Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 exposed deep weaknesses inside Ukraine’s security services, including the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU):
In 2015, the CIA helped support the creation of the SBU’s Fifth Directorate, a specialized unit that combined counterintelligence and special operations. According to reporting by The New Yorker, the unit developed networks of agents inside occupied territory, conducted surveillance operations and carried out some of Ukraine’s earliest covert actions against Russian proxy forces.
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Among the officers who emerged from this period was future HUR chief Kyrylo Budanov.
The Times reported in February 2024 that Budanov served in Unit 2245, an elite military intelligence formation that worked closely with the CIA after 2015. The unit specialized in recovering Russian military equipment, communications systems and other material that could be analyzed by both Ukrainian and American intelligence services.
The intelligence gathered from captured Russian equipment provided valuable insight into Moscow’s capabilities while helping deepen cooperation between Ukrainian and American services.
Budanov was later wounded while conducting operations against Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine and received rehabilitation at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in the United States. He would go on to lead Ukraine’s military intelligence agency.
Officers trained during the years immediately following Crimea now occupy senior leadership positions throughout Ukraine’s intelligence and security services.
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A December New York Times investigation noted that CIA officers and US military planners had assisted Ukraine in refining its campaign against Russia’s energy sector.
Rather than attacking refineries indiscriminately, planners reportedly focused on hard-to-replace components. In one case, a CIA expert identified a critical refinery coupler whose destruction could leave a facility offline for weeks.
The same logic reportedly informed Ukraine’s campaign against Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, the network of aging vessels used to export sanctioned Russian oil around the world.
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Following the public confrontation between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in February 2025, Washington temporarily suspended intelligence cooperation with Kyiv, raising concerns about the future of US support.
However, The Times reported that CIA Director John Ratcliffe successfully argued for maintaining the agency’s presence inside Ukraine despite broader political disagreements over military aid. The CIA reportedly retained personnel in the country and expanded funding for several Ukraine-related programs.
The decision reflected a reality often overlooked in discussions about Western assistance: Ukraine also provides value to the United States. As Bogan put it, “Ukraine understands Russia in ways that Western services never fully can.”
This is US/UK/EU propaganda. Prior to the coup of 2014 that removed Ukraine’s democratically elected and legitmate president, Yanukovich, and that replaced him with the current paleo-Nazi junta, over 90 of Crrimeans were ethnic Russians, and they voted to join Russia. The vote was unauthorized, but there is no doubt it was accurate. The Russian military did not invade Crimea. They were already there by treaty. And Crimea (and all of Ukraine) had been sovereign Russian territory for over 300 years, longer than the USA has existed,