One of the biggest secrets of the Ukraine war, William Arkin says, is how much the CIA doesn’t know:
The Agency is as uncertain about Volodymyr Zelensky’s thinking and intentions as it is about Vladimir Putin’s. And as the Russian leader faces his biggest challenge in the aftermath of a failed mutiny, the Agency is straining to understand what the two sides will do—because President Joe Biden has determined that the United States (and Kyiv) will not undertake any actions that might threaten Russia itself or the survival of the Russian state, lest Putin escalate the conflict and engulf all of Europe in a new World War. In exchange, it expects that the Kremlin won’t escalate the war beyond Ukraine or resort to the use of nuclear weapons.
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“There is a clandestine war, with clandestine rules, underlying all of what is going on in Ukraine,” says a Biden administration senior intelligence official who also spoke with Newsweek. The official, who is directly involved in Ukraine policy planning, requested anonymity to discuss highly classified matters. The official (and numerous other national security officials who spoke to Newsweek) say that Washington and Moscow have decades of experience crafting these clandestine rules, necessitating that the CIA play an outsize role: as primary spy, as negotiator, as supplier of intelligence, as logistician, as wrangler of a network of sensitive NATO relations and perhaps most important of all, as the agency trying to ensure the war does not further spin out of control.
“Don’t underestimate the Biden administration’s priority to keep Americans out of harm’s way and reassure Russia that it doesn’t need to escalate,” the senior intelligence officer says. “Is the CIA on the ground inside Ukraine?” he asks rhetorically. “Yes, but it’s also not nefarious.”
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Neither the CIA nor the White House would give specific responses for confirmation, but they asked that Newsweek not reveal the specific locations of CIA operations inside Ukraine or Poland, that it not name other countries involved in the clandestine CIA efforts and that it not name the air service that is supporting the clandestine U.S. logistics effort.
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Intelligence experts say this war is unique in that the United States is aligned with Ukraine, yet the two countries are not allies. And though the United States is helping Ukraine against Russia, it is not formally at war with that country. Thus, much of what Washington does to aid Ukraine is kept secret – and much of what is normally in the realm of the U.S. military is being carried out by the Agency.
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“The view advanced by many that the CIA is central to the fighting — say, for instance, in killing Russian generals on the battlefield or in important strikes outside Ukraine, such as the sinking of the Moskva flagship – doesn’t play well in Kyiv,” says one retired senior military intelligence official granted anonymity to speak with Newsweek. “If we want Kyiv to listen to us, we need to remind ourselves that the Ukrainians are winning the war, not us.”
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“There are clandestine rules of the road,” says the senior defense intelligence official, “even if they are not codified on paper, particularly when one isn’t engaged in a war of annihilation.” This includes staying within day-to-day boundaries of spying, not crossing certain borders and not attacking each other’s leadership or diplomats. “Generally the Russians have respected these global red lines, even if those lines are invisible,” the official says.
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“The CIA has been operating inside Ukraine, under strict rules, and with a cap on how many personnel can be in country at any one time,” says another senior military intelligence official.
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Newsweek was unable to establish the exact number of CIA personnel in Ukraine, but sources suggest it is less than 100 at any one time.
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Now, more than a year after the invasion, the United States sustains two massive networks, one public and the other clandestine. Ships deliver goods to ports in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland, and those supplies are moved by truck, train and air to Ukraine. Clandestinely though, a fleet of commercial aircraft (the “grey fleet”) crisscrosses Central and Eastern Europe, moving arms and supporting CIA operations.
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Russian intelligence is very active in Ukraine, intelligence experts say, and almost anything the U.S. shares with Ukraine is assumed to also make it to Russian intelligence. Other Eastern European countries are equally riddled with Russian spies and sympathizers, particularly the frontline countries.
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As billions of dollars worth of arms started flowing through Eastern Europe, another issue that the CIA is working on is the task of fighting corruption, which turned out to be a major problem. This involves not only accounting for where weapons are going but also quashing the pilfering and kickbacks involved in the movement of so much materiel to Ukraine.
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From Poland, CIA case officers are able to connect with their many agents, including Ukrainian and Russian spies. CIA ground branch personnel of the Special Activities Center handle security and interact with their Ukrainian partners and the special operations forces of 20 nations, almost all of whom also operate from Polish bases. CIA cyber operators work closely with their Polish partners.
Hey! It is “Newsweek”, aka controlled dump of wishful thinking from DC Swamp Creatures, intended to fool the gullible.
Well, the CIA did such a great job supporting US/NATO wars of aggression in Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, it gives us a reasonable guess as to how this US/NATO proxy war will end … assuming that Biden does not bumble his way into all out global thermonuclear war.
Remember, it’s clandestine, you know, secret, and we’re not allies with Ukraine.
That none of this is secret, and in war what you do is more important than what you say, and we are damn sure DOING alliance with Ukraine isn’t important; just follow the narrative.
“President Joe Biden has determined that the United States (and Kyiv) will not undertake any actions that might threaten Russia itself or the survival of the Russian state.”
This is directly contrary to oft-stated policy, but far more significant the policy of the USA since the 1990s advances steadily EAST towards Moscow.
Can there be a better example of just how delusional the entire US security and intelligence agencies are? They still have no idea of the size of the Russian economy, which is probably the fourth largest in the world. They have no idea of the capabilities of the Russian industrial sector. They have no idea of the size and capabilities of the Russian military.
They think they are fighting Spain.
It has also become painfully evident that 30 years of fighting essentially unarmed Muslim peasants, and losing to them, has produced a couple of generations of American military officers who have no tactical skills or knowledge whatsoever. They are telling the Ukrainians to attack across open, flat country with no air support and only limited artillery support. Even the British infantry at the Somme in 1916 had better artillery support than the Ukrainians, and they also failed.
PS. Watch the really frightening video of a dazed, confused Biden being manhandled through a ceremony on the Windsor parade ground by King Charles. Just who is making decisions in Washington? Certain not the senile, rapidly declining Joe Biden.
Bob Sykes: “They are telling the Ukrainians to attack across open, flat country with no air support and only limited artillery support.”
Apparently, the English WW1 plan of sending massed infantry against dug-in German machine gunners was that eventually the machine guns would jam, or overheat, or run out of ammunition. Then the peons at the back of the infantry charge could survive long enough to shoot the machine gunners. That plan may have made sense to English general officers who had learned their craft on the cricket pitches of Eton — and who had little concern for the lives of their lower-class countrymen.
It seems that the current US/NATO instructions to the unfortunate Ukrainian conscripts charging Russian positions have been cut from the same cloth.
It takes a lot of chutzpah to say that CIA doesn’t hand Volodymyrokov Zelenskyyy his daily talking points.
“If we want Kyiv to listen to us, we need to remind ourselves that the Ukrainians are winning the war, not us.”
Bwahahaha!
The result of the vaunted Ukrainian summer offensive was that the Russians have gained ground while killing tens of thousands of Ukrainians.
(That’s only a small embellishment of “Volodymyr Zelenskyy”, which has appeared in Haaretz. You would think that the scriptwriters would try to come up with more believable names for their reality show war drama characters, but apparently that’s too much to ask of the rapidly declining Jewish population.)
Bob Sykes: “Watch the really frightening video of a dazed, confused Biden being manhandled through a ceremony on the Windsor parade ground by King Charles. Just who is making decisions in Washington? Certain not the senile, rapidly declining Joe Biden.”
It isn’t really very frightening. The fact that the Washington establishment can send a masked man around to the world’s heads of state and make them smile and shake hands and take pictures is one of the greatest mogs of all time.
“That plan may have made sense to English general officers who had learned their craft on the cricket pitches of Eton — and who had little concern for the lives of their lower-class countrymen.”
Whig history. In armies run by warrior-caste aristocrats, like Imperial Germany, they were greatly concerned about conserving the blood of their forces. In armies (countries) run by bureaucrats, like France and England, they were highly enthusiastic about sending such warrior-caste men to needless deaths, who they saw as rivals, and whom they alternated between both hating and fearing. Bureaucrats love starting wars because they expect their enemies (their neighbors) to be the ones to die in them.
Problem arose in that they were a little too cavalier about actually playing to win, and a little too enthusiastic about human sacrifice, that, against all odds, it started looking like Germany would actually prevail.
Luckily for the priesthood occupying Europe at the time, their sister priesthood occupying America at the time was more than enthusiastic to pull their bacon out of the fire and Make The World Safe For Democracy (regardless of any restiveness on the part of the recalcitrant cattle uninterested in being dragged into such foreign misadventures).
You can see the same essential dynamic playing out in Ruthenia today. The ‘advising experts’ managing the war for Ukraine are remarkably cavalier about prodding them into paying for blotches of colour on a map with Ukrainian blood, and above all about the prospect of all Ukraine dying to the last Ukrainian to bruise the nose of Russia. “We’re behind you 100% in this war”.
Of course, such is always the end result for any body that makes the mistake of trying to be friends with The Great Satan.