Ukraine War CIA ‘Communication Interception Hub Satellite Hacking’ Destruction Base Underground Construction
The New York Times reported on the 25th that during the two years of the Ukraine War, the CIA built a 'communications interception hub' in the basement of a military base destroyed by Russian missiles and 'hacked satellites' of Russia, China, and Belarus, and that the Republican Party's refusal to support Ukraine was aimed at reducing the CIA. did.
In Russian slang, 'Operation Goldfish' refers to the narrow road leading to the secret base, which was surrounded by minefields sprinkled as defenses in the weeks following the Russian invasion, and although the above-ground base appeared to be closed due to a Russian missile hitting the base, it was actually a high-end wiretapping station built underground. Communication interception and satellite hacking were carried out at the facility.
With money and equipment provided by the CIA, and under the command of Ukrainian General Serhiy Dvoretsky, crews began rebuilding underground, working only at night and when Russian spy satellites were not overhead to avoid detection, and workers were driven far away from the construction site. parked.
In the underground bunker, General Dvoretsky pointed to communications equipment and large computer servers, some of which were funded by the CIA, and he told the NYT that "teams are using the base to hack the Russian military's secure communications network." He said.
“This is about breaking into satellites and decoding secret conversations,” General Dvoretsky said in an interview with a NYT reporter. “We are also hacking Chinese and Belarusian spy satellites.”
Another officer placed two recently produced maps on the table as evidence of how Ukraine is tracking Russian activities around the world, the first showing the overflight path of a Russian spy satellite flying over central Ukraine. The second showed how Russian spy satellites flew over strategic military facilities, including nuclear weapons facilities, in the eastern and central United States.
“The CIA began sending equipment after an important meeting at Scattergood in 2016, providing encrypted radios and devices to intercept secret enemy communications,” General Dvoretsky said.
In addition to the base, the CIA oversaw Operation Goldfish, a training program conducted in two European cities to teach Ukrainian intelligence agents how to convincingly assume false identities and steal secrets from other countries, adept at rooting out spies. .
The name of Operation ‘Operation Goldfish’ comes from a proverb that says a Russian-speaking goldfish grants two wishes to Estonians in exchange for their freedom.
The details of the long-standing intelligence partnership between the U.S. and Ukraine, first reported publicly by the New York Times, have been closely guarded for a decade, and through more than 200 interviews with current and former officials in Ukraine, the U.S. and Europe, the New York Times said the partnership was rooted in mutual distrust. The steady expansion reportedly turned Ukraine into an intelligence-gathering hub that intercepted more Russian communications than the CIA base in Kiev could initially handle.
Many of the officials interviewed discussed intelligence and sensitive diplomatic issues on condition of anonymity.
These intelligence networks have become more important than ever as Russia becomes more aggressive in the Ukraine war and as Ukraine becomes more reliant on sabotage and long-range missile attacks that require spies behind enemy lines, and recent efforts by hard-right Republican lawmakers to support Ukraine's military. Demands to stop funding became the trigger for the 'Democrat-Republican presidential election clash' in this CIA-led downsizing.
The eavesdropping base in a Ukrainian forest destroyed by a Russian missile is part of a network of CIA-backed spy bases built over the past eight years that includes a dozen secret locations along the Russian border.
Before the war in Ukraine, Ukrainian intelligence officers proved their worth to the United States by collecting intercept data that helped prove Russian involvement in the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a commercial jetliner.
Ukrainian intelligence operatives assisted U.S. intelligence agencies in their pursuit of Russian operatives who interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the network took root a decade ago and came together under three very different U.S. presidents.
Around 2016, the CIA trained an elite Ukrainian commando unit known as Unit 2245 to capture Russian drones and communications equipment so CIA technicians could reverse engineer them and crack Moscow's encryption systems.
One of the officers of this special forces unit is Kyrylo Budanov, a general who currently heads Ukraine's military intelligence service.
The CIA helped train a new generation of Ukrainian spies operating inside Russia, across Europe, in Cuba and other areas with heavy Russian military presence, and its ties with Ukraine are so deep-rooted that they were captured just weeks before the Russian invasion in February 2022. As the Biden administration evacuated U.S. troops, CIA agents remained in a remote location in western Ukraine.
Throughout the invasion, intelligence officers relayed vital information, including where Russia was planning to attack and what weapons systems it would use.
“Without them, we would have had no way of resisting or defeating the Russians,” Ivan Bakhanov, the head of Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service, the SBU, told the New York Times in the early days of the war.
A senior European official said, “When President Putin met with the head of one of Russia’s main intelligence agencies in late 2021, he was weighing whether to launch a full-scale invasion.” Putin said, “The CIA will control Ukraine along with Britain’s MI6.” “We are making it a bridgehead for operations against Moscow,” he was quoted as saying.
The NYT, based on its own investigation, said, “President Putin and his aides misread important dynamics,” and added, “The CIA did not advance into Ukraine. “American officials have often been reluctant to engage in full-scale intervention for fear of not being able to trust Ukrainian officials and for fear of provoking the Kremlin,” he said.
A close circle of Ukrainian intelligence officials courted the CIA relentlessly and became increasingly important to the Americans, and in 2015, Gen. Valery Kondratyuk, then head of Ukraine's military intelligence service, attended a meeting with the CIA's deputy director and then, without warning, made a top-level arrest. He handed over Prenti, a bundle of classified documents containing secrets about the Russian Navy's Northern Fleet, including detailed information on the latest Russian nuclear submarine designs.
The NYT said, “Soon after, CIA agents were regularly leaving his office carrying backpacks full of documents.”
The NYT continued to report, “To reassure Ukrainian leaders, CIA Director William J. Burns secretly visited Ukraine last Thursday (22nd), his 10th visit since the invasion.”