The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has apparently been training Ukrainian paramilitary groups in anticipation of further conflict with Russia since 2015, preparing them for the eventual Russian invasion that took place on February 24, 2022, according to a report from Yahoo News published in January.
The “secret intensive training program” for Ukrainian forces was reportedly based at an undisclosed facility in the southern United States.
According to Yahoo News, “The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel, according to five former intelligence and national security officials familiar with the initiative. The program, which started in 2015, is based at an undisclosed facility in the Southern U.S., according to some of those officials.”
The website bragged that “The CIA-trained forces could soon play a critical role on Ukraine’s eastern border,” where Russian troops were, at the time, staging for the current invasion of Ukraine.
The program, run by paramilitaries working on behalf of the CIA’s Ground Branch – officially known as the Ground Department today – was established by the Obama administration following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The secret program was then expanded under the Trump administration, and amplified further under the Biden White House, according to the report.
The American-based secret program involved CIA paramilitaries being trained over the course of several weeks, and included training in firearms, camouflage techniques, land navigation, tactics like “cover and move,” intelligence and other areas, the report states.
By 2015, the CIA-affiliated paramilitaries had actually begun to travel to Ukraine’s eastern front, presumably the Donbass region, to “advise their counterparts there.”
U.S. intelligence officials insist that the program was not oriented in an offensive manner. “The purpose of the training, and the training that was delivered, was to assist in the collection of intelligence,” said a current senior intelligence official.
“If the Russians invade, those [graduates of the CIA programs] are going to be your militia, your insurgent leaders”
– Former intelligence official (Yahoo News)
However, the report adds that the notion of intelligence support can be ambiguous in the context of paramilitaries.
The official added that the secret CIA training included “very specific training on skills that would enhance” the Ukrainians’ “ability to push back against the Russians,” and said that the “tactical stuff,” was “going to start looking pretty offensive if Russians invade Ukraine” at the time the report was published.
A former CIA official told Yahoo News that the “United States is training an insurgency” and was teaching Ukrainians how “to kill Russians.”
The program reportedly included training that could be used for preparing a Ukrainian insurgency. Another intelligence official said that the CIA was helping show “Ukrainians how to maintain secure communications behind enemy lines or in a ‘hostile intelligence environment’ as potential ‘stay-behind force training.'”
Tammy Thorp, a current CIA spokesperson, denied the reports, adding that “suggestions that we have trained an armed insurgency in Ukraine are simply false.”
“If the Russians invade, those [graduates of the CIA programs] are going to be your militia, your insurgent leaders,” a former senior intelligence official told Yahoo News, contradicting the official position of the CIA.
“We’ve been training these guys now for eight years. They’re really good fighters. That’s where the agency’s program could have a serious impact.”
The former CIA executive added that over the years, the CIA training programs have been “very effective.”
Should the Russians invade Ukraine, as they ultimately did, “there’s going to be people who make their life miserable,” the former senior intelligence official said. The CIA-trained paramilitary forces “will organize the resistance” using the specialized training they’ve received, according to the report.
According to a report by the BBC, President Joe Biden had “pulled out [US] troops who were serving” in Ukraine as “military advisers and monitors,” but did not mention if any of the CIA’s secret paramilitary advisors to Ukrainian forces had been removed from the country ahead of the Russian invasion.
