- dass einen die CIA bei targeted killings recht umfänglich unterstützt. So umfänglich, dass man es wieder vergessen hat zuvor bekannt zu geben.
The CIA was unavailable for comments.
Washington Post reporting.
Ukrainian spies with deep ties to CIA wage shadow war against Russia
[…]
The missions have involved elite teams of Ukrainian operatives drawn from directorates that were formed, trained and equipped in close partnership with the CIA, according to current and former Ukrainian and U.S. officials. Since 2015, the CIA has spent tens of millions of dollars to transform Ukraine’s Soviet-formed services into potent allies against Moscow, officials said. The agency has provided Ukraine with advanced surveillance systems, trained recruits at sites in Ukraine as well as the United States, built new headquarters for departments in Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, and shared intelligence on a scale that would have been unimaginable before Russia illegally annexed Crimea and fomented a separatist war in eastern Ukraine. The CIA maintains a significant presence in Kyiv, officials said.
The extent of the CIA’s involvement with Ukraine’s security services has not previously been disclosed. U.S. intelligence officials stressed that the agency has had no involvement in targeted killing operations by Ukrainian agencies, and that its work has focused on bolstering those services’ abilities to gather intelligence on a dangerous adversary. A senior intelligence official said that “any potential operational concerns have been conveyed clearly to the Ukrainian services.”
Sie sehen hier: Keinen US Proxy Krieg.
Many of Ukraine’s clandestine operations have had clear military objectives and contributed to the country’s defense. The car bombing that killed Daria Dugina, however, underscored Ukraine’s embrace of what officials in Kyiv refer to as “liquidations” as a weapon of war. Over the past 20 months, the SBU and its military counterpart, the GUR, have carried out dozens of assassinations against Russian officials in occupied territories, alleged Ukrainian collaborators, military officers behind the front lines and prominent war supporters deep inside Russia. Those killed include a former Russian submarine commander jogging in a park in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar and a militant blogger at a cafe in St. Petersburg, according to Ukrainian and Western officials.
Ukraine’s affinity for lethal operations has complicated its collaboration with the CIA, raising concerns about agency complicity and creating unease among some officials in Kyiv and Washington.
Sie sehen hier: Grave concerns on part of the CIA.
Even those who see such lethal missions as defensible in wartime question the utility of certain strikes and decisions that led to the targeting of civilians including Dugina or her father, Alexander Dugin — who officials acknowledge was the intended mark — rather than Russians more directly linked to the war.
“We have too many enemies who are more important to neutralize,” said a high-ranking Ukraine security official. “People who launch missiles. People who committed atrocities in Bucha.” Killing the daughter of a pro-war firebrand is “very cynical,” the official said.
Others cited broader concerns about Ukraine’s cutthroat tactics that may seem justified now — especially against a country accused of widespread war atrocities — but could later prove difficult to rein in.
Das Gute an den Bedenken der CIA ist aber, dass sie mehr so zukunftsorientiert sind. Ok, wir töten schon mal Kinder von Zielen, wenn wir an die Ziele nicht dran kommen, oder Blogger mit Reichweite - das ist schon sehr zynisch, aber zum Problem wirds erst, wenn wir uns denken - wie bekommen wir da den Geist wieder in die Flasche?! Also zukünftig?
“We are seeing the birth of a set of intelligence services that are like Mossad in the 1970s,” said a former senior CIA official, referring to the Israeli spy service long accused of carrying out assassinations in other countries. Ukraine’s proficiency at such operations “has risks for Russia,” the official said, “but it carries broader risks as well.”
“If Ukraine’s intelligence operations become even bolder — targeting Russians in third countries, for example — you could imagine how that might cause rifts with partners and come into serious tension with Ukraine’s broader strategic goals,” the official said. Among those goals is membership in NATO and the European Union.
Gut, Proxy Krieg ist das natürlich keiner, wir machen uns aber Gedanken um den Nato Mossad seine Kill Operations in Drittländern, vor allem wenn die EU dabei zusieht.
SBU and GUR officials describe their expanding operational roles as the result of extraordinary circumstances. “All targets hit by the SBU are completely legal,” the agency’s director, Vasyl Malyuk, said in a statement provided to The Post. The statement did not specifically address targeted killings but Malyuk, who met with top CIA and other U.S. officials in Washington last month, said Ukraine “does everything to ensure that fair punishment will ‘catch up’ with all traitors, war criminals and collaborators.”
Das gute daran ist aber, dass alle unsere gezielten Tötungen komplett legal sind! Weil wir die Regeln schreiben. Oder irgend ein emotionaler “catching up with the traitors” BS, den wir sonst als Begründung erfinden können.
Current and former U.S. and Ukrainian officials said both sides have sought to maintain a careful distance between the CIA and the lethal operations carried out by its partners in Kyiv. CIA officials have voiced objections after some operations, officials said, but the agency has not withdrawn support.
Ah.
Gut, die non denial denials der Ukraine sind diesmal wirklich erstklassig.
“We never involved our international partners in covert operations, especially behind the front lines,” a former senior Ukrainian security official said. SBU and GUR operatives were not accompanied by CIA counterparts. Ukraine avoided using weapons or equipment that could be traced to U.S. sources, and even covert funding streams were segregated.
Also wir haben unsere internationalen Partner nie in unsere verdeckten Operationen miteinbezogen. Vor allem nicht in die hinter den Frontlinien.
Na was jetzt? Nicht oder doch schon “qualifiziertes kaum”?
Die Non denial denials der US Seite sind aber auch wunderbar.
“We had a lot of restrictions about working with the Ukrainians operationally,” said a former U.S. intelligence official. The emphasis was “more on secure communications and tradecraft,” and pursuing new streams of intelligence inside Russia “rather than ‘here’s how you blow up a mayor.’ I never got the sense that we were that involved in designing their ops.”
Also ich hatte nie das Gefühl, dass wir deren Operationen geplant haben! Moskva. Gesundheit.
Even so, officials acknowledged that boundaries were occasionally blurred. CIA officers in Kyiv were made aware of some of Ukraine’s more ambitious plans for strikes. In some cases, including the bombing of the Kerch Bridge, U.S. officials registered concerns.
Hey, das glaub ich sogar. 🙂
Ukraine’s spies developed their own lines about which operations to discuss and which to keep under wraps. “There were some things that maybe we wouldn’t talk about” with CIA counterparts, said a second Ukraine security official involved in such missions. He said crossing those boundaries would lead to a terse reply from Americans: “We don’t want any part of that.”
Genau, und deshalb gibt es ja auch Dinge bei denen wir plausible deniability behaupten würden!
Und jetzt Zucker:
The CIA-Ukraine collaboration took root in the aftermath of 2014 political protests that prompted Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych to flee the country, followed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its arming of separatists in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Die CIA Zusammenarbeit startete nach der CIA Unterstützung politischer Proteste? Verzeihung Congress Unterstützung, US Congress Unterstützung.
Ja - aber nur sehr zögerlich, in dem wir den Ukrainischen Geheimdienst umstrukturiert haben. Wait, what?!
The initial phases of cooperation were tentative, officials said, given concerns on both sides that Ukraine’s services were still heavily penetrated by the FSB — the Russian agency that is the main successor to the KGB. To manage that security risk, the CIA worked with the SBU to create an entirely new directorate, officials said, one that would focus on so-called “active measures” operations against Russia and be insulated from other SBU departments.
The new unit was prosaically dubbed the “Fifth Directorate” to distinguish it from the four long-standing units of the SBU. A sixth directorate has since been added, officials said, to work with Britain’s MI6 spy agency.
Gut, der Ukrainische Geheimdienst hat jetzt eine US geführte Abteilung, und eine MI6 Abteilung, aber Proxy Krieg würden wir das noch nicht nennen.
Training sites were located outside Kyiv where handpicked recruits were instructed by CIA personnel, officials said. The plan was to form units “capable of operating behind front lines and working as covert groups,” said a Ukrainian official involved in the effort.
Und wir haben ja auch nie mit US Geheimdiensten zusammengearbeitet, wenn es darum ging Operationen hinter feindlichen Linien zu planen. Gut, ausgebildet haben wir diese Einheiten für diesen Zweck natürlich schon… Also wir - die CIA.
The agency provided secure communications gear, eavesdropping equipment that allowed Ukraine to intercept Russian phone calls and emails, and even furnished disguises and separatist uniforms enabling operatives to more easily slip into occupied towns.
The early missions focused on recruiting informants among Russia’s proxy forces as well as cyber and electronic eavesdropping measures, officials said. The SBU also began mounting sabotage operations and missions to capture separatist leaders and Ukrainian collaborators, some of whom were taken to secret detention sites.
But the operations soon took a lethal turn.
Komm, so ein kleiner überschwänglicher Ausrutscher…
Over one three-year stretch, at least half a dozen Russian operatives, high-ranking separatist commanders or collaborators were killed in violence that was often attributed to internal score-settling but in reality was the work of the SBU, Ukraine officials said.
Wie bereits gesagt, so ein kleiner überschwänglicher Ausrutscher…
Among those killed was Yevgeny Zhilin, the leader of a pro-Russian militant group in eastern Ukraine, who was gunned down in 2016 in a Moscow restaurant.
In Moskau, in einem Restaurant in 2016…
A year later, a rebel commander known as ‘Givi’ was killed in Donetsk as part of an operation in which a woman who accused him of rape was enlisted to plant a bomb at his side, according to a former official involved in the mission.
Und 2017. Wobei bei dem Plotdesign komm ich leider nicht mit. Improvisation?
Ukrainian officials said the country’s turn to more lethal methods was driven by Russian aggression, atrocities attributed to its proxies and desperation to find ways to weaken a more powerful adversary. Many also cited Russia’s own alleged history of conducting assassinations in Kyiv.
Gut, aber die Russen waren ja Schuld.
“Because of this hybrid war we faced an absolutely new reality,” said Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, a member of Ukraine’s parliament who served as SBU director in 2015, when the Fifth Directorate was created. “We were forced to train our people in a different way.”
He declined to elaborate.
Obwohl das auch absolut neu war!
So, der nächste Punkt ist jetzt -
Transforming Ukrainian military intelligence
Und die Hälfte des Artikels ist noch ausständig.
Ich brauch mal eine Pause…
