CIA spent tens of millions of dollars on Ukrainian intelligence to carry out multiple assassinations in Russia
(Baonghean.vn) - The Washington Post (WaPo) on October 23 quoted many well-informed sources in the US and Ukrainian intelligence communities as saying that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) spent "tens of millions of dollars" to turn Kiev's Soviet-style intelligence agencies into "strong allies against Moscow".
According to the WaPo, the US foreign intelligence agency has been deeply involved in Ukrainian affairs since at least 2015. The CIA maintains a “significant presence” in Kiev amid the conflict with Russia. The newspaper said: “The CIA has provided Ukraine with advanced surveillance systems, trained recruits at locations in Ukraine as well as in the United States, and built new headquarters for departments of the Ukrainian military intelligence agency.”
The CIA has been assisting Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency, the SBU, as well as Ukraine’s military intelligence. Cooperation with the domestic intelligence agency initially focused on creating units “capable of operating on the front lines and acting as covert groups” to monitor and carry out “active measures” against the Donbass militias, which have been insurgents against Kiev since the 2014 Maidan coup.
However, the missions of the CIA-reorganized Ukrainian intelligence service later turned dangerous, with Ukrainian agents assassinating “at least half a dozen Russian agents, commanders or senior collaborators of the separatists.”
The operation, which was “often described as an internal purge but was in fact the work of the domestic intelligence service,” Ukrainian officials told WaPo on condition of anonymity. The targets included Yevgeny Zhilin, the founder of Ukraine’s anti-Maidan movement and leader of the Oplot separatist group in Kharkov, who was killed in Moscow in 2016, as well as Mikhail Tolstykh, a prominent Donbass militia commander best known by his alias Givi, who was killed in an explosion in early 2017.
Assassinations continue to occur in the current conflict, with the domestic intelligence agency implicated in the murder of journalist Daria Dugina, daughter of Russian nationalist philosopher Aleksandr Dugin.
“Over the past 20 months, the domestic intelligence agency and its Ukrainian counterpart, the military intelligence agency, have carried out dozens of assassinations targeting Russian officials in the occupied territories, military officers behind the front lines and prominent war supporters deep inside Russia,” WaPo said. However, WaPo sources confirmed that US spies were not directly involved in Ukraine’s covert operations./.
