An explosive New York Times exposé dated 25 Feb 24, sheds light on major developments preceding the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in Feb 2022.
Russia’s Ukraine attack has been described as “unjustified and unprovoked” several times by top US officials & allies. But the Russian attack has not been without a context.
According to the report, the Ukrainian government entered into a wide-ranging partnership with the CIA against Russia. This cooperation, which involved the establishment of as many as 12 secret CIA “forward operating bases” along Ukraine’s border with Russia, began not with Russia’s 2022 invasion, but just over 10 years ago.
Immediately after the Feb 2014 Euromaidan Revolution that culminated in the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych & installed firmly a pro-Western government, the newly appointed head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, reportedly proposed a “three-way partnership” with the CIA & MI6, the UK’s foreign intelligence service.
Ukrainian security officials proved their value to the US by feeding the CIA intelligence on Russia, including “secret documents about the Russian Navy,” leading to the establishment of CIA bases in Ukraine to coordinate activities against Russia and various training programs for Ukrainian commandos and other elite units.
A graduate of one such CIA training program, then-Lt. Col. Kyrylo Budanov, went on to become the chief of Ukrainian military intelligence.
Budanov, on Kyiv-CIA partnership says, “It only strengthened. It grew systematically. The cooperation expanded to additional spheres and became more large-scale.” This cooperation went far beyond helping Ukraine defend itself against Russia in a narrow, technical sense — rather, Ukraine was drawn into a Western coalition for the purpose of waging a broad-based shadow war against, Russia.
Moscow repeatedly warned — for many years before 2014 — that it was and remains prepared to take drastic action to prevent Ukraine from being used by the West as a forward operating base against Russia. Yet that, as recounted in lurid detail by The New York Times, is precisely what has happened over the past 10 years.
The activities described in this exposé constitute, from the Kremlin’s perspective, a dire provocation and would be seen as such by the US if the situation were reversed and a rival superpower established such bases in Mexico. This perception is an inseparable part of the military and political context that shaped this war’s outbreak.
By: Brig V Mahalingam, taken from X
