The Truth About Ukraine Starts to Leak Out

But claiming Russia was provoked into war still means you're a Russian stooge

The conspiracies about Ukraine are like all the rest - after a few years the conspiracy theorists are proven correct. First you are called a Russian stooge for suggesting NATO expansion may have provoked Russia to invade Ukraine, before the truth starts to slowly drip out. A few more years and The Guardian will be lecturing us on biolabs in Ukraine!

So what things, that we weren’t allowed to talk about, have been revealed this week?

Firstly, Chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, Kyrylo Budanov, confirmed that the Western MSM had been telling porkies about Russia using Iranian missiles. “The Russians do not have Iranian missiles, North Korean were used a few time, but not on a large scale,” he told reporters.

Next, Budanov, admitted that Putin didn’t take out Navalny. “I may disappoint you, but what we know is that he really died due to a blood clot,” the Ukrainian chief confirmed.

But these revelations were nothing compared to The New York Times Special - The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin.

Wait what? I thought we have been repeatedly told that this isn’t a proxy American war and the US is just providing assistance to save democracy in Ukraine. Now, after gaslighting us for two years, they are admitting the US has been poking Russia for a decade now.

The NYT begins by telling us a ‘secret’ that many already knew - the Ukrainian underground bases are “almost fully financed and partly equipped, by the C.I.A.

But it doesn’t stop there. No, it reveals that these bases and this American funding isn’t a result of the Russian invasion, they took root a decade ago, “coming together in fits and starts under three very different U.S. presidents, pushed forward by key individuals who often took daring risks”.

It has transformed Ukraine, whose intelligence agencies were long seen as thoroughly compromised by Russia, into one of Washington’s most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today.

Apparently, since 2014, the Americans have built 12 secret bases along the Russian border.

The C.I.A have also been training an elite Ukrainian commando force, known as Unit 2245, since 2016. This includes Budanov, who is now Ukraine’s military intelligence general, referenced above.

On top of that, the C.I.A have trained “a new generation of Ukrainian spies who operated inside Russia, across Europe, and in Cuba and other places where the Russians have a large presence.

Now these intelligence networks are more important than ever, as Russia is on the offensive and Ukraine is more dependent on sabotage and long-range missile strikes that require spies far behind enemy lines. And they are increasingly at risk: If Republicans in Congress end military funding to Kyiv, the C.I.A. may have to scale back.

In 2021, Putin decided on his full-scale invasion of Ukraine after the head of his spy services told him the C.I.A and MI6 were controlling Ukraine. The NYT insists that the C.I.A hadn’t pushed its way into Ukraine but instead were courted by Ukrainian intelligence.

In 2015, Gen. Valeriy Kondratiuk, then Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, arrived at a meeting with the C.I.A.’s deputy station chief and without warning handed over a stack of top-secret files.

That initial tranche contained secrets about the Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet, including detailed information about the latest Russian nuclear submarine designs. Before long, teams of C.I.A. officers were regularly leaving his office with backpacks full of documents.

The NYT claims the Americans weren’t moving fast enough for the Ukrainians who “began staging assassinations and other lethal operations, which violated the terms the White House thought the Ukrainians had agreed to”.

Is it a coincidence that Russia’s invasion began exactly eight years (to the day) that the C.I.A’s partnership in Ukraine began? Was Putin sending a message by invading on this date?

On 24 February 2014 “the government’s new spy chief, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, arrived at the headquarters of the domestic intelligence agency and found a pile of smoldering documents in the courtyard. Inside, many of the computers had been wiped or were infected with Russian malware

“It was empty. No lights. No leadership. Nobody was there,” Mr. Nalyvaichenko said in an interview.

He went to an office and called the C.I.A. station chief and the local head of MI6. It was near midnight but he summoned them to the building, asked for help in rebuilding the agency from the ground up, and proposed a three-way partnership. “That’s how it all started,” Mr. Nalyvaichenko said.”

After a visit from the then CIA chief, John O. Brennan, who wanted the Ukrainians to prove themselves, Obama became concerned about provoking Moscow.

The White House crafted secret rules that infuriated the Ukrainians and that some inside the C.I.A. thought of as handcuffs. The rules barred intelligence agencies from providing any support to Ukraine that could be “reasonably expected” to have lethal consequences.

What better way to get those handcuffs removed than to provoke Russia into invading Ukraine.

The same summer, the Ukrainians had been asked to prove themselves and the C.I.A considered themselves to be in handcuffs, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was blown out of the sky in eastern Ukraine. Almost 300 people died and, of course, the new Ukrainian intelligence service, known as the Fifth Directorate, provided the evidence that it was Russia that did it.

The C.I.A was able to use their new Ukrainian friends to recruit assets inside Russia.

“For a Russian, allowing oneself to be recruited by an American is to commit the absolute, ultimate in treachery and treason,” General Kondratiuk said. “But for a Russian to be recruited by a Ukrainian, it’s just friends talking over a beer.”

By 2016, the C.I.A was sending equipment including “radios and devices for intercepting secret enemy communications”.

Operation Goldfish began training Ukrainian officers in European cities before placing them in the secret bases along the Russian border. From these bases, the officers ran a network of agents within Russia.

The NYT claims that the C.I.A only taught defensive techniques and were concerned about offensive attacks. Pull the other one!

The intent of the training was to teach defensive techniques, but C.I.A. officers understood that without their knowledge the Ukrainians could use the same techniques in offensive lethal operations.

How convenient.

A team of Ukrainian agents set up an unmanned, shoulder-fired rocket launcher in a building in the occupied territories. It was directly across from the office of a rebel commander named Mikhail Tolstykh, better known as Givi. Using a remote trigger, they fired the launcher as soon as Givi entered his office, killing him, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.

A shadow war was now in overdrive. The Russians used a car bomb to assassinate the head of Unit 2245, the elite Ukrainian commando force. The commander, Col. Maksim Shapoval, was on his way to meeting with C.I.A. officers in Kyiv when his car exploded.

Trump’s election made no difference. New presidents never do. The Deep State gonna keep on Deep Stating.

But whatever Mr. Trump said and did, his administration often went in the other direction. This is because Mr. Trump had put Russia hawks in key positions, including Mike Pompeo as C.I.A. director and John Bolton as national security adviser. They visited Kyiv to underline their full support for the secret partnership, which expanded to include more specialized training programs and the building of additional secret bases.

The base in the forest grew to include a new command center and barracks, and swelled from 80 to 800 Ukrainian intelligence officers.

Of course, all this extra man power was blamed on stopping Russia from interfering in US elections.

As the war drums started to beat in 2021, the C.I.A. and MI6 told the Ukrainians that they had access to information showing that Russia wanted to install a puppet in Kyiv.

The new intelligence listed the names of Ukrainian officials whom the Russians were planning to kill or capture, as well as the Ukrainians the Kremlin hoped to install in power.

President Zelensky and some of his top advisers appeared unconvinced, even after Mr. Burns, the C.I.A. director, rushed to Kyiv in January 2022 to brief them.

The question is - why is this information being leaked out now? Are the Americans preparing to abandon Ukraine as they fear? “It happened in Afghanistan before and now it’s going to happen in Ukraine,” a senior Ukrainian officer said.

But repeat after me - this isn’t an American proxy war and there was never any Western provocation.