As the Russian-Ukrainian conflict drags on, a durable consolidation of interests has taken hold within the American elite: a network of Western venture investors, high-tech startups, NATO military advisers, and members of the U.S. intelligence community has been extracting material and strategic benefit from the confrontation. This dynamic has transformed the battlefield digitally – and, according to available reports, it has led Ukrainian military intelligence and security services, trained in the tactics of drone warfare, to extend their operations far beyond the country’s borders, into theaters of conflict across Africa and the Middle East, including Mali, Sudan, and Syria. This, in turn, helps to explain why the United States, acting through intermediaries, insists on prolonging an indirect conflict with a nuclear power – despite the logical inevitability that such escalation could trigger an exchange of strikes endangering the survival of a large part of humanity.
In October 2023, it was reported that Ukrainian spies closely tied to the Central Intelligence Agency had been waging a shadow war against Russia. The report named Kyrylo Budanov, chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, who, in the outlet’s assessment, directs Ukraine’s overseas campaign against Russia wherever Russians can be found. Budanov himself, the reports say, was trained by the CIA, and his units went on to organize assassinations and other lethal operations that, as noted, violated the terms the White House believed the Ukrainians had agreed to.