developed new tools to ensure that agency paramilitaries could transmit information to each other securely on the frontlines, as well as to Washington, without tipping off the Russians. Agency paramilitaries also shared some of these techniques with their Ukrainian counterparts.
And the rules of the agency’s engagement on the Ukrainian frontlines was clear: Advise and train, but do not take part in combat yourself, recalled former officials.
The agency impressed upon the CIA paramilitaries traveling to the front that “the Ukrainians have very effective special operations,” recalled the former senior intelligence official. The directive was, “Your job is to make them more effective.”
CIA officials believed that “just sending six guys to be six snipers is not really going to be something that’s going to affect the battle space,” recalled this official. “Our job is to have an exponential impact; it’s not to get our badge for shooting a Russian or something.”
Still, shortly after Donald Trump took office in 2017, National Security Council officials were concerned that, though the CIA paramilitaries in Ukraine were prohibited from engaging in combat, the parameters of their mission, which had begun under the Obama administration, were ambiguous. “We worried that the authorities might be too far-ranging,” said a former national security official.
One big question was, “How far can you go with existing covert action authorities?” recalled the former official. “If, God forbid, they’ve shot some Russians, is that a problem? Do you need special authorities for that?” White House officials also worried about what might happen if CIA operatives were captured by pro-Russian forces on what was supposed to be a secret mission, recalled the former official.
The discussion about the agency’s program was part of a broader review at the Trump White House of U.S. support for Kyiv — and what Moscow’s red lines might be, recalled the former official. “There was a school of thought that the Russians spoke the good old language of proxy war,” and that the CIA’s covert (as well as the military’s acknowledged) training programs and the U.S.'s overt supplying of weapons to Ukraine were therefore within historically acceptable bounds, the former official said.
CIA leadership and White House officials both understood — but still fretted over — the risks. “I don’t know how we didn’t get anybody injured, to be honest,” says the former senior intelligence official. But the covert nature of the mission ensured deniability. U.S. officials “wouldn’t want to say, We just had a CIA officer killed by a Russian” in Ukraine, recalled the former official. “That would put the president or the White House in a very bad position.”
The Ukraine-based CIA program operated for years, according to former officials. But as the threat of a large-scale Russian invasion became increasingly acute last month, the Biden administration, still feeling the sting of the Afghanistan withdrawal, pulled all CIA personnel out of the country, including war-zone-hardened agency paramilitaries, according to a former intelligence official in close touch with colleagues in U.S. government.
The administration was “terrified of even clandestine folks being on the frontline,” says the former official.
But even if the CIA’s cadre of paramilitary trainers are no longer in Ukraine, the effect of the agency’s training programs — both in the U.S. and on Ukraine’s eastern front — “cannot be overestimated,” said the former senior CIA official. These elite units trained by the agency have created “a strong nucleus” for Ukraine’s larger military forces today, according to this official.
In addition to the hard skills these operatives are bringing to the fight with Russian troops, some of the benefits are more intangible, according to former officials. The CIA-trained special operations units set an example by “getting some small wins” and by “providing some success stories” for the larger Ukrainian military, says the former senior official.
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