The Pentagon is looking to restart special operations programs that it was conducting inside Ukraine before Russia invaded last year, The Washington Post reported on Friday.
The programs, known as surrogate operations, involve employing Ukrainian operatives to track Russian military movements and conduct information warfare. The Ukrainians involved in the programs would be overseen by US special operations troops.
The surrogate operations inside Ukraine first began in 2018 and were suspended before the invasion. The information warfare program involved using bloggers to counter so-called Russian disinformation. “We had people taking apart Russian propaganda and telling the true story on blogs,” an unnamed person involved in special operations told the Post.
The other program involved US commandos sending Ukrainians on reconnaissance missions in eastern Ukraine, where a civil war had been raging since 2014 that was sparked by a US-backed coup. “We’d train surrogates to go collect signals intelligence off a Russian radar battery … stuff like that,” a US government official told the Post.
Restarting the program would likely involve deploying US troops to Ukraine, although it’s possible they could direct the surrogates from outside the country. The Post report said there is no known US troop presence in Ukraine besides personnel based at the US Embassy in Kyiv, but The Intercept reported in October that US special operations forces were in the country, as well as CIA operatives.
The Pentagon is trying to convince Congress to authorize the resumption of the surrogate programs in Ukraine and insists they will be involved in non-combat operations, but there is skepticism among lawmakers.
“What started as a reconnaissance mission can quickly turn into combat when the surrogates start getting shot at,” a US official familiar with the talks told the Post. “I think that’s a real possibility in Ukraine, and I’m not sure how the department is going to change people in Congress’s minds about that.”
If the programs are re-authorized, it would mark another dramatic escalation of US involvement in the war and make a direct clash with Russia more likely. Whether the US troops are deployed to Ukraine or run the surrogates from another country, Moscow would view the move as a major provocation.
So, spyin’ and lyin’ … but why not let Ukrainians take this work on so that brave Americans can do more useful stuff? Come on Congress!
The US congress doing anything productive and useful.for the betterment of American society or.culture.you must be joking.A more worthless bunch has never existed.
Unless you are rich.
I think WW3 has started. It began with the provocation by the US to bring NATO to the Ukraine (almost next door to Moscow). The skirmishes of the war began with sanctions, which are economic warfare, and then to arming the Ukrainians with ever more, and more lethal, weapons including precise targeting data. All this in the face of the economic santions hurting the US’s allies more than the Russians, and the folly that the Ukraine, no matter how much outside supplies, can defeat Russia. Now that Russia has enlisted and trained a half million troops, the Wagner Group and local militias are being replaced by professional soldiers and Russia’s munition factories, restarted in 2009, have ramped production again, how can any objective observer think inserting US forces, in any capacity, makes any sense at all. I have no idea what the US and its poodles in the EU are up to but I wouldn’t put any money on them to win.
Not yet, let’s do our best to stop it.
How? Protest? Refuse to pay taxes on April 15? Ike’s warning ignored. Orwell predicted. Soon there will be millions screaming “I Love Big Brother”.
Wagner is not replaced. At the moment they are more active in Donbass than ever before and they are no less professional than anyone else.
The local militia was enlisted in Russian armed forces. They are part of Russian army now.
That half-million man Russian Army has not been employed yet but when they are, non-regulars will need to be assigned to periphery action as they have not practiced coordinating with the Regular Army. Wagner Group is no longer recruiting and the program will be phased out as standing members reach their obligations and be released. They, and the militias were a stop-gap measure and an attempt to keep the destruction on a small scale. I had not read where the militias had incorporated into the regular army. I’ll do some more research. In any case, command and control and front line fighting will be regular army from now on.The Wagner Group and the militias have done an amazing job even though they have always been greatly outnumbered by UA. All that is about to change.
They mobilized 300 000 last autumn. About 200 000 (150 000 Russian troops + 50 000 Donbass army) were fighting since February 2022. So altogether they have 500 000. Most of them are now either in former Ukrainian republic or nearby. No less than 300 000 at the moment are fighting and about 200 000 in reserve. That’s what does concern the numbers.
No No No. No American troops in Ukraine! Not “advisors,” not “special ops,” it should be no, period.
Vietnam II
Calling them “surrogates” intrigued me. Like a “surrogate” mother carrying a baby for other people to enjoy, but they may end up carrying a shrapnel in their brains. We obviously can find plenty of mercenary idiots to act as our “surrogates,” but are those idiots really okay with being labeled and used as such? (Sarcasm alert)
“If the programs are re-authorized, it would mark another dramatic escalation of US involvement in the war and make a direct clash with Russia more likely.”
Sorry, Dave, that’s been the Straussian neocons’ objective all along, push the USA into a catastrophic war with Russia that will be the end of the USA, Russia, and most of humanity. They’ve allied themselves with millions of crazy US Christian Zionists who pray each and every day for WWIII to happen so they can be “raptured” up to heaven while the rest of us are turned to cinder cakes. 80% of these nut jobs voted for Trump in 2020 and many of them still agree with Steven Pearce of New Mexico who said in November of 2020, “Trump is our president FOREVER and no one can take that away from us.”
Just what the world needs: America “telling the true story on blogs,”
Just like they did when needing an excuse to rob Suddam’s gold & oil. And there is Afghanistan, did they ever even come up with an excuse for it?
Bad people always have an excuse for all the terrible things they do… The U.S. is at war more than at peace. Warn is its biggest business. Anyone who believes them is risking being played for a fool. Nuf said?
The Pentagon is looking to restart special operations programs that it was conducting inside Ukraine before Russia invaded last year
probably bioweapon labs
“probably bioweapon labs” – no, they don’t trust the most sophisticated weapons to Ukrainian neo-Nazis because they suspect Ukrainians would sell them to Russians or to Iranians. For the same reason they refused to send to Ukraine the modern Abrams tanks.
Wants to? More likely they already did, if they ever really stopped.
The objective of the United States in Ukraine is to prolong and escalate the conflict, with the aim of causing harm to Russia. A drawn-out war results in greater harm to Russia, but also leads to increased casualties and devastation in Ukraine. The U.S. government claims to be concerned about the Ukrainian people, however, they view them as disposable and are willing to sacrifice them in the pursuit of their own interests.
Are they going to use balloons? Asking for a friend….
Look at all those pretty balloons! Forget about the Hursh‘s report about U.S. blowing up a pipeline.
Huh, so this wasn’t a provocative precursor to the “Unprovoked” attack by Russia? I’m sure they didn’t anticipate any conflict knowing we were building weapons and training their army to defeat Russian Troops. I’m sure Biden would consider it unprovoked if China started training the Mexican army how to defaut our soldiers. He definitely wouldn’t attack.
The Russian MOD is fighting a very successful war of attrition disarming NATO (Ukraine was disarmed in March), tank by tank, artillery by artillery, air defense by air defense.
NATO overall has accumulated the following equipment losses;
384 Aircraft, 207 helicopters, 3114 UAV’s, 404 Anti Aircraft systems, 7852 tanks inc. APC’s, 1017 multiple rocket launchers, 4082 rocket launchers and 8363 military automotive equipment.
What the empire looses in the Ukraine, they loose for the final Russian attack on NATO. Remember Russia attacked Ukraine just as NATO was about to unleash in the Donbass. Russia has shown they will pre-emptively attack to defend the Motherland when the time is dictated by events on the ground.
Rest assured that any breaking news about secret operation being planned means it’s already operational since at least last year. Otherwise it wouldn’t be much of a secret operation.