A new report by the NYT has further confirmed the explosive report published on Yahoo News that a massive network of CIA spies is still active in Ukraine.
The CIA is still quite active in Ukraine, according to a recent New York Times report, especially when it comes to training and weaponry coordination among its Ukrainian allies. According to US and European intelligence officials aware with the operations, the Times report describes “a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence, and training.” According to the report, while being outgunned by the Russians, Ukrainian forces are “more than ever” reliant on this Western clandestine network.
This comes months after Zach Dorfman’s explosive report in Yahoo News revealed how an earlier, 8-year-old CIA covert program to train Ukrainian fighters helped in triggering off the Russian invasion. After that March report, the sole lingering concern was the CIA’s level of involvement in the ongoing conflict with the Russian invaders.
Given that the CIA’s close cooperation with the Ukrainians is taking place both inside and outside of the nation, in numerous locations, the latest Times story shows that the US program is not only active and ongoing but also appears larger in scale than previously assumed.
“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,” the report indicates.
The CIA’s work in Ukraine appears to be largely focused on coordinating intelligence with local counterparts and intel organizations. In addition to the diplomatic staff members who returned after Russia ended its siege of Kyiv, “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 NY Times continues.
There have allegedly been reports of Canadian special operations forces infiltrating Ukraine over the weekend. Although this has been known for months, a separate NYT report provides additional confirmation. “Both CTV and Global News reported in late January that Canadian special forces had been sent to Ukraine, but National Defence did not comment on that deployment,” the Ottawa Citizen reports on Sunday. Yahoo News revealed the following in January, more than two months before the invasion:
The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel, according to five former intelligence and national security officials familiar with the initiative. The program, which started in 2015, is based at an undisclosed facility in the Southern U.S., according to some of those officials.
The CIA-trained forces could soon play a critical role on Ukraine’s eastern border, where Russian troops have massed in what many fear is preparation for an invasion. The U.S. and Russia started security talks earlier this week in Geneva but have failed thus far to reach any concrete agreement.
While the covert program, run by paramilitaries working for the CIA’s Ground Branch — now officially known as Ground Department — was established by the Obama administration after Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, and expanded under the Trump administration, the Biden administration has further augmented it, said a former senior intelligence official in touch with colleagues in government.
These findings appear to validate those arguments that NATO and Russia are, in fact, waging a proxy war within Ukraine. Biden administration officials have previously attempted to downplay and dismiss this accusation.
Further describing the global context of Ukraine’s on-the-ground aid, the NY Times said “At the same time, a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine.”
However, the report adds that “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.”
This definitely suggests the scenario that many people have long suspected: that CIA operations that had been ongoing in Ukraine for eight years did not wind down or end upon the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, but rather increased and were ramped up. The same applies, of course, to the Pentagon’s special operations presence within the nation and along its Western frontiers, particularly in Poland.
The Kremlin underscored angrily on Sunday that Washington has refused to provide straightforward answers regarding Western operatives and mercenaries inside Ukraine, even as such covert programs are made public through deliberate “leaks” to the media – also after a few American fighters were recently captured.
Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry, stated on Sunday:
“As [Russian Ambassador to London Andrey] Kelin said, they [Western countries] are writing some provocative, boorish things. They don’t want to answer the question we ask about their activities.”
“They are sparing no effort so that the conflict in Ukraine continued as long as possible,” she claimed, accusing the West of merely wanting to prolong the conflict. “We remember what US 43rd President George Bush Jr said: Ukraine’s mission is to kill as many Russians as possible…. They have endowed Ukraine and the Kiev regime with this duty.”
“They are using (Ukraine – TASS) as an instrument and the entire logistics are centered round that – weapons supplies, sending people, anything to keep the conflict burning, as [UK Prime Minister] Boris Johnson told [French President Emmanuel] Macron today, to prevent the settlement of this situation. Otherwise, their plan will fail,” Zakharova said according to TASS.