NYT
The Spy War: How the CIA Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin
Adam Entous and Michael Schwirtz
Sun, February 25, 2024
Nestled in a dense forest, the Ukrainian military base appears abandoned and destroyed, its command center a burned-out husk, a casualty of a Russian missile barrage early in the war.
But that is above ground.
Not far away, a discreet passageway descends to a subterranean bunker where teams of Ukrainian soldiers track Russian spy satellites and eavesdrop on conversations between Russian commanders. On one screen, a red line followed the route of an explosive drone threading through Russian air defenses from a point in central Ukraine to a target in the Russian city of Rostov.
The underground bunker, built to replace the destroyed command center in the months after Russia’s invasion, is a secret nerve center of Ukraine’s military.
There is also one more secret: The base is almost fully financed, and partly equipped, by the CIA.
“One hundred and ten percent,” Gen. Serhii Dvoretskiy, a top intelligence commander, said in an interview at the base.
Now entering the third year of a war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, the intelligence partnership between the United States and Ukraine is a linchpin of Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. The CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies provide intelligence for targeted missile strikes, track Russian troop movements and help support spy networks.
But the partnership is no wartime creation, nor is Ukraine the only beneficiary.
It 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.
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. Before the war, the Ukrainians proved themselves to the Americans by collecting intercepts that helped prove Russia’s involvement in the 2014 downing of a commercial jetliner, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. The Ukrainians also helped the Americans go after the Russian operatives who meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
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Nestled in a dense forest, the Ukrainian military base appears abandoned and destroyed, its command center a burned-out husk, a casualty of a Russian missile barrage early in the war. But that is above ground. Not far away, a discreet passageway descends to a subterranean bunker where teams of...
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