How the CIA and Ukrainian intelligence secretly forged a deep partnership

KYIV — Lt. Gen. Valeriy Kondratyuk had come to Washington, D.C., with a mission: to persuade American intelligence agencies to trust him.

It was 2015, a year after Russia had seized Crimea and started a war in eastern Ukraine. It was still six years before Russia would move to its full-scale invasion, but the front-line in eastern Ukraine still smoldered amid a poorly observed ceasefire agreement. General Kondratyuk was the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency. Convinced Ukraine’s future was with the West, he wanted the United States to help strengthen his agency to better hold off Russia. But so far he had found American intelligence wary.

To change that, he believed he needed a bold gesture. That was why his luggage was stuffed with top-secret Russian military documents.

Kondratyuk said he brought the documents to meetings with senior American intelligence officials in Washington.

“I was like, ‘Holy s—!'” a former U.S. official told ABC News. “And he’s like, “‘Yes, we have a gift.'”

Kondratyuk’s visit to Washington was part of a remarkable story: how since 2014 the CIA and Ukraine’s intelligence services secretly forged a deep partnership, transforming them from former Cold War enemies into one of the U.S. agency’s most trusted partners.

This account of the partnership is based on interviews with former U.S. and Ukrainian intelligence officials, including Kondratyuk, with knowledge of how it developed. Some of the officials have been granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The partnership, according to those former officials, has been essential to Ukraine defending itself against the Kremlin. It also gave the U.S. an extraordinary window into Russia’s military and its political decision-making, thanks to Ukraine’s former closeness to Moscow.

“They went from being zero to one of our most important partners, up in the realm of the Brits,” a former U.S. official told ABC News. “Their access was so significant. Here was the best friend of the Russians for many, many years. They knew things we just, frankly, had no idea of.”

The partnership saw the CIA help Ukraine to rebuild its Main Directorate of Intelligence, known by its acronym HUR, which has become renowned for its audacious operations. 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. The two services also began conducting joint operations together around the world, the highest level of trust for intelligence services, according to the former U.S. officials.

“It’s unprecedented,” Sir Richard Dearlove, the former chief of Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency, told ABC News.

The development of the partnership was first reported in-depth by The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Some of the former American and Ukrainian officials said they were speaking out now because they believed it was vital for American lawmakers to understand the benefits the partnership that Kondratyuk first helped build has brought to the U.S. as well as Ukraine.

“This is something that the American Congress needs to know. What they have done as a service — and what Valeriy [Kondratyuk] has done personally — has saved the U.S. taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars. Maybe even billions of dollars,” said a former U.S. official.

Once Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, CIA intelligence sharing, in particular targeting information, became crucial for Ukraine. American-trained Ukrainian special forces also caught advancing Russian troops by surprise, according to current and former Ukrainian and U.S. officials.

“It was ground-breaking how we rebuilt that service. And the payoff came in the early days of the war,” said one of the former U.S. officials. “The HUR special operations guys were able to hit the Russians hard and hit them in ways that they didn’t expect. And that was the result of the years of investment from the agency in particular,” said the official.

Asked to comment for this article, the CIA referred to remarks by the agency’s director William Burns during an on-stage interview in October.

“I’m really proud of the record of the agency” Burns said in the interview with The Cipher Brief. “I’m proud of the work that CIA has done with our colleagues in the intelligence community to help the president build a strong coalition of countries to support Ukraine, to help the Ukrainians defend themselves.”

‘Let’s help the Ukrainians be Ukrainians’

The origin of the CIA partnership traces back to 2014, nearly a decade before Russia’s full-scale invasion, amid Ukraine’s “Revolution of Dignity.”

In February 2014, months of mass protests and violent clashes with security services culminated with Ukraine’s Kremlin-backed president, Viktor Yanukovych, fleeing to Russia.

The country’s new pro-Western government appointed Valentyn Nalyvaichenko as head of Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU. Barricades still circled central Kyiv, and government buildings were occupied by triumphant protesters.

Nalyvaichenko arrived at his new agency’s offices in Kyiv to find them empty. Much of the SBU’s leadership had fled to Russia and Crimea.

“I was absolutely shocked,” Nalyvaichenko told ABC News in an interview in Kyiv. “Nobody in. My predecessor fled to Crimea. His first deputy fled to Russia. It was totally compromised and destroyed,” said Nalyvaichenko.

Even worse, he said, officers from Russia’s FSB intelligence service had been working directly inside the SBU’s cybersecurity department. They had taken databases listing Ukraine’s military and security officers with them.

On the spot, Nalyvaichenko said, he decided that night to call the U.S. and British embassies directly from his abandoned office, and to ask for help.

The Americans and British quickly agreed, according to Nalyvaichenko, setting up a training program in combat tactics for SBU officers. That was the beginning.

“We could feel a palpable change on the Ukrainian side,” said a former U.S. official. “There were those of us on the agency side who were like, ‘Hey, this is something to exploit. We need to change with it. Let’s help, you know, the Ukrainians be Ukrainians.'”

‘Man, this is legit’

But initially, the U.S. was cautious, knowing that Ukrainian intelligence was deeply penetrated by Russia. The military intelligence agency, HUR, in particular, was seen as an unpromising candidate for collaboration.

That began to change with the appointment of Kondratyuk as head of HUR in 2015. He took it upon himself to convince the Americans to help him rebuild his agency. First, he reached out to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, but he found they remained too wary. So he turned to the CIA.

“Convincing them that we were worth it, it was not easy,” said Kondratyuk. “So I decided to go ahead, without receiving anything, but simply giving.”

That was how Kondratyuk decided to surprise American officials with the trove of Russian documents gathered by Ukrainian intelligence during the trip in 2015. The documents he brought included top-secret plans of Russian weapons, military capabilities.

The move worked. CIA analysts began vetting the intelligence provided by Ukraine, still cautious it could have been maliciously supplied by Russia. But the U.S. confidence in the material rapidly grew.

“He decided that the West is our future. So he essentially started opening the files,” said a former U.S. official. “And, you know, as this stuff adds up and as it checks out, people are going like, ‘Man, this is legit.'”

The partnership was also boosted by the arrival in Kyiv of a new CIA station chief, who developed a close relationship with Kondratyuk and believed the Ukrainians offered a historic opportunity for the CIA.

The new station chief, who had a white beard, was affectionately dubbed “Santa” by the Ukrainians.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea, combined with his ambitious modernization program for Russia’s armed forces, had to change how the U.S. government viewed Moscow. Officers within the CIA began arguing that the U.S. needed a more robust effort to understand Russia’s military, fearing Crimea could be a dry run for a larger war.

The intelligence the Ukrainians were providing bolstered their arguments for supporting them. They were sharing information on Russian decision-making, classified designs for new Russian weapon systems, electronic warfare technology, as well as their order of battle, the former U.S. officials said.

“The Ukrainians were providing us with the kind of intelligence that we could show it to our superiors and say, ‘Hey, they’re earning this. This isn’t a handout,'” said one of the former U.S. officials.

“In the end of the day, we needed the Ukrainians as much as they needed us on Russia,” said the former official.

‘Operation Goldfish’

From 2016, the collaboration picked up speed. 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.

“Secure communications, tradecraft, just basic street stuff,” said a former U.S. official. “Because these guys heretofore had been trained using the old Soviet and Russian intelligence methods.”

The CIA also eventually helped Ukraine equip a dozen forward-operating bases along the Russian border, from where the Ukrainian officers gathered intelligence, monitoring Russian communications and sometimes launching covert operations, according to Kondratyuk and former U.S. officials.

Hanging over the project always was the risk of Russian infiltration. Even after Ukraine’s independence, 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. That closeness was both an asset and a liability.

To guard against Russian penetration, 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.

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, according to Kondratyuk. An officer from the unit, Kyrylo Budanov, is now the head of HUR.

The CIA and Ukraine also established a training program, called “Operation Goldfish”. The name derived, Kondratyuk said, from a post-Soviet joke about an untrustworthy Russian-speaking fish.

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. The Ukrainians were able to pass as Russians, creating remarkable opportunities for access and recruitment, former Ukrainian and U.S. officials said.

The speed the partnership developed at was exceptional, the former U.S. officials said

“It was a magical time,” said a former U.S. 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.”

‘So many red lines’

But, even as the partnership grew rapidly, White House officials under the Obama administration — and later the Trump and Biden — remained wary, worried the collaboration could provoke Russia, according to Kondratyuk and former U.S. officials.

The Administration’s national security leaders wanted the partnership to focus on intelligence gathering and the CIA was forbidden from assisting the Ukrainians in conducting lethal or sabotage operations targeting Russia, the ex-officials said.

The restrictions frustrated the Ukrainians. Convinced Russia was already preparing for a larger invasion, Kondratyuk and others pushed to conduct sabotage operations into occupied Crimea and into Russia itself, with the aim of pre-positioning explosives for example. Such plans horrified the Obama administration, which demanded the Ukrainians not go through with them, former U.S. and Ukrainian officials said.

“We always had to you know respect those red lines. But they hated that we had so many red lines,” said a former U.S. official.

In 2016, without informing the Americans, Kondratyuk sent the U.S.-trained Unit 2245 on a mission to Crimea to plant explosives at a Russian helicopter base. The mission went disastrously awry, resulting in a gun battle with Russian special forces, reportedly killing several, and prompting Putin to publicly threaten retaliation.

The mission outraged the Obama White House. Joe Biden, then Vice President, called Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko, to express the administration’s unhappiness. Biden told him it had caused a “gigantic problem” and warned Poroshenko “it cannot come close to happening again,” according to audio from the call that was later leaked by a pro-Russian Ukrainian MP.

The U.S. anger lost Kondratyuk his position as HUR chief. The partnership with the CIA, however, continued.

A first line of defense

When Russia invaded in 2022, the Biden administration lifted many of the restrictions on the CIA’s operations in Ukraine, according to current and former U.S. officials.

CIA officers were authorised to remain in Ukraine as Russia attacked. They were still not permitted to directly kill Russians, but they were now authorized to assist Ukraine with targeting information.

As Russian columns advanced over the border, CIA-trained HUR special forces units, operated behind the lines, sending intelligence on Russian troop movements and attacking them. Ukrainian agents had also planted explosives on train lines and logistics points and left weapons caches inside Russia and occupied Ukraine.

“All these guys were the first line of our defense, which met Russia in the first day of invasion,” said Kondratyuk.

‘Just Russian propaganda’

Putin has publicly long insisted Ukraine is controlled by the CIA and was becoming a beachhead for NATO forces, using the claims as justification for his invasion. Some have alleged the CIA partnership with Ukrainian intelligence was a provocation to Putin, giving him a pretext for the war.

Kondratyuk, who arrived in Washington all those years ago with luggage full of secrets, dismisses those claims, describing them as Russian propaganda. Putin, he said, invaded Ukraine because he wanted to dominate it.

“This is just Russian propaganda, manipulation in order to somehow justify this inhuman and terrible invasion of another country,” he said. “Our cooperation did not provoke. It only strengthened our ability to resist Russian aggression.”

Nalyvaichenko, the former SBU chief, who is now a member of parliament, said Ukrainians had sought support from the U.S. because they knew it was the best chance to retain their independence from Russia.

“We have only two options: for us to be in Russia, being dissolved, occupied with the KGB back,” he said. “The other option is to become a democratic country, with democratic special services. We made our choice.”