In recent years, American intelligence has invested tens of millions of dollars in the development of Ukrainian intelligence services.
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has spent tens of millions of dollars building up Ukrainian intelligence services since 2015. They work closely together, but the CIA tries to distance itself from some of the assassination operations in Kyiv. This was reported by The Washington Post, citing interviews with more than two dozen current and former Ukrainian, American and Western intelligence and security officials.
The agency provided Ukraine with advanced surveillance systems, trained recruits at facilities in Ukraine and the United States, built a new headquarters for Ukrainian military intelligence units, and shared intelligence with a on a scale unimaginable before Russia annexed Crimea and sparked a war in eastern Ukraine. “According to the official, the CIA maintains a significant presence in Kiev,” the report said.
US intelligence officials said the CIA was not involved in targeted assassination operations conducted by Ukrainian intelligence agencies and that the agency’s work was focused on strengthening the ability of Ukrainian services to gather intelligence on a dangerous enemy.
A senior intelligence official said “any potential operational concerns have been clearly communicated to the Ukrainian services.”
A high-ranking official of Ukraine, in a conversation with the publication, emphasized that Ukraine “has many enemies that are more important to neutralize: people who launch missiles who committed atrocities in Bucha. And killing the daughter of a pro-war instigator was “very cynical.”
A former senior CIA officer, commenting on the work of the Ukrainian intelligence services, said that today “we are seeing the birth of a set of intelligence services reminiscent of the Mossad of the 1970s.”
“All the targets that the SBU hits are completely legal,” agency director Vasily Malyuk said in a statement provided to The Post.
The statement did not speak about targeted killings, but Malyuk said Ukraine was “doing everything to ensure fair punishment for all traitors, war criminals and collaborators.”
Current and former US and Ukrainian officials say both sides are trying to keep distance between the CIA and the deadly operations carried out by its partners in Kyiv. After several operations, CIA officials expressed concern but continued to provide support, the officials said.
SBU and GUR operatives were not accompanied by their CIA colleagues. Ukraine avoided using weapons or equipment that could be linked to American sources, and clandestine funding streams were kept separate.
Officials acknowledged that the lines are sometimes blurred. CIA officials in Kyiv were briefed on some of Ukraine’s most ambitious strike plans. In some cases, including the Crimean Bridge bombing, American officials have expressed concern.
The CIA’s deep cooperation with Ukraine, which has continued even as the country has been embroiled in President Donald Trump’s impeachment scandal, represents a dramatic turnaround for agencies that spent decades on both sides of the Cold War.
Cooperation between the CIA and Ukraine began after protests in 2014. There was little cooperation at first, officials said, because of concerns on both sides that Ukrainian services were still heavily infiltrated by Russian FSB, the Russian agency that is the main successor to the KGB.
To manage these risks, the CIA and the SBU created an entirely new directorate dedicated to so-called “active measures” against Russia and separate from other SBU units, the officials said.
The new unit received a prosaic name Fifth Directorto distinguish it from the four other SBU units. A sixth directorate was subsequently created, which officials said cooperated with the British intelligence service. The training sites were located outside Kyiv, where select recruits received instruction from CIA officers, the officials said.
According to officials, the first missions focused on recruiting informants among Russian apostates, as well as cyber and electronic eavesdropping activities.
But soon the operations turned deadly. In three years, at least half a dozen Russian operatives, senior separatist commanders or collaborators have been killed in attacks often attributed to internal score-fixing but actually the work of the SBU, officials said. Ukrainian.
Among those killed was Yevgeny Zhilin, the leader of a pro-Russian militant group in eastern Ukraine who was gunned down in 2016 in a Moscow restaurant. A year later, a rebel commander known as Givi was killed in Donetsk.
Ukrainian officials say the country’s shift to more lethal methods was prompted by Russia’s aggression and atrocities against Ukrainians.
While helping build the new SBU directorate, the CIA simultaneously embarked on a more ambitious project with Ukrainian military intelligence.
The GUR, with fewer than 5,000 employees, was half the size of the SBU and had a narrower focus on espionage and active actions against Russia. In addition, it is staffed by junior officers with less Soviet-era experience, while the SBU is still considered a Russian intelligence-infused organization.
The GID has begun recruiting operatives for its new Active Measures Unit, officials said.
The CIA helped the GUR acquire modern surveillance and electronic eavesdropping systems. According to officials, the data sets were moved through a new facility built by the CIA in Washington, where they were carefully studied by CIA and NSA (National Security Agency) analysts.
According to the publication’s sources, the CIA-funded GUR structures were among dozens of key facilities targeted by Russian strikes in the early days of the war. These facilities continue to operate.
The new capabilities of Ukrainian intelligence proved valuable from the beginning of the war. For example, the SBU received intelligence on important Russian targets, which allowed it to carry out strikes that killed several commanders and nearly killed a senior Russian official, Valery Gerasimov.
The SBU has struck the Crimean Bridge twice in the past year, including in October 2022, when an explosion killed five people and left a hole in the westbound lane.
Zelensky initially denied that Ukraine was responsible. But SBU director Malysh described the operation in excruciating detail in an interview earlier this year, admitting that his service planted powerful explosives in a truck carrying industrial-sized rolls of cellophane.
American officials, who were notified in advance, expressed concern about the attack, fearing Russian escalation. However, these fears were probably allayed by the time the SBU launched a second strike on the bridge nine months later, using naval drones developed as part of a top-secret operation involving the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies.
Malysh’s public account of the operation defies typical intelligence methods, but helps Kyiv tout its successes and reflects growing rivalries in the intelligence department.
The two services overlap to some extent, although officials say the SBU tends to carry out more complex missions with longer lead times, while the GUR tends to operate more quickly. .
Representatives of the security forces said that not a single major operation of the SBU or GUR was carried out without permission – tacit or otherwise – from Zelensky. Zelensky’s spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
A senior Ukrainian official who has worked closely with Western governments to coordinate support for Ukraine said the attacks on non-combatants and bombings of Moscow buildings reinforce Putin’s false narrative that Ukraine poses a growing danger to ordinary Russians.
The WP said the car bombing that killed Dugina last year continues to be one of the most “extreme cases of deadly revenge”.
According to security officials with knowledge of the operation, Ukrainian operatives placed a secret compartment in a cat box in a car and used it to hide bomb components.
We remind you that the representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate, Andrei Yusov, said that the Russians planned to use their tactics last year of destroying the energy infrastructure of Ukraine, but Ukraine will respond to the attack by invaders.
Source: korrespondent
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.