CIA Built “12 Secret Spy Bases” In Ukraine &
Waged Shadow War For Last Decade,
Bombshell NYT Report Confirms
TOPICS:CIAForeign PolicyRussiaTyler DurdenUkraine
FEBRUARY 26, 2024
By Tyler Durden
On Sunday The New York Times published an explosive and very belated full
admission that US intelligence has not only been instrumental in Ukraine wartime
decision-making, but has established and financed high-tech command-and-
control spy centers, and was doing so long prior to the Feb. 24 Russian invasion
of two years ago.
Among the biggest revelations is that the program was established a decade ago
and spans three different American presidents. The Times says the CIA
program to modernize Ukraine’s intelligence services has “transformed” the
former Soviet state and its capabilities into “Washington’s most important
intelligence partners against the Kremlin today.”
This has included the agency having secretly trained and equipped Ukrainian
intelligence officers spanning back to just after the 2014 Maidan coup events, as
well constructing a network of 12 secret bases along the Russian border—work
which began eight years ago. These intelligence bases, from which Russian
commanders’ communications can be swept up and Russian spy satellites
monitored, are being used launch and track cross-border drone and missile
attacks on Russian territory.
This means that with the disclosure of the longtime “closely guarded secret” the
world just got a big step closer to WW3, given it means the CIA is largely
responsible for the effectiveness of the recent spate of attacks which have
included direct drone hits on key oil refineries and energy infrastructure.
“Without them [the CIA and elite commandoes it’s trained], there would have been
no way for us to resist the Russians, or to beat them,” according to Ivan Bakanov,
former head of the SBU, which is Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency.
A main source of the NYT revelations—disclosures which might come as no
surprise to those never willing to so easily swallow the mainstream ‘official’
narrative of events—is identified as a top intelligence commander named Gen.
Serhii Dvoretskiy.
Clearly, Kiev and Washington now want world to know of the deep intelligence
relationship they tried to conceal for over the past decade. It is perhaps a kind of
warning to Moscow at a moment Ukraine’s forces are in retreat: the US is fighting
hand in glove with the Ukrainians. And yet the revelations contained in the NY
Times report also confirm what President Putin has precisely accused
Washington of all along.
While the lengthy NYT report is full of fresh revelations and confirmation of just
how deeply the CIA has always been involved in Ukraine, below are seven of the
biggest contained in the story…
Description of secret spy bunker
The report contains a surprisingly detailed description of one of the ‘secret’
underground command centers established by the CIA near the Russian border…
location undisclosed of course:
Not far away, a discreet passageway descends to a subterranean bunker where
teams of Ukrainian soldiers track Russian spy satellites and eavesdrop on
conversations between Russian commanders. On one screen, a red line followed
the route of an explosive drone threading through Russian air defenses from a
point in central Ukraine to a target in the Russian city of Rostov.
The underground bunker, built to replace the destroyed command center in the
months after Russia’s invasion, is a secret nerve center of Ukraine’s military.
There is also one more secret: The base is almost fully financed, and partly
equipped, by the CIA.
Elite commando force
Within two years after the 2014 West-backed coup in Ukraine, the CIA had set up
a training program for elite Ukrainian operatives:
Around 2016, the CIA began training an elite Ukrainian commando force —
known as Unit 2245 — which captured Russian drones and communications gear
so that CIA technicians could reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s
encryption systems. (One officer in the unit was Kyrylo Budanov, now the general
leading Ukraine’s military intelligence.)
And the CIA also helped train a new generation of Ukrainian spies who operated
inside Russia, across Europe, and in Cuba and other places where the Russians
have a large presence.
Ukraine transformed into an “intelligence-gathering hub”
The US intelligence network in Ukraine (which is tantamount to NATO
intelligence network too) has in reality been more extensive than pretty much all
prior media speculation has envisioned. Ukraine has long been a massive
“intelligence gathering hub” for Washington and its partners:
In more than 200 interviews, current and former officials in Ukraine, the United
States and Europe described a partnership that nearly foundered from mutual
distrust before it steadily expanded, turning Ukraine into an intelligence-gathering
hub that intercepted more Russian communications than the CIA station in Kyiv,
Ukraine, could initially handle. Many of the officials spoke on condition of
anonymity to discuss intelligence and matters of sensitive diplomacy.
Now these intelligence networks are more important than ever, as Russia is on the
offensive and Ukraine is more dependent on sabotage and long-range missile
strikes that require spies far behind enemy lines. And they are increasingly at risk:
If Republicans in Congress end military funding to Kyiv, the CIA may have to
scale back.
Huge NYT admission that Putin was basically right
Below is a hugely ironic excerpt from the Times report. The section begins by
noting that Putin has repeatedly blamed the US-NATO for expanding its military
and intelligence infrastructure into Ukraine. Not only had this precisely been going
on for the past decade, as is now being admitted, but was presented by the Kremlin
as a key cause of the Russian invasion of Feb.24, 2022. Putin and his officials were
adamant on the eve of the invasion that NATO was militarizing Ukraine.
The Times appears to now fully admit that, yes – this was actually the case:
Putin has long blamed Western intelligence agencies for manipulating Kyiv and
sowing anti-Russia sentiment in Ukraine.
Toward the end of 2021, according to a senior European official, Putin was
weighing whether to launch his full-scale invasion when he met with the head of
one of Russia’s main spy services, who told him that the CIA, together with
Britain’s MI6, were controlling Ukraine and turning it into a beachhead for
operations against Moscow.
…U.S. officials were often reluctant to fully engage, fearing that Ukrainian
officials could not be trusted, and worrying about provoking the Kremlin.Yet a
tight circle of Ukrainian intelligence officials assiduously courted the CIA and
gradually made themselves vital to the Americans. In 2015, Gen. Valeriy
Kondratiuk, then Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, arrived at a meeting with
the CIA’s deputy station chief and without warning handed over a stack of top-
secret files.
2014 Coup… and Crimea
The report indirectly references this very critical period which set Ukraine and
Russian on their tragic collision course:
With violence escalating, an unmarked U.S. government plane touched down at an
airport in Kyiv carrying John Brennan, then the director of the CIA. He told
Nalyvaichenko that the CIA was interested in developing a relationship but only at
a pace the agency was comfortable with, according to U.S. and Ukrainian
officials.
To the CIA, the unknown question was how long Nalyvaichenko and the pro-
Western government would be around. The CIA had been burned before in
Ukraine.
…The result was a delicate balancing act. The CIA was supposed to strengthen
Ukraine’s intelligence agencies without provoking the Russians. The red lines
were never precisely clear, which created a persistent tension in the partnership.
Operation Goldfish
Money and advanced tech given by the CIA has allowed the Ukrainians to
establish eavesdropping operations far beyond what they would otherwise be
capable of. All the while, elite commando teams were being trained by the CIA in
European cities as part of a program called ‘Operation Goldfish’. The NYT
reporting includes a bit of a ‘boast’ of the Ukrainians now being able to hack into
Russian military networks:
In the bunker, Dvoretskiy pointed to communications equipment and large
computer servers, some of which were financed by the CIA. He said his teams were
using the base to hack into the Russian military’s secure communications
networks.
“This is the thing that breaks into satellites and decodes secret conversations,”
Dvoretskiy told a Times journalist on a tour, adding that they were hacking into
spy satellites from China and Belarus, too.
…The CIA began sending equipment in 2016, after the pivotal meeting at
Scattergood, Dvoretskiy said, providing encrypted radios and devices for
intercepting secret enemy communications.
A stunning admission: “Tiptoeing Around Trump”
Among the most interesting and curious moments of the NYT report is a
description of the CIA program’s expanse under the Trump administration. The
report suggests that the true scope may have even been hidden from Trump. The
Russian hawks in his administration quietly did the ‘dirty work’, we are told:
The election of Trump in November 2016 put the Ukrainians and their CIA
partners on edge.
Trump praised Putin and dismissed Russia’s role in election interference. He was
suspicious of Ukraine and later tried to pressure its president, Volodymyr
Zelenskyy, to investigate his Democratic rival, Biden, resulting in Trump’s first
impeachment.
The report then emphasizes, “But whatever Trump said and did, his
administration often went in the other direction. This is because Trump had
put Russia hawks in key positions, including Mike Pompeo as CIA director and
John Bolton as national security adviser.”
And further, “They visited Kyiv to underline their full support for the secret
partnership, which expanded to include more specialized training programs and the
building of additional secret bases.” Given the attempt to place Trump in a
negative light (he had to be ‘tiptoed around’…), it will be interesting to see how he
and his campaign respond to the report. But more consequential will be the
reaction of Putin and the Kremlin in the coming days.
