WASHINGTON – As Russian troops advance a forceful campaign to seize eastern Ukraine, the nation’s ability to withstand the onslaught depends more than ever on the help of the United States and its allies, including a stealthy network of commandos and spies who rush to provide weapons. intelligence and training, according to U.S. and European officials.
Much of this work is done outside of Ukraine, at bases in Germany, France and Britain, for example. But although the Biden administration has stated that it will not deploy U.S. troops in Ukraine, some CIA personnel have continued to operate in the country in secret, mainly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the large number of troops. intelligence with which the United States is sharing. Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials.
At the same time, a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries, such as Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, have also been working in Ukraine. The United States withdrew its own 150 military instructors before the war began in February, but the commandos of these allies remained or have gone in and out of the country since then, training and advising Ukrainian troops and providing a conduct on the ground for weapons and other aid, three U.S. officials said.
Few details have emerged about what CIA personnel or commandos are doing, but their presence in the country, in addition to members of the diplomatic staff who returned after Russia abandoned the siege of Kyiv, hints at the extent of the secret effort to help Ukraine that is underway and the risks that Washington and its allies are taking.
Ukraine remains unarmed, and on Saturday, Russian forces launched a missile bombardment against targets across the country, even in areas of the north and west that have been largely spared in recent weeks. President Biden and Allied leaders are expected to discuss additional support for Ukraine at a meeting of the Group of 7 industrialized nations beginning Sunday in Germany and at a NATO summit in Spain over the weekend.
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the 10th Army Special Forces Group, which had been training Ukrainian commandos at a base in the west of the country before the war, quietly set up a planning cell. coalition in Germany to coordinate military assistance to Ukrainian and other Ukrainian commandos. troops. The cell has grown to 20 nations.
Army Secretary Christine E. Wormuth offered an insight into the operation last month, saying the special operations cell had helped manage the flow of weapons and equipment to Ukraine. “As the Ukrainians try to move and evade the Russians who are potentially trying to target the convoys, you know, we’re trying to be able to help coordinate the movement of all these different types of shipments,” he said in a statement. national security event held by the Atlantic Council.
“Another thing I think we can help with,” he said, “is the intelligence about where the threats to these convoys may be.”
The cell, which was modeled from a structure used in Afghanistan, is part of a broader set of operational and intelligence coordination cells led by the Pentagon’s European Command to accelerate Allied assistance to Ukrainian troops. At Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, for example, a U.S. Air Force and National Guard team called Gray Wolf offers support, even in tactics and techniques, to the Ukrainian Air Force, said a military spokesman.
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Commandos are not in the front line with Ukrainian troops and instead advise from headquarters in other parts of the country or remotely through encrypted communications, according to U.S. and other Western officials, who spoke under the condition of anonymity to discuss operational issues. But the signs of his stealthy logistical support, training, and intelligence are tangible on the battlefield.
Several lower-level Ukrainian commanders recently expressed gratitude to the United States for intelligence obtained from satellite images, which can be consulted on tablets provided by the Allies. The tablets work with an application of battlefield maps that the Ukrainians use to attack and attack Russian troops.
On a street in Bakhmut, a city in the hotly contested Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, a group of Ukrainian special operations forces had patches of the American flag on their equipment and were equipped with new ground missiles. -air portable, as well as beautiful and American. assault rifles.
“What is an unexplained story is the international association with the special operations forces of a multitude of different countries,” said Lt. Gen. Jonathan P. Braga, commander of the army’s special operations command. American, to senators in April when describing the planning cell. . “They have united absolutely in a very disproportionate impact” to support the special and military forces of Ukraine.
Representative Jason Crow, a Colorado Democrat on the House Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, said in an interview that relations the Ukrainian commandos have developed with their U.S. and other counterparts in recent years had proved invaluable in the fight against Russia.
“It has been crucial to know who to deal with during chaotic battlefield situations and who to carry the weapons with,” Mr. Crow, a former army ranger. “Without these relationships, this would have taken much longer.”
CIA officials operating in Ukraine have focused on directing the information that the US government has been providing to the Ukrainian government. Most of his work has been in Kyiv, according to current and former officials.
Updated
June 26, 2022 at 11:08 ET
While the U.S. government does not recognize that the CIA is operating in Ukraine or any other country, Russia and other intelligence services around the world understand the presence of officials well.
But the agency’s experience in training is in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations, say former intelligence officials. What Ukrainians need right now is classic military training on how to use rocket artillery, such as high-mobility artillery rocket systems, or HIMARS, and other sophisticated weapons, said Douglas H. Wise, former Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and retired senior. CIA official.
“Here we are talking about large-scale fighting,” Mr. Wise. “We are talking about modern tank-to-tank battles with massive military forces. I can’t imagine the CIA training the Ukrainians how to fire HIMARS.
The Biden administration has so far sent four of its mobile multi-launch rocket systems to Ukraine and announced on Thursday that four more were on its way. They are the most advanced weapons the United States has supplied to date so far in Ukraine, with rockets having a range of up to 40 miles, larger than everything Ukraine now has.
Pentagon officials say a first group of 60 Ukrainian soldiers have been trained on how to use the systems and a second group is in training in Germany.
General Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the training had begun in a “rational and deliberate” way, as Ukrainians who have historically used Soviet-era systems learn the mechanics of the most high-tech Americans. weapons.
“It’s not good to just throw these systems on the battlefield,” General Milley told reporters traveling with him on a recent flight back to the United States after meeting with European military leaders in France.
Following a meeting in Brussels this month, General Milley and military leaders from nearly 50 countries pledged to increase the flow of advanced artillery and other armaments into Ukraine.
“All of this takes some time and requires a lot of effort,” General Milley said. U.S. troops need six to eight weeks to learn how to use the systems, but Ukrainians have a two-week accelerated training program, he said.
However, former military officials who have been working with the Ukrainian army have expressed frustration with some of the training efforts.
For example, the Ukrainians have struggled to evacuate wounded soldiers at the front. The United States could step up first aid training and advise Ukrainians how to establish a network of intermediate mobile hospitals to stabilize the wounded and transport them, former officials said.
“They’re losing 100 soldiers a day. That’s almost like the height of the Vietnam War for us; it’s terrible,” a former Trump administration official said. “And they’re losing a lot of experienced people.”
Army green berets in Germany recently began medical training for Ukrainian troops, who were taken out of the country for instruction, a U.S. military official said.
From 2015 until the beginning of the year, instructors from the US Special Forces and the National Guard trained more than 27,000 Ukrainian soldiers at the Yavoriv Combat Training Center in western Ukraine. , near the city of Lviv, Pentagon officials said.
Military advisers from a dozen allied countries have also trained thousands of Ukrainian military personnel in Ukraine in recent years.
Since 2014, when Russia first invaded parts of the country, Ukraine has expanded its small special forces from a single unit to three brigades and a training regiment. In the past 18 months, he has added a domestic guard company – trained in resistance tactics – to each of these brigades, General Richard D. Clarke, head of the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command, told the Senate in ‘April.
The most acute training problem of the Ukrainian army right now is that it is losing its most hardened and well-trained forces, according to former U.S. officials who have worked with the Ukrainians.
The former Trump administration official said the Special Operations Command had small groups of U.S. operators working in the field with Ukrainian officers before the war. The American teams were …