A bombshell report from the New York Times yesterday received little fanfare in major media circles. The report centers on the United States Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine operations in Eastern Ukraine, which began soon after the 2014 coup that begat open hostilities between the Russian Federation and Ukraine.
At that time, the proximal cause of the hostilities was a trade offer to Ukraine from the European Union, which the pro-Russian, duly-elected President of Ukraine, Yanukovych, and his government rejected. This spurred protests, which became the “Orange Revolution.”
The United States wholeheartedly backed the EU proposal and the protests that followed. But more than that, we’ve known since 2014 that Victoria Nuland (a long-time neocon who was a deputy of Dick Cheney’s, cited as a major architect of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars during the Bush administration) while serving in Obama’s State Department as Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasian Affairs, was caught red-handed on a recording discussing the Ukrainian coup and who the US intended to install as the new leader.
Here’s the call, which demonstrates the US State Department mid-wifing the switch from pro-Russian to pro-American leadership in Ukraine.
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After that February 2014 coup, Russia invaded the Crimea and swiftly took over the region. Meanwhile, Russian-speaking pro-Russian “separatist Rebels” in the Eastern part of Ukraine rose up against the new government, and the two sides have been fighting a Civil War (with the “rebels” backed by Russia, Ukraine backed by the US) ever since.
Yesterday’s New York Times reporting has filled in major gaps in clandestine operations perpetrated by the CIA and other US assets in the ten-year-old Cold War-style proxy fight with Russia, which closely resembles Korea, Vietnam, and other disasters of 20th-century US military thinking.
Here is what the CIA has been doing in Eastern Ukraine, according to the NYT, “The listening post in the Ukrainian forest is part of a CIA-supported network of spy bases constructed in the past eight years that includes 12 secret locations along the Russian border…Around 2016, the CIA began training an elite Ukrainian commando force — known as Unit 2245 — which captured Russian drones and communications gear so that the CIA technicians could reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s encryption systems. (One officer in the unit was Kyrylo Budanov, now the general leading Ukraine’s military intelligence.)
“And the CIA. also helped train 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.”
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According to the New York Times, “Toward the end of 2021, according to a senior European official, Mr. Putin was weighing whether to launch his full-scale invasion when he met with the head of one of Russia’s main spy services, who told him that the CIA., together with Britain’s MI6, were controlling Ukraine and turning it into a beachhead for operations against Moscow.”
Now, just for a moment, consider the following scenario: the Chinese Communist Party has offered a lucrative trade deal with Mexico that would make China the preferred trading partner of our neighbor to the South. The Mexican government, being a longtime ally of the United States, rejected the deal, but the Mexican people protested and started to violently protest as they preferred the more lucrative Chinese trade and ties.
Then, China is caught red-handed, helping to bring about a coup of the elected Mexican government and installing a pro-Chinese Mexican President in its stead. Next, Chinese Intelligence forces begin to work directly with the Mexicans to build secret spy bases across the US-Mexico border to steal technology and secrets and feed all of this intelligence back to Beijing.
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The situation festered and deteriorated until the United States, in a letter to the Chinese and their allies in Mexico and elsewhere, required that the situation change immediately. listing a number of demands to be negotiated. The US builds up forces on the Mexican border; it’s clear the US intends to invade if the situation does not change. The Chinese do not respond, and the United States invades Mexico.
So, here’s that letter from Putin’s Russia in 2021 that demanded that the US and NATO cease operations in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. It coincided with a Russian military buildup on the border. And while the US and NATO responses were never officially released, the New York Times on January 26th, 2022 reported that “The United States and its allies on Wednesday formally rejected Russia’s demands that NATO retreat from Eastern Europe and bar Ukraine from ever entering the alliance,” a flat rejection. Russia began the latest invasion less than a month later.
The New York Times also just reported that CIA Director William Burns had visited Ukraine 10 separate times – has any CIA director spent more time in any country? This fact alone indicates that the CIA owns the Ukraine War. There are reports the CIA is likewise doing everything it can to produce politicized intelligence and damage control for the War. Despite the world having already sent over 250 billion Euros in aid to Ukraine, we are expected to send $60 billion more with no plan, no exit strategy, and no end in sight.
The American people are tired of being told they are awful human beings for not continuing to fund a useless, completely avoidable war for which our State Department and CIA are either culpable or directly responsible.
Although it is hard to find an accurate accounting of the CIA annual budget (isn’t that interesting!?), we do know that the Intelligence budget for the US is approximately $100B per year; the State Department budget is approximately $67B annually. That is plenty of money to fund Ukraine’s $60B need.
We must hold responsible foreign bureaucrats for their profligate folly; they imagine they play chess with the world. Well, let them fix what they’ve broken and pay for the privilege of doing so. We refuse to continue to bail them out.
If Ukraine’s aid to the tune of $60B is indeed existential, these people can find a way to produce it from their own budgets. God speed.
Justin Weller is the Founder and Editor of The Country, and host of the podcast The Country with Justin Weller. Prior, he was a general manager and sales leader in startup and Big Tech firms, interned on Capitol Hill, and was a Contributing Editor at mxdwn.com. This piece is republished from The Country
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Tampa Free Press.
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