kyiv’s secret services SBU and GUR
CIA has been helping in the shadow war against Moscow since 2015
By Roland Peters
October 23, 2023, 8:08 p.m.
In less than a decade, the United States is equipping its Ukrainian partners with intelligence and capabilities to stand up to Russia. The services ran secret prisons for “traitors” and carried out dozens of assassination attempts, a US media reports.
Covert operations by elite units, dozens of murders and missions against military targets: According to a media report, the spies of the Ukrainian domestic secret service SBU and the military secret service GUR have been waging a shadow war against the Russian invaders for years – on their own occupied territory, but also in Russia. Among other things, the car bomb that killed the prominent Russian war supporter Daria Dugina near Moscow last year was an attack by the Ukrainian services, reports the Washington Post. The bomb attacks on the Crimean Bridge are also their responsibility.
The US foreign intelligence agency CIA trained its Ukrainian colleagues for almost a decade and spent tens of millions of dollars on it, writes the US media citing statements from both governments. The training focuses in particular on the skills to collect information about the enemy and to carry out covert operations behind enemy lines with spies and elite units. According to the US government, the CIA was not involved in the killings. After the attack on Dugina, which was aimed at her father Alexander, the USA “warned” Ukraine. Many of the covert missions had military objectives and strengthened national defense.
According to the report, the intensive cooperation between the USA and Ukraine was triggered by the Russian occupation of eastern Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The connection between the two secret services is closed and a completely new, joint department has been founded, it goes on to say. At the beginning, the SBU in particular was still ridden with Russian FSB agents. The aim of the training was to turn the SBU and GUR into “effective allies” who could carry out “active measures” against Moscow. After the “fifth department” of the CIA and SBU, a “sixth department” has now been founded, the equivalent of cooperation with the British secret service MI6.
The CIA equipped its Ukrainian partners with surveillance systems, trained recruits for elite domestic units in both Ukraine and the United States, and financed a new headquarters for the GUR military intelligence service, the article said. The new partners are now sharing “a level of information that would have been unthinkable before the Russian annexation of Crimea and the promotion of the separatist war in eastern Ukraine.” The GUR initially had around 5,000 employees. “We had to rebuild it from scratch,” a former US intelligence officer is quoted as saying. According to the report, the CIA is currently very present in kyiv.
Kyiv sees “liquidations” as legitimate
Cooperation with the CIA began with training and recruiting Russian informants and intercepting Russian communications. This was followed by sabotage missions by spies and the kidnapping of separatist leaders and collaborators. Some of them were taken to secret prisons. A former US intelligence official told the US media that they had strict restrictions on cooperation with their Ukrainian colleagues.
According to the report, in the past 20 months, the two Ukrainian secret services have carried out dozens of assassination attempts against Russian officials in the territories occupied by Moscow, including Ukrainian collaborators, officers in the rear of the front, and war supporters in Russia . The medium lists, for example, the military blogger who died as a result of a bomb explosion in a café in Saint Petersburg, as well as the former Russian submarine captain who was shot while jogging in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar. Government officials in kyiv would call these “liquidations,” which they see as legitimate in the defensive war against Russia.
The killings led to tensions between the two countries’ intelligence services, according to the report. There is concern in Washington that cooperation in Moscow could be perceived as CIA complicity. The attacks are also viewed with skepticism in Ukraine. “We have too many enemies whose neutralization is more important,” a high-ranking employee is quoted as saying: “People who fire rockets. The people responsible for the atrocities in Bucha.” Killing the daughter of a prominent war supporter was “very cynical.”
Warning of extension to third countries
SBU and GUR employees see the previous operations as a consequence of extraordinary circumstances. “All targets hit by the SBU are completely legal,” said SBU chief Vasyl Malyuk: “We are doing everything we can to ensure that traitors, war criminals and collaborators receive their just punishment.”
The assassination attempts on people were all carried out independently of the CIA, Ukrainian informants said. In addition, the Ukrainian services did not use weapons or equipment from US resources, nor did they use their money. However, a former CIA employee warned of a possible expansion of such attacks on Russians in third countries: “This could drive partners apart and endanger Ukraine’s broader strategic goals,” he is quoted as saying. kyiv is seeking membership in both NATO and the EU.
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