[
Nestled in a dense forest, the Ukrainian army base seems deserted and destroyed, its command heart a burned-out husk, a casualty of a Russian missile barrage early within the conflict.
However that’s above floor.
Not far-off, a discreet passageway descends to a subterranean bunker the place groups of Ukrainian troopers observe Russian spy satellites and snoop on conversations between Russian commanders. On one display screen, a crimson line adopted the route of an explosive drone threading by way of Russian air defenses from some extent in central Ukraine to a goal within the Russian metropolis of Rostov.
The underground bunker, constructed to exchange the destroyed command heart within the months after Russia’s invasion, is a secret nerve heart of Ukraine’s army.
There’s additionally yet another secret: The bottom is nearly absolutely financed, and partly outfitted, by the C.I.A.
“100 and ten p.c,” Gen. Serhii Dvoretskiy, a high intelligence commander, stated in an interview on the base.
Now coming into the third yr of a conflict that has claimed tons of of 1000’s of lives, the intelligence partnership between Washington and Kyiv is a linchpin of Ukraine’s capacity to defend itself. The C.I.A. and different American intelligence businesses present intelligence for focused missile strikes, observe Russian troop actions and assist assist spy networks.
However the partnership isn’t any wartime creation, neither is Ukraine the one beneficiary.
It took root a decade in the past, coming collectively in matches and begins below three very completely different U.S. presidents, pushed ahead by key people who usually took daring dangers. It has remodeled Ukraine, whose intelligence businesses have been lengthy seen as completely compromised by Russia, into one in all Washington’s most vital intelligence companions in opposition to the Kremlin in the present day.
The listening put up within the Ukrainian forest is a part of a C.I.A.-supported community of spy bases constructed up to now eight years that features 12 secret places alongside the Russian border. Earlier than the conflict, the Ukrainians proved themselves to the People by gathering intercepts that helped show Russia’s involvement within the 2014 downing of a industrial jetliner, Malaysia Airways Flight 17. The Ukrainians additionally helped the People go after the Russian operatives who meddled within the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Round 2016, the C.I.A. started coaching an elite Ukrainian commando pressure — generally known as Unit 2245 — which captured Russian drones and communications gear in order that C.I.A. technicians may reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s encryption methods. (One officer within the unit was Kyrylo Budanov, now the final main Ukraine’s army intelligence.)
And the C.I.A. additionally helped prepare a brand new era of Ukrainian spies who operated inside Russia, throughout Europe, and in Cuba and different locations the place the Russians have a big presence.
The connection is so ingrained that C.I.A. officers remained at a distant location in western Ukraine when the Biden administration evacuated U.S. personnel within the weeks earlier than Russia invaded in February 2022. In the course of the invasion, the officers relayed crucial intelligence, together with the place Russia was planning strikes and which weapons methods they’d use.
“With out them, there would have been no approach for us to withstand the Russians, or to beat them,” stated Ivan Bakanov, who was then head of Ukraine’s home intelligence company, the S.B.U.
The small print of this intelligence partnership, lots of that are being disclosed by The New York Instances for the primary time, have been a intently guarded secret for a decade.
In additional than 200 interviews, present and former officers in Ukraine, america and Europe described a partnership that just about foundered from mutual mistrust earlier than it steadily expanded, turning Ukraine into an intelligence-gathering hub that intercepted extra Russian communications than the C.I.A. station in Kyiv may initially deal with. Most of the officers spoke on situation of anonymity to debate intelligence and issues of delicate diplomacy.
Now these intelligence networks are extra vital than ever, as Russia is on the offensive and Ukraine is extra depending on sabotage and long-range missile strikes that require spies far behind enemy traces. And they’re more and more in danger: If Republicans in Congress finish army funding to Kyiv, the C.I.A. could need to cut back.
To attempt to reassure Ukrainian leaders, William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, made a secret go to to Ukraine final Thursday, his tenth go to for the reason that invasion.
From the outset, a shared adversary — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — introduced the C.I.A. and its Ukrainian companions collectively. Obsessive about “shedding” Ukraine to the West, Mr. Putin had recurrently interfered in Ukraine’s political system, handpicking leaders he believed would preserve Ukraine inside Russia’s orbit, but every time it backfired, driving protesters into the streets.
Mr. Putin has lengthy blamed Western intelligence businesses for manipulating Kyiv and sowing anti-Russia sentiment in Ukraine.
Towards the top of 2021, in response to a senior European official, Mr. Putin was weighing whether or not to launch his full-scale invasion when he met with the pinnacle of one in all Russia’s fundamental spy companies, who instructed him that the C.I.A., along with Britain’s MI6, have been controlling Ukraine and turning it right into a beachhead for operations in opposition to Moscow.
However the Instances investigation discovered that Mr. Putin and his advisers misinterpret a crucial dynamic. The C.I.A. didn’t push its approach into Ukraine. U.S. officers have been usually reluctant to totally have interaction, fearing that Ukrainian officers couldn’t be trusted, and worrying about upsetting the Kremlin.
But a good circle of Ukrainian intelligence officers assiduously courted the C.I.A. and regularly made themselves important to the People. In 2015, Gen. Valeriy Kondratiuk, then Ukraine’s head of army intelligence, arrived at a gathering with the C.I.A.’s deputy station chief and with out warning handed over a stack of top-secret information.
That preliminary tranche contained secrets and techniques in regards to the Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet, together with detailed details about the most recent Russian nuclear submarine designs. Earlier than lengthy, groups of C.I.A. officers have been recurrently leaving his workplace with backpacks filled with paperwork.
“We understood that we wanted to create the situations of belief,” Basic Kondratiuk stated.
Because the partnership deepened after 2016, the Ukrainians grew to become impatient with what they thought of Washington’s undue warning, and started staging assassinations and different deadly operations, which violated the phrases the White Home thought the Ukrainians had agreed to. Infuriated, officers in Washington threatened to chop off assist, however they by no means did.
“The relationships solely acquired stronger and stronger as a result of either side noticed worth in it, and the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv — our station there, the operation out of Ukraine — grew to become the perfect supply of knowledge, alerts and the whole lot else, on Russia,” stated a former senior American official. “We couldn’t get sufficient of it.”
That is the untold story of the way it all occurred.
A Cautious Starting
The C.I.A.’s partnership in Ukraine could be traced again to 2 cellphone calls on the evening of Feb. 24, 2014, eight years to the day earlier than Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians had simply overrun the nation’s pro-Kremlin authorities and the president, Viktor Yanukovych, and his spy chiefs had fled to Russia. Within the tumult, a fragile pro-Western authorities rapidly took energy.
The federal government’s new spy chief, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, arrived on the headquarters of the home intelligence company and located a pile of smoldering paperwork within the courtyard. Inside, most of the computer systems had been wiped or have been contaminated with Russian malware.
“It was empty. No lights. No management. No one was there,” Mr. Nalyvaichenko stated in an interview.
He went to an workplace and known as the C.I.A. station chief and the native head of MI6. It was close to midnight however he summoned them to the constructing, requested for assist in rebuilding the company from the bottom up, and proposed a three-way partnership. “That’s how it began,” Mr. Nalyvaichenko stated.
The scenario rapidly grew to become extra harmful. Mr. Putin seized Crimea. His brokers fomented separatist rebellions that might develop into a conflict within the nation’s east. Ukraine was on conflict footing, and Mr. Nalyvaichenko appealed to the C.I.A. for overhead imagery and different intelligence to assist defend its territory.
With violence escalating, an unmarked U.S. authorities airplane touched down at an airport in Kyiv carrying John O. Brennan, then the director of the C.I.A. He instructed Mr. Nalyvaichenko that the C.I.A. was enthusiastic about creating a relationship however solely at a tempo the company was comfy with, in response to U.S. and Ukrainian officers.
To the C.I.A., the unknown query was how lengthy Mr. Nalyvaichenko and the pro-Western authorities could be round. The C.I.A. had been burned earlier than in Ukraine.
Following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine gained independence after which veered between competing political forces: those who wished to stay near Moscow and those who wished to align with the West. Throughout a earlier stint as spy chief, Mr. Nalyvaichenko began an analogous partnership with the C.I.A., which dissolved when the nation swung again towards Russia.
Now Mr. Brennan defined that to unlock C.I.A. help the Ukrainians needed to show that they might present intelligence of worth to the People. Additionally they wanted to purge Russian spies; the home spy company, the S.B.U., was riddled with them. (Working example: The Russians rapidly realized about Mr. Brennan’s supposedly secret go to. The Kremlin’s propaganda retailers revealed a photoshopped picture of the C.I.A. director sporting a clown wig and make-up.)
Mr. Brennan returned to Washington, the place advisers to President Barack Obama have been deeply involved about upsetting Moscow. The White Home crafted secret guidelines that infuriated the Ukrainians and that some contained in the C.I.A. regarded as handcuffs. The foundations barred intelligence businesses from offering any assist to Ukraine that could possibly be “fairly anticipated” to have deadly penalties.
The end result was a fragile balancing act. The C.I.A. was presupposed to strengthen Ukraine’s intelligence businesses with out upsetting the Russians. The crimson traces have been by no means exactly clear, which created a persistent stress within the partnership.
In Kyiv, Mr. Nalyvaichenko picked a longtime aide, Basic Kondratiuk, to function head of counterintelligence, they usually created a brand new paramilitary unit that was deployed behind enemy traces to conduct operations and collect intelligence that the C.I.A. or MI6 wouldn’t present to them.
Generally known as the Fifth Directorate, this unit could be full of officers born after Ukraine gained independence.
“That they had no reference to Russia,” Basic Kondratiuk stated. “They didn’t even know what the Soviet Union was.”
That summer season, Malaysia Airways Flight 17, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, blew up in midair and crashed in japanese Ukraine, killing almost 300 passengers and crew. The Fifth Directorate produced phone intercepts and different intelligence inside hours of the crash that rapidly positioned duty on Russian-backed separatists.
The C.I.A. was impressed, and made its first significant dedication by offering safe communications gear and specialised coaching to members of the Fifth Directorate and two different elite items.
“The Ukrainians wished fish and we, for coverage causes, couldn’t ship that fish,” stated a former U.S. official, referring to intelligence that might assist them battle the Russians. “However we have been pleased to show them the way to fish and ship fly-fishing gear.”
A Secret Santa
In the summertime of 2015, Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, shook up the home service and put in an ally to exchange Mr. Nalyvaichenko, the C.I.A.’s trusted associate. However the change created a possibility elsewhere.
Within the reshuffle, Basic Kondratiuk was appointed as the pinnacle of the nation’s army intelligence company, generally known as the HUR, the place years earlier he had began his profession. It could be an early instance of how private ties, greater than coverage shifts, would deepen the C.I.A.’s involvement in Ukraine.
In contrast to the home company, the HUR had the authority to gather intelligence exterior the nation, together with in Russia. However the People had seen little worth in cultivating the company as a result of it wasn’t producing any intelligence of worth on the Russians — and since it was seen as a bastion of Russian sympathizers.
Attempting to construct belief, Basic Kondratiuk organized a gathering along with his American counterpart on the Protection Intelligence Company and handed over a stack of secret Russian paperwork. However senior D.I.A. officers have been suspicious and discouraged constructing nearer ties.
The final wanted to discover a extra prepared associate.
Months earlier, whereas nonetheless with the home company, Basic Kondratiuk visited the C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va. In these conferences, he met a C.I.A. officer with a jolly demeanor and a bushy beard who had been tapped to develop into the subsequent station chief in Kyiv.
After a protracted day of conferences, the C.I.A. took Basic Kondratiuk to a Washington Capitals hockey match, the place he and the incoming station chief sat in a luxurious field and loudly booed Alex Ovechkin, the group’s star participant from Russia.
The station chief had not but arrived when Basic Kondratiuk handed over to the C.I.A. the key paperwork in regards to the Russian Navy. “There’s extra the place this got here from,” he promised, and the paperwork have been despatched off to analysts in Langley.
The analysts concluded the paperwork have been genuine, and after the station chief arrived in Kyiv, the C.I.A. grew to become Basic Kondratiuk’s major associate.
Basic Kondratiuk knew he wanted the C.I.A. to strengthen his personal company. The C.I.A. thought the final would possibly be capable to assist Langley, too. It struggled to recruit spies inside Russia as a result of its case officers have been below heavy surveillance.
“For a Russian, permitting oneself to be recruited by an American is to commit absolutely the, final in treachery and treason,” Basic Kondratiuk stated. “However for a Russian to be recruited by a Ukrainian, it’s simply pals speaking over a beer.”
The brand new station chief started recurrently visiting Basic Kondratiuk, whose workplace was adorned with an aquarium the place yellow and blue fish — the nationwide colours of Ukraine — swam circles round a mannequin of a sunken Russian submarine. The 2 males grew to become shut, which drove the connection between the 2 businesses, and the Ukrainians gave the brand new station chief an affectionate nickname: Santa Claus.
In January 2016, Basic Kondratiuk flew to Washington for conferences at Scattergood, an property on the C.I.A. campus in Virginia the place the company usually fetes visiting dignitaries. The company agreed to assist the HUR modernize, and to enhance its capacity to intercept Russian army communications. In alternate, Basic Kondratiuk agreed to share all the uncooked intelligence with the People.
Now the partnership was actual.
Operation Goldfish
Right this moment, the slender highway resulting in the key base is framed by minefields, seeded as a line of protection within the weeks after Russia’s invasion. The Russian missiles that hit the bottom had seemingly shut it down, however simply weeks later the Ukrainians returned.
With cash and gear offered by the C.I.A., crews below Basic Dvoretskiy’s command started to rebuild, however underground. To keep away from detection, they solely labored at evening and when Russian spy satellites weren’t overhead. Employees additionally parked their automobiles a distance away from the development web site.
Within the bunker, Basic Dvoretskiy pointed to communications gear and enormous pc servers, a few of which have been financed by the C.I.A. He stated his groups have been utilizing the bottom to hack into the Russian army’s safe communications networks.
“That is the factor that breaks into satellites and decodes secret conversations,” Basic Dvoretskiy instructed a Instances journalist on a tour, including that they have been hacking into spy satellites from China and Belarus, too.
One other officer positioned two just lately produced maps on a desk, as proof of how Ukraine is monitoring Russian exercise all over the world.
The primary confirmed the overhead routes of Russian spy satellites touring over central Ukraine. The second confirmed how Russian spy satellites are passing over strategic army installations — together with a nuclear weapons facility — within the japanese and central United States.
The C.I.A. started sending gear in 2016, after the pivotal assembly at Scattergood, Basic Dvoretskiy stated, offering encrypted radios and gadgets for intercepting secret enemy communications.
Past the bottom, the C.I.A. additionally oversaw a coaching program, carried out in two European cities, to show Ukrainian intelligence officers the way to convincingly assume pretend personas and steal secrets and techniques in Russia and different international locations which are adept at rooting out spies. This system was known as Operation Goldfish, which derived from a joke a few Russian-speaking goldfish who gives two Estonians needs in alternate for its freedom.
The punchline was that one of many Estonians bashed the fish’s head with a rock, explaining that something talking Russian couldn’t be trusted.
The Operation Goldfish officers have been quickly deployed to 12 newly-built, ahead working bases constructed alongside the Russian border. From every base, Basic Kondratiuk stated, the Ukrainian officers ran networks of brokers who gathered intelligence inside Russia.
C.I.A. officers put in gear on the bases to assist collect intelligence and in addition recognized among the most expert Ukrainian graduates of the Operation Goldfish program, working with them to method potential Russian sources. These graduates then skilled sleeper brokers on Ukrainian territory meant to launch guerrilla operations in case of occupation.
It will probably usually take years for the C.I.A. to develop sufficient belief in a international company to start conducting joint operations. With the Ukrainians it had taken lower than six months. The brand new partnership began producing a lot uncooked intelligence about Russia that it needed to be shipped to Langley for processing.
However the C.I.A. did have crimson traces. It wouldn’t assist the Ukrainians conduct offensive deadly operations.
“We made a distinction between intelligence assortment operations and issues that go increase,” a former senior U.S. official stated.
‘That is Our Nation’
It was a distinction that grated on the Ukrainians.
First, Basic Kondratiuk was irritated when the People refused to supply satellite tv for pc photographs from inside Russia. Quickly after, he requested C.I.A. help in planning a clandestine mission to ship HUR commandos into Russia to plant explosive gadgets at prepare depots utilized by the Russian army. If the Russian army sought to take extra Ukrainian territory, Ukrainians may detonate the explosives to sluggish the Russian advance.
When the station chief briefed his superiors, they “misplaced their minds,” as one former official put it. Mr. Brennan, the C.I.A. director, known as Basic Kondratiuk to make sure that mission was canceled and that Ukraine abided by the crimson traces forbidding deadly operations.
Basic Kondratiuk canceled the mission, however he additionally took a unique lesson. “Going ahead, we labored to not have discussions about this stuff along with your guys,” he stated.
Late that summer season, Ukrainian spies found that Russian forces have been deploying assault helicopters at an airfield on the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula, presumably to stage a shock assault.
Basic Kondratiuk determined to ship a group into Crimea to plant explosives on the airfield so that they could possibly be detonated if Russia moved to assault.
This time, he didn’t ask the C.I.A. for permission. He turned to Unit 2245, the commando pressure that obtained specialised army coaching from the C.I.A.’s elite paramilitary group, generally known as the Floor Division. The intent of the coaching was to show defensive strategies, however C.I.A. officers understood that with out their information the Ukrainians may use the identical strategies in offensive deadly operations.
On the time, the long run head of Ukraine’s army intelligence company, Basic Budanov, was a rising star in Unit 2245. He was recognized for daring operations behind enemy traces and had deep ties to the C.I.A. The company had skilled him and in addition taken the extraordinary step of sending him for rehabilitation to Walter Reed Nationwide Army Medical Heart in Maryland after he was shot in the suitable arm throughout preventing within the Donbas.
Disguised in Russian uniforms, then-Lt. Col. Budanov led commandos throughout a slender gulf in inflatable speedboats, touchdown at evening in Crimea.
However an elite Russian commando unit was ready for them. The Ukrainians fought again, killing a number of Russian fighters, together with the son of a basic, earlier than retreating to the shoreline, plunging into the ocean and swimming for hours to Ukrainian-controlled territory.
It was a catastrophe. In a public deal with, President Putin accused the Ukrainians of plotting a terrorist assault and promised to avenge the deaths of the Russian fighters.
“There isn’t a doubt that we are going to not let this stuff cross,” he stated.
In Washington, the Obama White Home was furious. Joseph R. Biden Jr., then the vice chairman and a champion of help to Ukraine, known as Ukraine’s president to angrily complain.
“It causes a huge drawback,” Mr. Biden stated within the name, a recording of which was leaked and revealed on-line. “All I’m telling you as a good friend is that my making arguments here’s a hell of quite a bit tougher now.”
A few of Mr. Obama’s advisers wished to close the C.I.A. program down, however Mr. Brennan persuaded them that doing so could be self-defeating, given the connection was beginning to produce intelligence on the Russians because the C.I.A. was investigating Russian election meddling.
Mr. Brennan acquired on the cellphone with Basic Kondratiuk to once more emphasize the crimson traces.
The final was upset. “That is our nation,” he responded, in response to a colleague. “It’s our conflict, and we’ve acquired to battle.”
The blowback from Washington price Basic Kondratiuk his job. However Ukraine didn’t again down.
Someday after Basic Kondratiuk was eliminated, a mysterious explosion within the Russian-occupied metropolis of Donetsk, in japanese Ukraine, ripped by way of an elevator carrying a senior Russian separatist commander named Arsen Pavlov, recognized by his nom de guerre, Motorola.
The C.I.A. quickly realized that the assassins have been members of the Fifth Directorate, the spy group that obtained C.I.A. coaching. Ukraine’s home intelligence company had even handed out commemorative patches to these concerned, each stitched with the phrase “Raise,” the British time period for an elevator.
Once more, a few of Mr. Obama’s advisers have been livid, however they have been lame geese — the presidential election pitting Donald J. Trump in opposition to Hillary Rodham Clinton was three weeks away — and the assassinations continued.
A group of Ukrainian brokers arrange an unmanned, shoulder-fired rocket launcher in a constructing within the occupied territories. It was immediately throughout from the workplace of a insurgent commander named Mikhail Tolstykh, higher generally known as Givi. Utilizing a distant set off, they fired the launcher as quickly as Givi entered his workplace, killing him, in response to U.S. and Ukrainian officers.
A shadow conflict was now in overdrive. The Russians used a automobile bomb to assassinate the pinnacle of Unit 2245, the elite Ukrainian commando pressure. The commander, Col. Maksim Shapoval, was on his technique to assembly with C.I.A. officers in Kyiv when his automobile exploded.
On the colonel’s wake, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, stood in mourning beside the C.I.A. station chief. Later, C.I.A. officers and their Ukrainian counterparts toasted Colonel Shapoval with whiskey photographs.
“For all of us,” Basic Kondratiuk stated, “it was a blow.”
Tiptoeing Round Trump
The election of Mr. Trump in November 2016 put the Ukrainians and their C.I.A. companions on edge.
Mr. Trump praised Mr. Putin and dismissed Russia’s function in election interference. He was suspicious of Ukraine and later tried to strain its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to analyze his Democratic rival, Mr. Biden, leading to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment.
However no matter Mr. Trump stated and did, his administration usually went within the different course. It’s because Mr. Trump had put Russia hawks in key positions, together with Mike Pompeo as C.I.A. director and John Bolton as nationwide safety adviser. They visited Kyiv to underline their full assist for the key partnership, which expanded to incorporate extra specialised coaching applications and the constructing of further secret bases.
The bottom within the forest grew to incorporate a brand new command heart and barracks, and swelled from 80 to 800 Ukrainian intelligence officers. Stopping Russia from interfering in future U.S. elections was a high C.I.A. precedence throughout this era, and Ukrainian and American intelligence officers joined forces to probe the pc methods of Russia’s intelligence businesses to determine operatives attempting to control voters.
In a single joint operation, a HUR group duped an officer from Russia’s army intelligence service into offering data that allowed the C.I.A. to attach Russia’s authorities to the so-called Fancy Bear hacking group, which had been linked to election interference efforts in numerous international locations.
Basic Budanov, whom Mr. Zelensky tapped to steer the HUR in 2020, stated of the partnership: “It solely strengthened. It grew systematically. The cooperation expanded to further spheres and have become extra large-scale.”
The connection was so profitable that the C.I.A. wished to duplicate it with different European intelligence companies that shared a spotlight in countering Russia.
The top of Russia Home, the C.I.A. division overseeing operations in opposition to Russia, organized a secret assembly at The Hague. There, representatives from the C.I.A., Britain’s MI6, the HUR, the Dutch service (a crucial intelligence ally) and different businesses agreed to start out pooling collectively extra of their intelligence on Russia.
The end result was a secret coalition in opposition to Russia — and the Ukrainians have been important members of it.
March to Struggle
In March 2021, the Russian army began massing troops alongside the border with Ukraine. Because the months handed, and extra troops encircled the nation, the query was whether or not Mr. Putin was making a feint or getting ready for conflict.
That November, and within the weeks that adopted, the C.I.A. and MI6 delivered a unified message to their Ukrainian companions: Russia was getting ready for a full-scale invasion to decapitate the federal government and set up a puppet in Kyiv who would do the Kremlin’s bidding.
U.S. and British intelligence businesses had intercepts that Ukrainian intelligence businesses didn’t have entry to, in response to U.S. officers. The brand new intelligence listed the names of Ukrainian officers whom the Russians have been planning to kill or seize, in addition to the Ukrainians the Kremlin hoped to put in in energy.
President Zelensky and a few of his high advisers appeared unconvinced, even after Mr. Burns, the C.I.A. director, rushed to Kyiv in January 2022 to transient them.
Because the Russian invasion neared, C.I.A. and MI6 officers made closing visits in Kyiv with their Ukrainian friends. One of many M16 officers teared up in entrance of the Ukrainians, out of concern that the Russians would kill them.
At Mr. Burns’s urging, a small group of C.I.A. officers have been exempted from the broader U.S. evacuation and have been relocated to a resort complicated in western Ukraine. They didn’t need to desert their companions.
No Endgame
After Mr. Putin launched the invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the C.I.A. officers on the resort have been the one U.S. authorities presence on the bottom. Every single day on the resort, they met with their Ukrainian contacts to cross data. The outdated handcuffs have been off, and the Biden White Home approved spy businesses to supply intelligence assist for deadly operations in opposition to Russian forces on Ukrainian soil.
Usually, the C.I.A. briefings contained shockingly particular particulars.
On March 3, 2022 — the eighth day of the conflict — the C.I.A. group gave a exact overview of Russian plans for the approaching two weeks. The Russians would open a humanitarian hall out of the besieged metropolis of Mariupol that very same day, after which open fireplace on the Ukrainians who used it.
The Russians deliberate to encircle the strategic port metropolis of Odesa, in response to the C.I.A., however a storm delayed the assault and the Russians by no means took the town. Then, on March 10, the Russians supposed to bombard six Ukrainian cities, and had already entered coordinates into cruise missiles for these strikes.
The Russians additionally have been attempting to assassinate high Ukrainian officers, together with Mr. Zelensky. In not less than one case, the C.I.A. shared intelligence with Ukraine’s home company that helped disrupt a plot in opposition to the president, in response to a senior Ukrainian official.
When the Russian assault on Kyiv had stalled, the C.I.A. station chief rejoiced and instructed his Ukrainian counterparts that they have been “punching the Russians within the face,” in response to a Ukrainian officer who was within the room.
Inside weeks, the C.I.A. had returned to Kyiv, and the company despatched in scores of latest officers to assist the Ukrainians. A senior U.S. official stated of the C.I.A.’s sizable presence, “Are they pulling triggers? No. Are they serving to with focusing on? Completely.”
A number of the C.I.A. officers have been deployed to Ukrainian bases. They reviewed lists of potential Russian targets that the Ukrainians have been getting ready to strike, evaluating the knowledge that the Ukrainians had with U.S. intelligence to make sure that it was correct.
Earlier than the invasion, the C.I.A. and MI6 had skilled their Ukrainian counterparts on recruiting sources, and constructing clandestine and partisan networks. Within the southern Kherson area, which was occupied by Russia within the first weeks of the conflict, these partisan networks sprang into motion, in response to Basic Kondratiuk, assassinating native collaborators and serving to Ukrainian forces goal Russian positions.
In July 2022, Ukrainian spies noticed Russian convoys getting ready to cross a strategic bridge throughout the Dnipro river and notified MI6. British and American intelligence officers then rapidly verified the Ukrainian intelligence, utilizing real-time satellite tv for pc imagery. MI6 relayed the affirmation, and the Ukrainian army opened fireplace with rockets, destroying the convoys.
On the underground bunker, Basic Dvoretskiy stated a German antiaircraft system now defends in opposition to Russian assaults. An air-filtration system guards in opposition to chemical weapons and a devoted energy system is accessible, if the ability grid goes down.
The query that some Ukrainian intelligence officers at the moment are asking their American counterparts — as Republicans within the Home weigh whether or not to chop off billions of {dollars} in support — is whether or not the C.I.A. will abandon them. “It occurred in Afghanistan earlier than and now it’s going to occur in Ukraine,” a senior Ukrainian officer stated.
Referring to Mr. Burns’s go to to Kyiv final week, a C.I.A. official stated, “We now have demonstrated a transparent dedication to Ukraine over a few years and this go to was one other sturdy sign that the U.S. dedication will proceed.”
The C.I.A. and the HUR have constructed two different secret bases to intercept Russian communications, and mixed with the 12 ahead working bases, which Basic Kondratiuk says are nonetheless operational, the HUR now collects and produces extra intelligence than at any time within the conflict — a lot of which it shares with the C.I.A.
“You’ll be able to’t get data like this wherever — besides right here, and now,” Basic Dvoretskiy stated.
Natalia Yermak contributed translation.