Tag: ukraine

CIA ops, commandos in Ukraine: Can we just admit we are fighting this war?

The Central Intelligence Agency is operating in Kyiv and has been for some time, according to new reporting by the New York Times. So, while Biden has insisted on “no U.S. boots on the ground” in Ukraine, there are soft-soled operatives, otherwise known as American spies, providing  intelligence and other tactical assistance to Ukraine in its war with Russia.

Sounds like Americans are in this war, like it or not. 

The news, based on sourcing from current and former U.S. government officials, is part of a broader report about a “stealthy network” of U.S. and European commandos and spies in “cells” run by the Pentagon’s European Command “to speed allied assistance to Ukrainian troops.” Much of this is operating from military bases in France and Germany and elsewhere. But as the NYT points out, there are European commandos and CIA agents working on the inside. 

The commandos are not on the front lines with Ukrainian troops and instead advise from headquarters in other parts of the country or remotely by encrypted communications, according to American and other Western officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. But the signs of their stealthy logistics, training and intelligence support are tangible on the battlefield.

Several lower-level Ukrainian commanders recently expressed appreciation to the United States for intelligence gleaned from satellite imagery, which they can call up on tablet computers provided by the allies. The tablets run a battlefield mapping app that the Ukrainians use to target and attack Russian troops.

As usual it appears that the administration wants to have it both ways: assure the American people that it is being “restrained” and that we are not “at war” with the Russians, but doing everything but planting a U.S. soldier and a flag inside Ukraine. The CIA, as you will recall, has increasingly had an operational combat focus since 9/11,  running elaborate secret prisons overseas, engaging in enhanced interrogations (torture) and manhunting with armed drones and commando teams over the last 20 years. There may be a sliver of daylight between the CIA operatives there today and the U.S. special forces that left Ukraine after Russia invaded, but given the circumstances, is it a meaningful one? Is it all about who is pulling the trigger?

Keep reading

NATO boss lets the cat out of the bag: US-led bloc has ‘been preparing since 2014’ to use Ukraine for proxy conflict with Russia

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg may have said the quiet part out loud on Wednesday when he revealed to reporters that NATO’s push into Eastern Europe since 2014 was done specifically with Russia in mind.

“The reality is also that we have been preparing for this since 2014,” he said. “That is the reason that we have increased our presence in the eastern part of the alliance, why NATO allies have started to invest more in defense, and why we have increased [our] readiness.”

The NATO chief went on to insist that Russia has been “using force in the eastern Donbass since 2014.”

What he neglected to mention, though, was the role Western powers played in the outbreak of civil violence in Kiev on February 24, 2013 that led to the Maidan coup and, ultimately, to the current situation. The US and its influence on the ground in Ukraine, channelled through “civil society” groups it bankrolled, was largely responsibility for that mess.

Even Victoria ‘F**k the EU’ Nuland (then-US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs) admitted as much in April 2014 when she said Washington had invested $5 billion dollars into “spreading democracy” in Ukraine – apparently because such efforts worked so well before.

Keep reading

Biden Admin Gives $820 Million More in Military Aid to Ukraine, Including 2 Surface-to-Air Missile Systems

The Biden administration announced new security assistance to Ukraine on July 1 in a package worth about $820 million in total.

The assistance comprises an authorization of a Presidential Drawdown (PDA) of security assistance valued at up to $50 million, as well as $770 million in Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) funds. The PDA is the 14th drawdown of arms and equipment from the Pentagon’s inventories since August 2021.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the United States has committed a total of about $6.92 billion in military aid to Ukraine to fight Russian forces. Prior to the invasion, since 2014, the United States had committed some $1.8 billion in weapons and military training to Ukraine, $700 million of which came from the Biden administration.

The latest $820 million aid package was broadly announced by President Joe Biden at a news conference on Thursday in Madrid, which was the third and final day of the NATO summit focused on the Russia-Ukraine war.

“We are going to support Ukraine as long as it takes,” Biden said, adding that the United States is giving Ukrainians “the capacity” so that “they can continue to resist the Russian aggression.”

Keep reading

The Fantasy of Fanaticism

For a moment in time, it looked as if reality had managed to finally carve its way through the dense fog of propaganda-driven misinformation that had dominated Western media coverage of Russia’s “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine.

In a stunning admission, Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former senior adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and Intelligence Services, noted that the optimism that existed in Ukraine following Russia’s decision to terminate “Phase One” of the SMO (a major military feint toward Kiev), and begin “Phase Two” (the liberation of the Donbass), was no longer warranted. “The strategies and tactics of the Russians are completely different right now,” Danylyuk noted. “They are being much more successful. They have more resources than us and they are not in a rush.”

“There’s much less space for optimism right now,” Danylyuk concluded.

In short, Russia was winning.

Danylyuk’s conclusions were not derived from some esoteric analysis drawn from Sun Tzu or Clausewitz, but rather basic military math. In a war that had become increasingly dominated by the role of artillery, Russia simply was able to bring to bear on the battlefield more firepower than Ukraine.

Keep reading

G7 Commits To “Indefinite” Military & Financial Support To Ukraine

Just as the G7 was underway for its first day of meetings on Sunday in the five-star hotel Schloss Elmau in the Bavarian Alps of Germany, Russia’s military pounded Kiev with a series of missile attacks, which President Joe Biden – who is attending in person – condemned as “more of their barbarism.”

Biden was asked by reporters whether he views the relatively rare Russian strikes on Ukraine’s capital as deliberately timed due to the summit, which he didn’t answer. Ukrainian officials say one person died and six were injured as a result of the attack.

“We have to stay together, because Putin has been counting on, from the beginning, that somehow NATO and the G-7 would splinter, but we haven’t and we’re not going to,” Biden said in remarks during a pre-summit meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

As The Guardian previews of what’s expected to be tackled between now and Tuesday, “A price cap on Russian oil, deferral of climate change commitments, a potential famine in Africa and the further supply of weapons to Ukraine are to crowd into a meeting of G7 world leaders over the next three days held against the backdrop of the biggest geopolitical crisis since 1945.” Further, CNN’s audience has been told “Putin will be watching if they fail.”

Going into the summit, the UK’s Boris Johnson urged a united front on Ukraine amid what he called a growing war “fatigue” among the Western populace. The G7 countries which include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and United States have Ukraine and global economic fallout from the war as top of the agenda.

“Now is not the time to give up on Ukraine, they need the support and resolve of the G7 more than ever,” Johnson stated on Twitter. “The UK will continue to back Ukraine every step of the way because we know that their security is our security, and their freedom is our freedom.”

And Biden stated: “Together, the G7 will announce that we will ban the import of Russian gold, a major export that rakes in tens of billions of dollars for Russia,” he announced on Twitter.

But it was EU chief Ursula von der Leyen who pledged indefinite G7 and European support to Ukraine:

“We will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes. The negative global impact of Russia’s war will be front and center of our exchanges at the G7.”

Keep reading

Western Officials Admit Ukraine Is Crawling With CIA Personnel

In an article titled “Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say,” anonymous western officials inform us of the following through their stenographers at The New York Times:

As Russian troops press ahead with a grinding campaign to seize eastern Ukraine, the nation’s ability to resist the onslaught depends more than ever on help from the United States and its allies — including a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training, according to U.S. and European officials.

Much of this work happens outside Ukraine, at bases in Germany, France and Britain, for example. But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the massive amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials.

At the same time, a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine.

The revelation that the CIA and US special forces are conducting military operations in Ukraine does indeed make a lie of the Biden administration’s insistence at the start of the war that there would be no American boots on the ground in Ukraine, and the admission that NATO powers are so involved in operations against a nuclear superpower means we are closer to seeing a nuclear exchange than anyone should be comfortable with.

This news should surprise no one who knows anything about the usual behavior of the US intelligence cartel, but interestingly it contradicts something we were told by the same New York Times not three weeks ago.

Keep reading

$150-million movie halted over Ukrainian ‘bad-guys’

The release of Guy Ritchie’s £125-million ($150-million) spy comedy Operation Fortune has been delayed a second time in order to remove the villains’ Ukrainian nationalities, the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday. Initially set to be released last January, the film is now scheduled for release later this year.

The offending characters are a group of Ukrainian gangsters who have purchased a deadly weapon, which the film’s heroes have to retrieve to foil their evil scheme. Sources told the Mail the gangsters’ characters have been edited so that they are no longer Ukrainian.

While there are “many bad guys in the film” and “the antagonists come from all over the world,” a source close to the production told the Mail that “out of sensitivity to the ongoing war in Ukraine it was decided some of these should no longer be identified as Ukrainian.”

Keep reading

Ukraine Unveils Mini “Terminator” Ground Robot Equipped With Machine Gun

The latest war machine headed to Ukraine’s front lines isn’t a flying drone but a miniature 4×4 ground-based robot — equipped with a machine gun.

According to Forbes, Ukrainian forces are set to receive an uncrewed ground vehicle (UGV) called “GNOM” that is no bigger than a standard microwave and weighs around 110lbs.

GNOM isn’t radio-controlled and has a 2,000 meter (1.25 mile) spool of fiber-optic cable mounted on the rear that offers operators a jam-proof way to control it on the modern battlefield without being detected or signal jammed by Russian electronic warfare equipment.

“Control of GNOM is possible in the most aggressive environment during the operation of the enemy’s electronic warfare equipment.

“The operator doesn’t deploy a control station with an antenna, and does not unmask his position. The cable is not visible, and it also does not create thermal radiation that could be seen by a thermal imager,” said Eduard Trotsenko, CEO and owner of Temerland, the maker of the GNOM.

“While it is usually operated by remote control, GNOM clearly has some onboard intelligence and is capable of autonomous navigation. Previous Temerland designs have included advanced neural network and machine learning hardware and software providing a high degree of autonomy, so the company seems to have experience,” Forbes said.

The 7.62mm machinegun mounted on top of the “Terminator-style” robot will provide fire support for Ukrainian forces in dangerous areas. The UGV can also transport ammunition or other supplies to the front lines and even evacuate wounded soldiers with a special trailer.

Keep reading

Ukraine Bans Main Opposition Party, Seizes All Its Assets

Ukrainian authorities have banned the country’s main opposition party and seized all its assets, once again undermining the narrative that President Zelensky is presiding over a beacon of democracy.

The country’s Ministry of Justice announced the move via Facebook, revealing that the Opposition Platform — For Life had been shut down and its assets, money and property transferred to the state.

The party had previously had its operations suspended in March after it was accused of being complicit with Russia and being “anti-Ukrainian.”

The ban means that Zelensky’s main political opposition has been eliminated. The OPPL was the second largest party in the country and its popularity surpassed that of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party last year.

Its leader Viktor Medvedchuk, who claims he is merely looking out for the interests of the Ukrainian people by seeking better relations with Russia, was placed under house arrest last month.

The announcement said the party was suspected of acting to “undermine the sovereignty” of Ukraine, with authorities have already banned 10 other political opposition parties for the same reason.

Last month, President Zelensky signed a bill into law that gave the green light to ban any party that challenged the government’s policy on the Russian invasion, empowering courts to seize assets without the right to appeal.

While opposition parties are being obliterated, Ukrainians who engage in dissent are also being rounded up and arrested by armed men from the Ukraine Security Service.

Keep reading