With the tenth anniversary of the Ukrainian Maidan Revolution, the head of Ukraine’s security service (SBU) revealed the extent of CIA cooperation.
When the pro-Russian elected regime in Kyiv dissolved, the SBU had to be totally purged of Russian sympathizers. The CIA jumped in and helped Ukraine adopt Western standards, all the while sharing intelligence to bolster the pro-Western regime in Kyiv. The Kyiv Post interviewed the head of Ukraine’s SBU:
You have described arriving to the SBU headquarters to discover classified documents “smoldering in the courtyard” of the intelligence service and that many classified documents were missing. What did you see?
Hour-by-hour I came to realize that the SBU was destroyed. All the files about the Revolution of Dignity [Maidan] had been burned, out in the courtyard of the SBU. Many key documents had been sent to Donetsk by Yanukovych’s people.
When the Russians first became involved in a low level war in Ukraine, Ukrainians passed on Russian intelligence whenever they intercepted it. Captured Russian equipment was also sent to the CIA for reverse engineering. Yahoo reports:
The NYT reports that before the full-scale war, the Ukrainians proved themselves to the Americans by collecting intercepted data that helped prove Russian involvement in the downing of the Malaysia Airlines jetliner in 2014. Ukrainians also helped Americans prosecute the Russian agents who interfered in the 2016 US presidential election.
Around 2016, the CIA began training an elite Ukrainian special forces unit known as Unit 2245, which captured Russian drones and communications equipment so that CIA technicians could reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s encryption systems. According to the NYT, one of the officers in this unit was the current head of Defence Intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov.
The CIA’s involvement in Ukraine might be one of its best conducted operation. Using a relatively popular regime already in existence, it managed to glean crucial Russian intelligence to give America a leg up. However, these kinds of operations do put America on a path of perpetual hostility with Russia, something it will have to manage along with all its other interests worldwide.
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