Aletho News

2014 Coup Allowed CIA to Tap Into Vast Troves of Russian Intel, Turn Ukraine Into Proxy Shadow Army

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 18.01.2025

As the second-largest republic of the former USSR, possessing everything from tank and rocket factories and top research institutes and engaging in intimately close intelligence cooperation with Russia, Ukraine became a virtual goldmine for NATO’s intelligence services after USSR’s collapse in 1991.

But a trickle of leaked military and intelligence secrets turned into a flood after the 2014 Euromaidan coup d’état, with current and former US and Ukrainian officials revealing to US media that Kiev’s post-coup authorities gave away “key intelligence” to the CIA literally by the suitcase-full, and turned Ukraine’s intelligence services into a shadow proxy army against Russia.

‘We Have a Gift’

In 2015, Valeriy Kondratyuk, a career spy then working as chief of the Ukrainian military’s Main Intelligence Directorate, visited Washington to meet with senior American intelligence officials with luggage “stuffed with top-secret Russian military documents.”

“I was like, ‘holy sh*t!’, and he’s like, ‘yes, we have a gift’,” a former US official told ABC News.

The docs were said to include info on top-secret Russian weapons and military capabilities.

Further “gifts,” from classified Russian weapons and electronic warfare tech to the Russian military’s order of battle and decision-making, would come later.

“They went from being zero to one of our most important partners, up in the realm of the Brits,” another ex-US official said.

“Their access was so significant. Here was the best friend of the Russians for many, many years. They knew things we just, frankly, had no idea of,” the official added.

One former official said the information received was worth “hundreds of millions” if not “billions” of dollars.

‘Something to Exploit’

Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU, was also quickly compromised after the coup, with its new chief Valentyn Nalivaychenko inviting the US and British to “help” rebuild the agency.

“There were those of us on the agency side who were like, ‘hey, this is something to exploit. We need to change with it. Let’s help, you know, the Ukrainians be Ukrainians,’” a former US official recalled.

Officials said the CIA helped rebuild Ukraine’s intelligence services from the ground up as an anti-Russian proxy army, spending millions on training and equipment, new facilities, “including around a dozen secret forward-operating bases on the border with Russia,” as reported on earlier, and conducting “joint operations together around the world.”

In 2016, the CIA launched a training program known as ‘Operation Goldfish’, providing Ukraine with secure communications tech, combat and espionage training with the CIA and MI6, for operations in Russia and abroad posing as Russians.

“It was a magical time,” a former US official said of the program, saying joint operations began in one year, rather than the ten years it reportedly normally takes to establish such close cooperation.

Terror Ops Inside Russia

Kondratyuk admitted to lobbying Kiev’s newfound American partners to conduct “sabotage operations” in Crimea and elsewhere in Russia, including by “pre-positioning explosives,” long-before the 2022 escalation. This reportedly included a disastrous 2016 attack on a Russian Army base that triggered a shooting battle with Russian special forces.

That attack was carried out by Unit 2245, a group of US-trained commandos made up of officers under 30 with no memories of the Soviet period or sympathies related to Ukraine’s centuries-long history of close cooperation with Russia. Among these officers was Kyrylo Budanov, the current chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate who has bragged openly about the assassination of Russian public figures, and reportedly forged contacts with terrorist actors in Syria.

US officials confirmed that the CIA actively trained Ukrainian special forces for the proxy conflict that began in 2022, with one official boasting that the Main Intelligence Directorate was “able to hit the Russians hard and… in ways that they didn’t expect” thanks to years of “investment” from US intelligence.

Officials further revealed that the CIA had lifted restrictions on operations inside Ukraine after the conflict started, with officers providing assistance with targeting on the ground, and CIA-trained Ukrainian special forces engaging Russian troops from the “first day,” including by detonating pre-planted explosives on rail and logistical lines in eastern Ukraine, and inside Russia.

January 18, 2025 - Posted by aletho | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | CIA, MI6, NATO, Ukraine, United States