The Spy Battle: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Combat Putin

Nestled in a dense forest, the Ukrainian army base seems deserted and destroyed, its command middle a burned-out husk, a casualty of a Russian missile barrage early within the battle.

However that’s above floor.

Not far-off, a discreet passageway descends to a subterranean bunker the place groups of Ukrainian troopers monitor Russian spy satellites and snoop on conversations between Russian commanders. On one display screen, a purple line adopted the route of an explosive drone threading by way of Russian air defenses from a degree in central Ukraine to a goal within the Russian metropolis of Rostov.

The underground bunker, constructed to switch the destroyed command middle within the months after Russia’s invasion, is a secret nerve middle of Ukraine’s army.

There may be additionally yet another secret: The bottom is nearly totally financed, and partly outfitted, by the C.I.A.

“One hundred and ten percent,” Gen. Serhii Dvoretskiy, a high intelligence commander, stated in an interview on the base.

Now getting into the third yr of a battle that has claimed a whole lot of hundreds of lives, the intelligence partnership between Washington and Kyiv is a linchpin of Ukraine’s skill to defend itself. The C.I.A. and different American intelligence companies present intelligence for focused missile strikes, monitor Russian troop actions and assist assist spy networks.

However the partnership isn’t any wartime creation, neither is Ukraine the one beneficiary.

It took root a decade in the past, coming collectively in suits and begins beneath three very completely different U.S. presidents, pushed ahead by key people who usually took daring dangers. It has remodeled Ukraine, whose intelligence companies had been lengthy seen as completely compromised by Russia, into one among Washington’s most vital intelligence companions in opposition to the Kremlin at the moment.

The listening publish within the Ukrainian forest is a part of a C.I.A.-supported community of spy bases constructed up to now eight years that features 12 secret places alongside the Russian border. Earlier than the battle, the Ukrainians proved themselves to the Individuals by accumulating intercepts that helped show Russia’s involvement in the 2014 downing of a industrial jetliner, Malaysia Airways Flight 17. The Ukrainians additionally helped the Individuals go after the Russian operatives who meddled within the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Round 2016, the C.I.A. started coaching an elite Ukrainian commando power — often called Unit 2245 — which captured Russian drones and communications gear in order that C.I.A. technicians may reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s encryption programs. (One officer within the unit was Kyrylo Budanov, now the final main Ukraine’s army intelligence.)

And the C.I.A. additionally helped practice a brand new technology of Ukrainian spies who operated inside Russia, throughout Europe, and in Cuba and different locations the place the Russians have a big presence.

The connection is so ingrained that C.I.A. officers remained at a distant location in western Ukraine when the Biden administration evacuated U.S. personnel within the weeks earlier than Russia invaded in February 2022. In the course of the invasion, the officers relayed crucial intelligence, together with the place Russia was planning strikes and which weapons programs they’d use.

“Without them, there would have been no way for us to resist the Russians, or to beat them,” stated Ivan Bakanov, who was then head of Ukraine’s home intelligence company, the S.B.U.

The small print of this intelligence partnership, lots of that are being disclosed by The New York Occasions for the primary time, have been a carefully guarded secret for a decade.

In additional than 200 interviews, present and former officers in Ukraine, the USA and Europe described a partnership that just about foundered from mutual mistrust earlier than it steadily expanded, turning Ukraine into an intelligence-gathering hub that intercepted extra Russian communications than the C.I.A. station in Kyiv may initially deal with. Most of the officers spoke on situation of anonymity to debate intelligence and issues of delicate diplomacy.

Now these intelligence networks are extra vital than ever, as Russia is on the offensive and Ukraine is extra depending on sabotage and long-range missile strikes that require spies far behind enemy traces. And they’re more and more in danger: If Republicans in Congress finish army funding to Kyiv, the C.I.A. might must cut back.

To attempt to reassure Ukrainian leaders, William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, made a secret go to to Ukraine final Thursday, his tenth go to because the invasion.

From the outset, a shared adversary — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — introduced the C.I.A. and its Ukrainian companions collectively. Obsessive about “losing” Ukraine to the West, Mr. Putin had repeatedly interfered in Ukraine’s political system, handpicking leaders he believed would preserve Ukraine inside Russia’s orbit, but every time it backfired, driving protesters into the streets.

Mr. Putin has lengthy blamed Western intelligence companies for manipulating Kyiv and sowing anti-Russia sentiment in Ukraine.

Towards the top of 2021, in response to a senior European official, Mr. Putin was weighing whether or not to launch his full-scale invasion when he met with the pinnacle of one among Russia’s most important spy providers, who advised him that the C.I.A., along with Britain’s MI6, had been controlling Ukraine and turning it right into a beachhead for operations in opposition to Moscow.

However the Occasions investigation discovered that Mr. Putin and his advisers misinterpret a crucial dynamic. The C.I.A. didn’t push its means into Ukraine. U.S. officers had been usually reluctant to totally have interaction, fearing that Ukrainian officers couldn’t be trusted, and worrying about frightening the Kremlin.

But a good circle of Ukrainian intelligence officers assiduously courted the C.I.A. and progressively made themselves important to the Individuals. In 2015, Gen. Valeriy Kondratiuk, then Ukraine’s head of army intelligence, arrived at a gathering with the C.I.A.’s deputy station chief and with out warning handed over a stack of top-secret recordsdata.

That preliminary tranche contained secrets and techniques concerning the Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet, together with detailed details about the newest Russian nuclear submarine designs. Earlier than lengthy, groups of C.I.A. officers had been repeatedly leaving his workplace with backpacks stuffed with paperwork.

“We understood that we needed to create the conditions of trust,” Common Kondratiuk stated.

Because the partnership deepened after 2016, the Ukrainians turned impatient with what they thought of Washington’s undue warning, and started staging assassinations and different deadly operations, which violated the phrases the White Home thought the Ukrainians had agreed to. Infuriated, officers in Washington threatened to chop off assist, however they by no means did.

“The relationships only got stronger and stronger because both sides saw value in it, and the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv — our station there, the operation out of Ukraine — became the best source of information, signals and everything else, on Russia,” stated a former senior American official. “We couldn’t get enough of it.”

That is the untold story of the way it all occurred.

A Cautious Starting

The C.I.A.’s partnership in Ukraine might be traced again to 2 telephone calls on the night time of Feb. 24, 2014, eight years to the day earlier than Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Tens of millions of Ukrainians had simply overrun the nation’s pro-Kremlin authorities and the president, Viktor Yanukovych, and his spy chiefs had fled to Russia. Within the tumult, a fragile pro-Western authorities shortly took energy.

The federal government’s new spy chief, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, arrived on the headquarters of the home intelligence company and located a pile of smoldering paperwork within the courtyard. Inside, lots of the computer systems had been wiped or had been contaminated with Russian malware.

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

He went to an workplace and known as the C.I.A. station chief and the native head of MI6. It was close to midnight however he summoned them to the constructing, requested for assist in rebuilding the company from the bottom up, and proposed a three-way partnership. “That’s how it all started,” Mr. Nalyvaichenko stated.

The state of affairs shortly turned extra harmful. Mr. Putin seized Crimea. His brokers fomented separatist rebellions that might grow to be a battle within the nation’s east. Ukraine was on battle footing, and Mr. Nalyvaichenko appealed to the C.I.A. for overhead imagery and different intelligence to assist defend its territory.

With violence escalating, an unmarked U.S. authorities aircraft touched down at an airport in Kyiv carrying John O. Brennan, then the director of the C.I.A. He advised Mr. Nalyvaichenko that the C.I.A. was inquisitive about creating a relationship however solely at a tempo the company was snug with, in response to U.S. and Ukrainian officers.

To the C.I.A., the unknown query was how lengthy Mr. Nalyvaichenko and the pro-Western authorities could be round. The C.I.A. had been burned earlier than in Ukraine.

Following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine gained independence after which veered between competing political forces: those who needed to stay near Moscow and those who needed to align with the West. Throughout a earlier stint as spy chief, Mr. Nalyvaichenko began an analogous partnership with the C.I.A., which dissolved when the nation swung again towards Russia.

Now Mr. Brennan defined that to unlock C.I.A. help the Ukrainians needed to show that they might present intelligence of worth to the Individuals. Additionally they wanted to purge Russian spies; the home spy company, the S.B.U., was riddled with them. (Living proof: The Russians shortly realized about Mr. Brennan’s supposedly secret go to. The Kremlin’s propaganda shops printed a photoshopped picture of the C.I.A. director carrying a clown wig and make-up.)

Mr. Brennan returned to Washington, the place advisers to President Barack Obama had been deeply involved about frightening Moscow. The White Home crafted secret guidelines that infuriated the Ukrainians and that some contained in the C.I.A. considered handcuffs. The principles barred intelligence companies from offering any assist to Ukraine that could possibly be “reasonably expected” to have deadly penalties.

The end result was a fragile balancing act. The C.I.A. was alleged to strengthen Ukraine’s intelligence companies with out frightening the Russians. The purple traces had been by no means exactly clear, which created a persistent stress within the partnership.

In Kyiv, Mr. Nalyvaichenko picked a longtime aide, Common Kondratiuk, to function head of counterintelligence, they usually created a brand new paramilitary unit that was deployed behind enemy traces to conduct operations and collect intelligence that the C.I.A. or MI6 wouldn’t present to them.

Generally known as the Fifth Directorate, this unit could be crammed with officers born after Ukraine gained independence.

“They had no connection with Russia,” Common Kondratiuk stated. “They didn’t even know what the Soviet Union was.”

That summer season, Malaysia Airways Flight 17, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, blew up in midair and crashed in japanese Ukraine, killing almost 300 passengers and crew. The Fifth Directorate produced phone intercepts and different intelligence inside hours of the crash that shortly positioned accountability on Russian-backed separatists.

The C.I.A. was impressed, and made its first significant dedication by offering safe communications gear and specialised coaching to members of the Fifth Directorate and two different elite models.

“The Ukrainians wanted fish and we, for policy reasons, couldn’t deliver that fish,” stated a former U.S. official, referring to intelligence that would assist them battle the Russians. “But we were happy to teach them how to fish and deliver fly-fishing equipment.”

A Secret Santa

In the summertime of 2015, Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, shook up the home service and put in an ally to switch Mr. Nalyvaichenko, the C.I.A.’s trusted companion. However the change created a chance elsewhere.

Within the reshuffle, Common Kondratiuk was appointed as the pinnacle of the nation’s army intelligence company, often called the HUR, the place years earlier he had began his profession. It might be an early instance of how private ties, greater than coverage shifts, would deepen the C.I.A.’s involvement in Ukraine.

Not like the home company, the HUR had the authority to gather intelligence outdoors the nation, together with in Russia. However the Individuals had seen little worth in cultivating the company as a result of it wasn’t producing any intelligence of worth on the Russians — and since it was seen as a bastion of Russian sympathizers.

Attempting to construct belief, Common Kondratiuk organized a gathering together with his American counterpart on the Protection Intelligence Company and handed over a stack of secret Russian paperwork. However senior D.I.A. officers had been suspicious and discouraged constructing nearer ties.

The overall wanted to discover a extra prepared companion.

Months earlier, whereas nonetheless with the home company, Common Kondratiuk visited the C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va. In these conferences, he met a C.I.A. officer with a jolly demeanor and a bushy beard who had been tapped to grow to be the subsequent station chief in Kyiv.

After an extended day of conferences, the C.I.A. took Common Kondratiuk to a Washington Capitals hockey match, the place he and the incoming station chief sat in a luxurious field and loudly booed Alex Ovechkin, the workforce’s star participant from Russia.

The station chief had not but arrived when Common Kondratiuk handed over to the C.I.A. the key paperwork concerning the Russian Navy. “There’s more where this came from,” he promised, and the paperwork had been despatched off to analysts in Langley.

The analysts concluded the paperwork had been genuine, and after the station chief arrived in Kyiv, the C.I.A. turned Common Kondratiuk’s main companion.

Common Kondratiuk knew he wanted the C.I.A. to strengthen his personal company. The C.I.A. thought the final would possibly be capable to assist Langley, too. It struggled to recruit spies inside Russia as a result of its case officers had been beneath heavy surveillance.

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

The brand new station chief started repeatedly visiting Common Kondratiuk, whose workplace was embellished with an aquarium the place yellow and blue fish — the nationwide colours of Ukraine — swam circles round a mannequin of a sunken Russian submarine. The 2 males turned shut, which drove the connection between the 2 companies, and the Ukrainians gave the brand new station chief an affectionate nickname: Santa Claus.

In January 2016, Common Kondratiuk flew to Washington for conferences at Scattergood, an property on the C.I.A. campus in Virginia the place the company usually fetes visiting dignitaries. The company agreed to assist the HUR modernize, and to enhance its skill to intercept Russian army communications. In trade, Common Kondratiuk agreed to share all the uncooked intelligence with the Individuals.

Now the partnership was actual.

Operation Goldfish

At this time, the slender highway resulting in the key base is framed by minefields, seeded as a line of protection within the weeks after Russia’s invasion. The Russian missiles that hit the bottom had seemingly shut it down, however simply weeks later the Ukrainians returned.

With cash and tools offered by the C.I.A., crews beneath Common Dvoretskiy’s command started to rebuild, however underground. To keep away from detection, they solely labored at night time and when Russian spy satellites weren’t overhead. Employees additionally parked their vehicles a distance away from the development web site.

Within the bunker, Common Dvoretskiy pointed to communications tools and enormous pc servers, a few of which had been financed by the C.I.A. He stated his groups had been utilizing the bottom to hack into the Russian army’s safe communications networks.

“This is the thing that breaks into satellites and decodes secret conversations,” Common Dvoretskiy advised a Occasions journalist on a tour, including that they had been hacking into spy satellites from China and Belarus, too.

One other officer positioned two lately produced maps on a desk, as proof of how Ukraine is monitoring Russian exercise all over the world.

The primary confirmed the overhead routes of Russian spy satellites touring over central Ukraine. The second confirmed how Russian spy satellites are passing over strategic army installations — together with a nuclear weapons facility — within the japanese and central United States.

The C.I.A. started sending tools in 2016, after the pivotal assembly at Scattergood, Common Dvoretskiy stated, offering encrypted radios and units for intercepting secret enemy communications.

Past the bottom, the C.I.A. additionally oversaw a coaching program, carried out in two European cities, to show Ukrainian intelligence officers learn how to convincingly assume pretend personas and steal secrets and techniques in Russia and different international locations which might be adept at rooting out spies. This system was known as Operation Goldfish, which derived from a joke a couple of Russian-speaking goldfish who gives two Estonians needs in trade for its freedom.

The punchline was that one of many Estonians bashed the fish’s head with a rock, explaining that something talking Russian couldn’t be trusted.

The Operation Goldfish officers had been quickly deployed to 12 newly-built, ahead working bases constructed alongside the Russian border. From every base, Common Kondratiuk stated, the Ukrainian officers ran networks of brokers who gathered intelligence inside Russia.

C.I.A. officers put in tools on the bases to assist collect intelligence and likewise recognized a number of the most expert Ukrainian graduates of the Operation Goldfish program, working with them to strategy potential Russian sources. These graduates then educated sleeper brokers on Ukrainian territory meant to launch guerrilla operations in case of occupation.

It might usually take years for the C.I.A. to develop sufficient belief in a overseas company to start conducting joint operations. With the Ukrainians it had taken lower than six months. The brand new partnership began producing a lot uncooked intelligence about Russia that it needed to be shipped to Langley for processing.

However the C.I.A. did have purple traces. It wouldn’t assist the Ukrainians conduct offensive deadly operations.

“We made a distinction between intelligence collection operations and things that go boom,” a former senior U.S. official stated.

‘This is Our Country’

It was a distinction that grated on the Ukrainians.

First, Common Kondratiuk was aggravated when the Individuals refused to supply satellite tv for pc photographs from inside Russia. Quickly after, he requested C.I.A. help in planning a clandestine mission to ship HUR commandos into Russia to plant explosive units at practice depots utilized by the Russian army. If the Russian army sought to take extra Ukrainian territory, Ukrainians may detonate the explosives to gradual the Russian advance.

When the station chief briefed his superiors, they “lost their minds,” as one former official put it. Mr. Brennan, the C.I.A. director, known as Common Kondratiuk to make sure that mission was canceled and that Ukraine abided by the purple traces forbidding deadly operations.

Common Kondratiuk canceled the mission, however he additionally took a unique lesson. “Going forward, we worked to not have discussions about these things with your guys,” he stated.

Late that summer season, Ukrainian spies found that Russian forces had been deploying assault helicopters at an airfield on the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula, probably to stage a shock assault.

Common Kondratiuk determined to ship a workforce into Crimea to plant explosives on the airfield so that they could possibly be detonated if Russia moved to assault.

This time, he didn’t ask the C.I.A. for permission. He turned to Unit 2245, the commando power that obtained specialised army coaching from the C.I.A.’s elite paramilitary group, often called the Floor Division. The intent of the coaching was to show defensive strategies, however C.I.A. officers understood that with out their information the Ukrainians may use the identical strategies in offensive deadly operations.

On the time, the longer term head of Ukraine’s army intelligence company, Common Budanov, was a rising star in Unit 2245. He was recognized for daring operations behind enemy traces and had deep ties to the C.I.A. The company had educated him and likewise taken the extraordinary step of sending him for rehabilitation to Walter Reed Nationwide Army Medical Middle in Maryland after he was shot in the suitable arm throughout combating within the Donbas.

Disguised in Russian uniforms, then-Lt. Col. Budanov led commandos throughout a slender gulf in inflatable speedboats, touchdown at night time in Crimea.

However an elite Russian commando unit was ready for them. The Ukrainians fought again, killing a number of Russian fighters, together with the son of a basic, earlier than retreating to the shoreline, plunging into the ocean and swimming for hours to Ukrainian-controlled territory.

It was a catastrophe. In a public deal with, President Putin accused the Ukrainians of plotting a terrorist assault and promised to avenge the deaths of the Russian fighters.

“There is no doubt that we will not let these things pass,” he stated.

In Washington, the Obama White Home was furious. Joseph R. Biden Jr., then the vp and a champion of help to Ukraine, known as Ukraine’s president to angrily complain.

“It causes a gigantic problem,” Mr. Biden stated within the name, a recording of which was leaked and printed on-line. “All I’m telling you as a friend is that my making arguments here is a hell of a lot harder now.”

A few of Mr. Obama’s advisers needed to close the C.I.A. program down, however Mr. Brennan persuaded them that doing so could be self-defeating, given the connection was beginning to produce intelligence on the Russians because the C.I.A. was investigating Russian election meddling.

Mr. Brennan received on the telephone with Common Kondratiuk to once more emphasize the purple traces.

The overall was upset. “This is our country,” he responded, in response to a colleague. “It’s our war, and we’ve got to fight.”

The blowback from Washington price Common Kondratiuk his job. However Ukraine didn’t again down.

At some point after Common Kondratiuk was eliminated, a mysterious explosion within the Russian-occupied metropolis of Donetsk, in japanese Ukraine, ripped by way of an elevator carrying a senior Russian separatist commander named Arsen Pavlov, recognized by his nom de guerre, Motorola.

The C.I.A. quickly realized that the assassins had been members of the Fifth Directorate, the spy group that obtained C.I.A. coaching. Ukraine’s home intelligence company had even handed out commemorative patches to these concerned, every one stitched with the phrase “Lift,” the British time period for an elevator.

Once more, a few of Mr. Obama’s advisers had been livid, however they had been lame geese — the presidential election pitting Donald J. Trump in opposition to Hillary Rodham Clinton was three weeks away — and the assassinations continued.

A workforce of Ukrainian brokers arrange an unmanned, shoulder-fired rocket launcher in a constructing within the occupied territories. It was instantly throughout from the workplace of a insurgent commander named Mikhail Tolstykh, higher often called Givi. Utilizing a distant set off, they fired the launcher as quickly as Givi entered his workplace, killing him, in response to U.S. and Ukrainian officers.

A shadow battle was now in overdrive. The Russians used a automobile bomb to assassinate the pinnacle of Unit 2245, the elite Ukrainian commando power. The commander, Col. Maksim Shapoval, was on his option to assembly with C.I.A. officers in Kyiv when his automobile exploded.

On the colonel’s wake, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, stood in mourning beside the C.I.A. station chief. Later, C.I.A. officers and their Ukrainian counterparts toasted Colonel Shapoval with whiskey photographs.

“For all of us,” Common Kondratiuk stated, “it was a blow.”

Tiptoeing Round Trump

The election of Mr. Trump in November 2016 put the Ukrainians and their C.I.A. companions on edge.

Mr. Trump praised Mr. Putin and dismissed Russia’s position in election interference. He was suspicious of Ukraine and later tried to stress its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to analyze his Democratic rival, Mr. Biden, leading to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment.

However no matter Mr. Trump stated and did, his administration usually went within the different course. It’s because Mr. Trump had put Russia hawks in key positions, together with Mike Pompeo as C.I.A. director and John Bolton as nationwide safety adviser. They visited Kyiv to underline their full assist for the key partnership, which expanded to incorporate extra specialised coaching applications and the constructing of extra secret bases.

The bottom within the forest grew to incorporate a brand new command middle and barracks, and swelled from 80 to 800 Ukrainian intelligence officers. Stopping Russia from interfering in future U.S. elections was a high C.I.A. precedence throughout this era, and Ukrainian and American intelligence officers joined forces to probe the pc programs of Russia’s intelligence companies to establish operatives attempting to control voters.

In a single joint operation, a HUR workforce duped an officer from Russia’s army intelligence service into offering info that allowed the C.I.A. to attach Russia’s authorities to the so-called Fancy Bear hacking group, which had been linked to election interference efforts in quite a lot of international locations.

Common Budanov, whom Mr. Zelensky tapped to steer the HUR in 2020, stated of the partnership: “It only strengthened. It grew systematically. The cooperation expanded to additional spheres and became more large-scale.”

The connection was so profitable that the C.I.A. needed to copy it with different European intelligence providers that shared a spotlight in countering Russia.

The top of Russia Home, the C.I.A. division overseeing operations in opposition to Russia, organized a secret assembly at The Hague. There, representatives from the C.I.A., Britain’s MI6, the HUR, the Dutch service (a crucial intelligence ally) and different companies agreed to begin pooling collectively extra of their intelligence on Russia.

The end result was a secret coalition in opposition to Russia — and the Ukrainians had been important members of it.

March to Battle

In March 2021, the Russian army began massing troops alongside the border with Ukraine. Because the months handed, and extra troops encircled the nation, the query was whether or not Mr. Putin was making a feint or getting ready for battle.

That November, and within the weeks that adopted, the C.I.A. and MI6 delivered a unified message to their Ukrainian companions: Russia was preparing for a full-scale invasion to decapitate the government and set up a puppet in Kyiv who would do the Kremlin’s bidding.

U.S. and British intelligence companies had intercepts that Ukrainian intelligence companies didn’t have entry to, in response to U.S. officers. The brand new intelligence listed the names of Ukrainian officers whom the Russians had been planning to kill or seize, in addition to the Ukrainians the Kremlin hoped to put in in energy.

President Zelensky and a few of his high advisers appeared unconvinced, even after Mr. Burns, the C.I.A. director, rushed to Kyiv in January 2022 to transient them.

Because the Russian invasion neared, C.I.A. and MI6 officers made ultimate visits in Kyiv with their Ukrainian friends. One of many M16 officers teared up in entrance of the Ukrainians, out of concern that the Russians would kill them.

At Mr. Burns’s urging, a small group of C.I.A. officers had been exempted from the broader U.S. evacuation and had been relocated to a lodge advanced in western Ukraine. They didn’t need to desert their companions.

No Endgame

After Mr. Putin launched the invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the C.I.A. officers on the lodge had been the one U.S. authorities presence on the bottom. Day-after-day on the lodge, they met with their Ukrainian contacts to go info. The previous handcuffs had been off, and the Biden White Home approved spy companies to supply intelligence assist for deadly operations in opposition to Russian forces on Ukrainian soil.

Typically, the C.I.A. briefings contained shockingly particular particulars.

On March 3, 2022 — the eighth day of the battle — the C.I.A. workforce gave a exact overview of Russian plans for the approaching two weeks. The Russians would open a humanitarian hall out of the besieged metropolis of Mariupol that very same day, after which open hearth on the Ukrainians who used it.

The Russians deliberate to encircle the strategic port metropolis of Odesa, in response to the C.I.A., however a storm delayed the assault and the Russians by no means took the town. Then, on March 10, the Russians supposed to bombard six Ukrainian cities, and had already entered coordinates into cruise missiles for these strikes.

The Russians additionally had been attempting to assassinate high Ukrainian officers, together with Mr. Zelensky. In at the very least one case, the C.I.A. shared intelligence with Ukraine’s home company that helped disrupt a plot in opposition to the president, in response to a senior Ukrainian official.

When the Russian assault on Kyiv had stalled, the C.I.A. station chief rejoiced and advised his Ukrainian counterparts that they had been “punching the Russians in the face,” in response to a Ukrainian officer who was within the room.

Inside weeks, the C.I.A. had returned to Kyiv, and the company despatched in scores of latest officers to assist the Ukrainians. A senior U.S. official stated of the C.I.A.’s sizable presence, “Are they pulling triggers? No. Are they helping with targeting? Absolutely.”

A few of the C.I.A. officers had been deployed to Ukrainian bases. They reviewed lists of potential Russian targets that the Ukrainians had been getting ready to strike, evaluating the knowledge that the Ukrainians had with U.S. intelligence to make sure that it was correct.

Earlier than the invasion, the C.I.A. and MI6 had educated their Ukrainian counterparts on recruiting sources, and constructing clandestine and partisan networks. Within the southern Kherson area, which was occupied by Russia within the first weeks of the battle, these partisan networks sprang into motion, in response to Common Kondratiuk, assassinating native collaborators and serving to Ukrainian forces goal Russian positions.

In July 2022, Ukrainian spies noticed Russian convoys getting ready to cross a strategic bridge throughout the Dnipro river and notified MI6. British and American intelligence officers then shortly verified the Ukrainian intelligence, utilizing real-time satellite tv for pc imagery. MI6 relayed the affirmation, and the Ukrainian army opened hearth with rockets, destroying the convoys.

On the underground bunker, Common Dvoretskiy stated a German antiaircraft system now defends in opposition to Russian assaults. An air-filtration system guards in opposition to chemical weapons and a devoted energy system is on the market, if the ability grid goes down.

The query that some Ukrainian intelligence officers are actually asking their American counterparts — as Republicans within the Home weigh whether or not to chop off billions of {dollars} in assist — is whether or not the C.I.A. will abandon them. “It happened in Afghanistan before and now it’s going to happen in Ukraine,” a senior Ukrainian officer stated.

Referring to Mr. Burns’s go to to Kyiv final week, a C.I.A. official stated, “We have demonstrated a clear commitment to Ukraine over many years and this visit was another strong signal that the U.S. commitment will continue.”

The C.I.A. and the HUR have constructed two different secret bases to intercept Russian communications, and mixed with the 12 ahead working bases, which Common Kondratiuk says are nonetheless operational, the HUR now collects and produces extra intelligence than at any time within the battle — a lot of which it shares with the C.I.A.

“You can’t get information like this anywhere — except here, and now,” Common Dvoretskiy stated.

Natalia Yermak contributed translation.