ABC News (owned by the Walt Disney Company) released a story about the decade-long partnership secretly forged between the CIA and Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR). The information is based on interviews with former US and Ukrainian officials who revealed details of the collaboration involving the CIA and Ukrainian intelligence.
In 2015, General Kondratyuk, the head of HUR, had come to Washington, D.C., to persuade American intelligence agencies to trust him. Kondratyuk’s idea was to present American officials with a “treasure trove of Russian documents” collected by Ukraine’s intelligence, including highly classified Russian weaponry specs and military capabilities.
Kondratyuk brought this luggage full of secrets to meetings with senior American intelligence officials in Washington. Since then the CIA and Ukraine’s intelligence services secretly have forged a deep partnership, transforming them from former Cold War enemies into one of the US agency’s most trusted partners. Kondratyuk compartmentalized new teams within HUR, recruiting for them only officers under 30, with no memory of the Soviet Union and who only knew an independent Ukraine.
The CIA started providing secure communications technology, as well as training to Ukrainian officers in combat and espionage tactics. Ukrainian officers were brought to a European country for field training with officers from the CIA and Britain’s MI6, according to Kondratyuk. The training included how to operate as a case officer in Russia and in occupied Ukraine. Such officers made up a new commando unit trained by the CIA, called Unit 2245, that would become known for its audacious operations behind Russian lines and overseas. An officer from the unit, Kyrylo Budanov, is now the head of HUR.
The CIA eventually directed millions of dollars in funding to help train and equip Ukrainian intelligence officers, and to construct facilities, including around a dozen secret forward-operating bases on the border with Russia, from where the Ukrainian officers gathered intelligence, monitoring Russian communications and sometimes launching covert operations. The CIA officers also took advantage of the fact that Ukraine and Russia’s spy services had remained deeply entwined, many older officers had been trained in Moscow and some even remained close friends with their former Russian comrades.
In 2016, the CIA and Ukraine also established a training program, called “Operation Goldfish”. The program trained Ukrainians to pose as Russians, not only in Russia but in third countries around the world in joint operations with the CIA. They succeeded while creating remarkable opportunities for access and recruitment, former Ukrainian and US officials said.
“It was a magical time,” said a former US official. “We went from analytical exchanges to raw information exchanges to training. I think at the end of that year, we were starting joint operations. That usually takes a decade or more. And we did it in one year.”