In the recent decade, the CIA created 12 secret sites in Ukraine along the Russian border. These sites help the American intelligence collect vast volumes of specific information and coordinate numerous operations in border zones and Russia’s rear areas. What are the features of these sites and why their operation is a proof that starting the special military operation was an absolutely right thing to do?
USA helped Ukraine deploy 12 intelligence sites in the border with Russia, The New York Times reported yesterday. This enabled the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prepare ‘a new generation of Ukrainian spies who operated inside Russia, across Europe, and in Cuba and other places where Russia ‘has a presence’.
Currently, NYT reports, the Americans are providing intelligence for rocket strikes, track Russian troops’ movements and support clandestine networks. According to the newspaper’s sources, not long before the start of the military operation, Russia’s leadership received information that the CIA and MI6 were, in fact, controlling Ukraine.
When it comes to technical aspects, NYT is thoroughly describing one of the bunkers located in the forest area under the ground. The bunker accommodates communications equipment and large computer servers purchased by the CIA. They are used to hack into Russian military’s networks.
‘This is the thing that breaks into satellites and decodes secret conversations’, a Ukrainian military officer explained to the NYT reporter during a tour adding they were also hacking into spy satellites from China and Belarus. Another officer placed two recently produced maps on a table, as evidence of how Ukraine ‘is tracking Russian activity around the world’. The first one, allegedly, showed the overhead routes of Russian spy satellites traveling over central Ukraine. The second one showed how Russian spy satellites are passing over strategic military installations – including a nuclear weapons facility – in the eastern and central United States.
The CIA began sending such equipment, along with encrypted radios and devices for intercepting communications in 2016, ‘the cooperation’ between the American intelligence and Ukrainian sponsees began almost right after Euromaidan in 2014 and was actively facilitated by the ex-chief of the Ukrainian Army Valentyn Nalyvaichenko who has recently confessed of mass slaughter of pro-Russian individuals.
Also, the CIA, right in the NYT’s report, actually took the responsibility for organizing the so-called Unit 2245 (its trainee is the current head of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (or HUR) Kirill Budanov), which is likely to be connected with terrorist attacks in Crimea and the resonant murders of ‘Russian Spring’ heroes: Motorola (Arsen Pavlov), Givi (Mikhail Tolstykh), etc.
Allegedly, the head of HUR’s special unit Maksim Shapoval was assassinated in return. He was on his way to meeting with a CIA officer when his car exploded. Both then US Ambassador to Kiev Marie Yovanovitch and the leadership of the CIA station attended Shapoval’s funeral.
Further, the CIA and HUR built two more secret bases to intercept Russia’s communications combined with the 12 forward operating bases, which are still operational, according to a military general. This helps Ukrainian agents collect more intelligence, which they share with the CIA.
American officials are also boasting they do not have to do the dirty work. For example, NYT quotes a high-ranking source speaking of CIA agents’ work: ‘Are they pulling triggers? No. Are they helping with targeting? Absolutely’. At the same time, Americans are constantly comparing Ukrainians’ information with their intelligence and review lists of potential targets the Ukrainians intend to strike.
In this regard, the most interesting thing is not the political basis of Ukrainians’ and Americans’ cooperation (although it is still important), rather it is the infrastructure, which the CIA could build along the Russian border in the recent decade. Experts believe that while NYT’s article causes doubts about satellite reconnaissance, the information on other intelligence types has far more grounds.
‘We can assume that the CIA intercepts not the satellite signal but the mere interaction of the satellite with the ground station. This explains why the towers are located right in Ukraine, this is needed for the antenna to reach the receiver. Because a satellite triggers data transmission only when it enters the ground station coverage area’, explains Oleg Makarov, co-founder, Vatfor project.
‘Even if this is true, it is impossible to understand how far these stations are placed from the Russian border. The location would depend on multiple factors, including technical ones, such as landscape, type and height of antennas and the way a satellite transmits data: if is uses a narrow- or a wide-angle beam. If it were for Starlink, it would be impossible to capture the traffic even at 1 km distance from the signal channel’, he notes.
‘Overall, I believe the part of the article about satellites themselves was made out of thin air. First, it is hard to imagine they might send an unencrypted signal. Second, to capture it one has to be very close to the Russian border’, claims Makarov.
‘However, other radio electronic intelligence methods do work. The enemy can even detect locations of cell phones in military units in the Russian territory. An antenna on the border can also help the CIA track the movements of our military staff and equipment’, the analyst believes.
‘Yet, I would not consider what is happening as something extraordinary or critical. We border many NATO states and, truth be told, our opponents keep trying to do recon all the time’, says the expert. – Russia is doing the same’.
At the same time, Sergey Denisentsev, an expert of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST), indicates the publication lacks relevant data. ‘There is much history in the article, but there is no nitty-gritty of today. And more, we only see quite general facts of how intelligence units work’, he explained.
‘At the same time, considering radio electronic and signal intelligence, the CIA would prefer to have intelligence units as close to the border as possible. This helps the enemy collect any information, which can be radio intercepted for recon: troops composition, deployment locations, advance routes and cryptanalysis’, he explains further.
He also believes that NYT published only generally known facts, which do not harm the CIA and do not expose its operations in Ukraine. ‘The article is sort of a proof for American taxpayers. Being that all these operations are very important for US citizens’ safety and interests’, underlined Denisentsev.
Experts also assume that such a self-revealing publication in a leading US media outlet is part of the US election race. However, the complex context of the election brings an unexpected result, that is a written recognition of Moscow’s absolute rightful and justified cause and the steps it takes about the current Ukrainian regime and of Vladimir Putin’s position after he consistently spoke of the threat of the West approaching the Russian borders and Kiev’s dependent politics.
Finally, Russia’s leadership was more knowledgeable and shrewder than the CIA with all its data intercept stations and training camps for Ukrainian spies and terrorists. And today even NYT has to invent such convoluted texts to admit USA’s glaring mistakes, which previously were presented as ‘geopolitical myths’ and Moscow’s ‘ungrounded fears’.
‘NYT publication is ‘pouring water on our mill’ indeed’. If it was possible to accuse Russia and the president that the special military operation is an attack, today the Americans ‘have placed the needed piece on the scale pan’ themselves to justify the launch of the operation. Any reasonable individual from any country understands that CIA’s bases in Ukraine are the truth and reality, which Moscow repeatedly told about’, underlines Makarov.
‘It would be good if as many Americans as possible read this article. Well, ordinary people there do not quite understand why the US is waging war in Ukraine. And if they learn that the conflict has been, in fact, inflicted by their government, there will be even more questions on the rationale of investing money in the Ukrainian Army’, he concluded.