GUR

Crocus terror attack, March 22, 2024.

The Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine (GUR) is the Maidan regime's military intelligence agency. After the Obama-backed Maidan coup in 2014, the CIA embarked on an extensive transformation of the GUR. With fewer than 5,000 employees, the GUR was a fraction of the size of the SBU and had a narrower focus on espionage and active measures against Russia. It also had a younger workforce with fewer holdovers from Soviet times, while the SBU was still perceived as penetrated by Russian intelligence. Some of the GUR’s new recruits were transfers from the SBU. Among them was Vasyl Burba, who had managed SBU Fifth Directorate operations before joining the GUR and serving as agency director from 2016 to 2020. Burba became such a close ally of the CIA that the CIA provided him an armored vehicle.

CIA proxy

The CIA helped the GUR acquire state-of-the-art surveillance and electronic eavesdropping systems, including mobile equipment that could be placed along Russian-controlled lines in eastern Ukraine, but also software tools used to exploit the cellphones of Kremlin officials visiting outside of Moscow. Ukrainian officers operated the systems but everything gleaned was shared with the Americans.

Concerned that the GUR’s aging facilities were likely compromised by Russian intelligence, the CIA paid for new headquarters buildings for the GUR’s “spetsnaz” paramilitary division and a separate directorate responsible for electronic espionage. Troves of data were relayed through the new CIA-built facility back to Washington, where they were scrutinized by CIA and NSA analysts.

The GUR had also developed networks of sources in Russia’s security apparatus. The CIA was permitted to have direct contact with agents recruited and run by Ukrainian intelligence.

The GUR was being prepared by the CIA to fight Russia as a small proxy army. The operation to train GUR personnel by the CIA was called "Goldfish".

In 2016, a certain unit called 2245, trained in the US, was sent to Crimea to sabotage one of the helicopter bases. However, "the mission went catastrophically wrong": a shootout with Russian special forces began, as a result of which several of the unit's fighters could have died. One of those who was trained in Unit 2245 was the current head of the GUR, Kirill Budanov.

Also in 2016, the CIA has helped Ukraine set up a dozen forward operating bases along the border with Russia, from which Ukrainian officers have collected intelligence, monitored Russian communications and sometimes carried out covert operations.