The CIA has been overseeing a secret training program for Ukrainian special operations forces and intelligence operatives since 2015, Yahoo News reported on Thursday, citing five former intelligence and national security officials.
One former CIA official said the US is “training an insurgency” in Ukraine and that the program teaches the Ukrainians how “to kill Russians,” although other officials downplayed the training and said it was not meant for offensive purposes.
The training has been held at an undisclosed base in the southern United States. It was started by the Obama administration, was expanded by President Trump, and further expanded by President Biden. The program includes training in firearms, camouflage techniques, land navigation, and other areas, former officials told Yahoo.
The program was overseen by the CIA’s Ground Branch, the spy agency’s elite paramilitary unit. The Yahoo report said by 2015, Ground Branch personnel were deployed to the front in eastern Ukraine to advise the Ukrainian forces.
In comments to Yahoo, the CIA denied that it has been training a Ukrainian insurgency. But The New York Times reported on Friday that the US is considering supporting an insurgency in Ukraine if Russia invades.
For months now, the US has been claiming Russia is planning to invade Ukraine, an accusation Moscow strongly denies. Russia held talks this week with the US and NATO on Ukraine and other issues, but little progress was made.
The idiots at the CIA and the neocons keep dreaming about dragging Russia into another “Afghanistan quagmire.” The Russians have been there, done that. Not going to work again.
If Russia has to destroy the Ukraine military, they aren’t going to sit around and do “nation building” like the moronic US government does. They’ll simply organize the pro-Russian population in the limited areas Russia has taken from Ukraine into the necessary autonomous governments and organize the necessary militias to protect them, just as was done in Donetsk and Lugansk. Then they’ll go home.
It will be swift, that’s for sure. They already have the demographic advantage, which is something the Yanks never do, or can for that matter.
Fascinating. To train “insurrection”? Why? If Russia invades, would not Ukrainian population be the insurgents against invaders?
The truth is, there are many more Rusdian manority speaking regions in Ukraine. Those did not rebel when Donetsk, Lughansk and Crimea did. Or better put, their redistance was wesk and crushed by Ukrainian nazi groips marauding across Russian speaking countryside. One has to remember Odessa and the attrocity agsinst pro-Rusdian protesters.
To make long story short — if today those regions get a chance to spring free from a disfunctiknal, oppresive state — they would be more prepared to take it, Ukrainian speaking majority regions would remain landlockecked. So where eould indmsurgents come from?
Or perhaps these indurgents were meant to infiltrate Donbas and create illusion of insurgency against Russian influence?
If so, this is naive. Ukraine is not a mountainous Afghanistan. Every parcel of land is utilized, and no place for “insurgent” to hide. There are no abandoned farms or warehouses to serve as hiding places.
There is just a troublesome thought that remains. Why do we do this?
The neocons need to make sure their people in Kiev stay in power. The external threat of Russia is hyped for many reasons, but Ukraine unity would be the focus of counterinsurgency forces.
Counterinsurgency forces are needed to prevent breakaways from the rest of Ukraine, or a resistance developing in Kiev against the ruling political faction.
How real the threat is doesn’t matter. Kiev knows they rule by force and force alone over the rest of Ukraine.
Its only a matter of time before that starts to crumble into conflict, but when would be hard to predict.
I watched Alias growing up and had this naïveté that CIA were the “good” guys….Every time you read about the CIA in the news they are training people to kill other people because we don’t like their government. Sigh…
“The training has been held at an undisclosed base in the southern United States.” The same buildings and training grounds of the School of the Americas?? Hmmmmm.
That would certainly fit…
I wonder what the US public would say if they knew these guys are probably Azov Battalion – neo-Nazis training on US soil. OTOH, it was reported that the US Special Forces were training Arabs in Syria who were indistinguishable from Al Qaeda – and the Special Forces troops complained about that – and no one cared. So that’s “Amerikka” for you, now.
It’s a near certainty that the School of the Americas, which now goes by the name Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation and is still located in Fort Benning, Georgia, is where this training is taking place.
I wonder if these are the snipers they used in the 2014 coup.
Waste of 💰.
It’s time Russia liberates Ukraine from their traitor leaders
We saw the value of a CIA “training” program in Afghanistan.
Worked out well in Afghanistan right?
It kinda did. I mean it is.. insurgency training
I dunno, the Afghan paramilitaries we armed, paid for and trained made the French Army in 1940 look like the Spartans at Thermopylae by comparison.
I meant the Mujahideen thar bled the soviets dry not the current crop.
These guys were trained to be an extension of us force projection against their own while at the same time unable to operate without us assistance, people like that don’t have the resolve to withstand pressure.
So a bunch of people with a long track record of unconventional warfare fighting a war 40 years ago is the best he got?
Ignoring the fact that the Soviets had turned the security situation in Afghanistan around before they left (the Najibullah regime was able to survive for years after the Soviet departure) – The same crew that so recently kicked the United States out of their country and with no foreign help from anyone?
Nuh man not ignoring it but the early training and the bagful of cash did help immensely. By the time us came along war as a way of life was part of social structure so that alongside the terrain and the mentality of the people helped out the talib to do it again to the us. Let’s not forget taliban learnt a lot about ied from aq and some of that is due to training by Cia to the Arab afghans during the soviet war
Assumes a lot of facts not in evidence.
Translation: Russians are only a pretext for the CIA to train up another shadow army, since the Russians aren’t actually coming.
The neocon-NATO presence in Ukraine may start to consolidate into a more overt occupation, for lack of anything better to do.
Two can play at the “insurgency” game. Might not be too cool if someone started training a “Patriot Corps” to “liberate” Puerto Rico.
Wow… Just a while back the MSM was apoplectic about false rumors that Russia was offering bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan.
Because that worked out so well in Afghanistan.
Scott Ritter weighs in on this:
As a former US intelligence officer, I see a red flag in the CIA’s latest anti-Russia playbook
The Agency has a long and largely unsuccessful track record when it comes to duelling with Moscow
https://www.rt.com/russia/546254-cia-training-programs-ukrainian/
And the failure referenced is just that in Ukraine – not counting all the other US-supported insurgency efforts as in Syria, where Russia has a nice recent successful experience.