On Wednesday, March 16, President Biden announced an unprecedented package of $800 million in addition to $200 million previously pledged in military assistance to Ukraine, which includes 800 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, 2,000 anti-armor Javelins, 1,000 light anti-armor weapons, 6,000 AT-4 anti-armor systems and 100 Switchblade kamikaze drones.
Texas Rep. Mike McCaul, the top Republican on the House
Foreign Affairs Committee, told
Politico [1]: “The U.S. was working with allies to send more S-300
surface-to-air missile systems to Ukraine. The country has had the S-300 for
years, so troops should require little-to-no training on how to operate the
Soviet-era anti-aircraft equipment. CNN reported that Slovakia had
preliminarily agreed to transfer their S-300s to Ukraine.
“A Western diplomat familiar with Ukraine’s requests said
Kyiv specifically has asked the U.S. and allies for more Stingers and
Starstreak man-portable air-defense systems, Javelins and other anti-tank
weapons, ground-based mobile air-defense systems, armed drones, long-range
anti-ship missiles, off-the-shelf electronic warfare capabilities, and
satellite navigation and communications jamming equipment.
“To further help, there is a push to get Eastern European
allies to send new air defense systems to Ukraine that the U.S. doesn’t have.
At the top of the list are mobile, Russian-made missile systems such as the
SA-8 and S-300. Like the S-300, Ukraine also possesses SA-8s. The SA-8 is a
mobile, short-range air defense system still in the warehouses of Romania,
Bulgaria and Poland. The larger, long-range S-300 is still in use by Bulgaria,
Greece and Slovakia.
“Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s trip to Europe this week
will include not only NATO headquarters in Brussels, but also stops in Bulgaria
and Slovakia — countries that own S-300s and SA-8s — before heading back to
Washington.”
Slovakia’s defense minister said Thursday, March 17, that
the country was willing to give Ukraine its S-300 surface-to-air missile
defense systems if it receives a “proper replacement.” At a press conference in
Slovakia with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Slovak Defense Minister
Jaroslav Nad said Slovakia was discussing
the S-300s [2] with the US and Ukraine. “We’re willing to do so immediately
when we have a proper replacement. The only strategic air defense system that
we have in Slovakia is S-300 system,” he said.
As with the Slovak defense minister asking for “proper
replacement” in return for handing over its S-300 air defense system to Ukraine,
Secretary of State Tony Blinken similarly suggested that Poland could hand over
its entire fleet of 28 Soviet-era MiG-29s to Ukraine, and in return, the United
States government would “backfill” the Polish Air Force with American F-16s.
“We are looking actively now at the question of airplanes
that Poland may provide to Ukraine, and looking at how we might be able to
backfill it should Poland decide to supply those planes,” Blinken told a briefing
in Chisinau on March 6.
The transfer might have been possible if the deal was kept
under wraps, but that became impossible after Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign
affairs and security policy chief, declared unequivocally to reporters on Feb.
27 that the bloc would provide Ukraine with fighter jets.
The Ukrainian government heard the proposal and ran with it,
producing infographics claiming they were about to receive 70 used Russian
fighter jets from Poland, Slovakia and Bulgaria. A Ukrainian government
official told
Politico [3] that Ukrainian pilots had even traveled to Poland to wrap up
the deal and bring the planes back over the border.
Upon getting wind of the shady deal, Russian defense
spokesman Igor Konashenkov issued a stark warning that any attempt by an
outside power to facilitate a no-fly zone over Ukraine, including providing
aircraft to Kyiv, would be considered a belligerent in the war and treated
accordingly.
Hours after the Russian warning, the Polish Foreign
Ministry issued an emphatic denial, saying providing aircraft to Ukraine
was out of question as the MiG-29 fleet constituted the backbone of the Polish
Air Force.
The deal was categorically scuttled on March 3 by Polish
President Andrzej Duda: “We are not sending any jets to Ukraine because that
would open military inference in the Ukrainian conflict. We are not joining
that conflict. NATO is not party to that conflict,” Duda
said [4].
In a bizarre turn of events overriding its own president’s
categorical statement, Poland announced on March 8 that it was ready to
transfer the aircraft to the Ramstein Air Base in Germany at the disposal of
the United States which could then hand them over to Ukraine.
But the denouement of the diplomatic fiasco came on March 9,
after the United States, occupying a high moral ground, unequivocally rejected
the “preposterous” Polish offer, initially made on Warsaw’s behalf by the EU’s
foreign affairs head and the US secretary of state.
The prospect of flying combat aircraft from NATO territory
into the war zone “raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance,” the
Pentagon sanctimoniously revealed on March 9. “It is simply not clear to us
that there is a substantive rationale for it,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby
dignifiedly added.
The only conclusion that could be drawn from the reluctant
Polish offer of transferring its entire fleet of MiG-29s to Ramstein at the
disposal of the United States is that it was simply a humbug designed to
provide face-saving to its NATO patron while it was already decided behind the
scenes that Washington would spurn Poland’s nominal offer.
The New York Times reported
Saturday [5], March 19: “American officials have floated the idea of
Turkey’s government providing Ukraine with the sophisticated S-400 antiaircraft
system. It is the very system, made by Russia, that American officials punished
Turkey — a NATO ally — for buying from Moscow several years ago. Now American
diplomats see a way to pull Turkey away from its dance with Russia and give the
Ukrainians one of the most powerful, long-range antiaircraft systems in
existence.
“The proposal for Turkey to supply Ukraine with Russian-made
S-400 antiaircraft systems would also test what Mr. Putin is willing to accept
from NATO — and how far a NATO ally that in recent years often appeared to be
building bridges to Moscow is willing to go in reiterating its commitment to
the alliance and backing Ukraine.
“The idea came up when Wendy R. Sherman, the deputy
secretary of state, visited Turkey two weeks ago. Ms. Sherman declined to talk
about her discussions. A different senior American official said the United
States knew the proposal would anger Mr. Putin. Ukraine already uses
Turkish-made drones, but Turkey is worried that providing the antiaircraft
systems could make the country a target of Russia’s wrath.
“At the same time, the upside for Turkey could be
substantial: It was suspended by the Trump administration from the F-35 fighter
program — in which it was both a buyer and a manufacturer of parts for the
advanced aircraft — after its purchase of the Russian S-400s. A deal to send
the antiaircraft systems to Ukraine could open the door to re-entry into the
F-35 program.”
Notwithstanding, private military contractors in close
co-ordination and consultation with covert operators from CIA and Western
intelligence agencies are not only training Ukraine’s conscript military and
allied neo-Nazi militias in the use of caches of MANPADS and anti-armor
munitions provided by the US, Germany and the rest of European nations as a
military assistance to Ukraine but are, in fact, directing the whole defense
strategy of Ukraine.
The Intercept
reported [6] Thursday, March 17, the US military had deployed extensive
ISR, or intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, assets to countries
neighboring Ukraine to monitor developments within the embattled nation. The
aircraft include MQ-9 Reaper drones, Boeing RC-135 Rivet Joints, and Boeing E-3
Sentry AWACS, which have been used to eavesdrop on communications and collect
imagery intelligence.
“‘The U.S. is using a variety of drone and fixed-wing
collection assets to obtain tactical information of the battlefield,’ the
official said, adding that the intelligence is then passed on to the Ukrainians
through a liaison officer. On Sunday, a Russian drone briefly crossed into
Poland, a NATO member, leading to a warning from the alliance that it could
respond with force — an alarming threat of direct confrontation with Russia.
“An MQ-9 drone pilot with the U.S. military also told The
Intercept that Reapers had been deployed to the region. He said the U.S. was
using MQ-9 services leased from private contractors before withdrawing them and
replacing with government assets, which he said have been slower to stand up.
“The U.S. has particular experience with this type of
indirect weapons and intelligence assistance against Russia, having previously
sent arms to Syrian rebels combating the Russian-backed regime of President
Bashar al-Assad.”
In many ways, the proxy war in Ukraine resembles the CIA’s
Operation Timber Sycamore and the Pentagon’s $500 million train-and-equip
program to provide guerrilla warfare training and lethal weaponry to rebels battling
the Syrian government in the training camps located at border regions of Turkey
and Jordan during Syria’s decade-long conflict.
In fact, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last month was only a
logical culmination of a long-simmering, eight-year war of attrition initiated
by NATO powers against Russia in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region after the 2014
Maidan coup toppling Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and consequent
annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia.
In an explosive
scoop [7], Zach Dorfman reported for the Yahoo News on March 16: “As part
of the Ukraine-based training program, CIA paramilitaries taught their
Ukrainian counterparts sniper techniques; how to operate U.S.-supplied Javelin
anti-tank missiles and other equipment; how to evade digital tracking the
Russians used to pinpoint the location of Ukrainian troops, which had left them
vulnerable to attacks by artillery; how to use covert communications tools; and
how to remain undetected in the war zone while also drawing out Russian and
insurgent forces from their positions, among other skills, according to former
officials.
“When CIA paramilitaries first traveled to eastern Ukraine
in the aftermath of Russia’s initial 2014 incursion, their brief was twofold.
First, they were ordered to determine how the agency could best help train
Ukrainian special operations personnel fight the Russian military forces, and
their separatist allies, waging a grinding war against Ukrainian troops in the
Donbas region. But the second part of the mission was to test the mettle of the
Ukrainians themselves, according to former officials.”
Besides the CIA’s clandestine program for training neo-Nazi
militias in eastern Donbas and the US Special Forces program for training
Ukraine’s security forces at Yavoriv Combat Training Center in the western part
of the country bordering Poland that was hit
by a barrage [8] of 30 cruise missiles launched from Russian strategic
bombers killing at least 35 militants on March 13, Zach Dorfman claims in a
separate January
report [9] that the CIA also ran a covert program for training Ukraine’s
special forces at an undisclosed facility in the southern United States.
“The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program
in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other
intelligence personnel, according to five former intelligence and national
security officials familiar with the initiative. The program, which started in
2015, is based at an undisclosed facility in the Southern U.S., according to
some of those officials.
“While the covert program, run by paramilitaries working for
the CIA’s Ground Branch — now officially known as Ground Department — was
established by the Obama administration after Russia’s invasion and annexation
of Crimea in 2014, and expanded under the Trump administration, the Biden
administration has further augmented it.
“By 2015, as part of this expanded anti-Russia effort, CIA
Ground Branch paramilitaries also started traveling to the front in eastern
Ukraine to advise their counterparts there. The multiweek, U.S.-based CIA
program has included training in firearms, camouflage techniques, land
navigation, tactics like cover and move, intelligence and other areas.
“One person familiar with the program put it more bluntly. ‘The
United States is training an insurgency,’ said a former CIA official, adding
that the program has taught the Ukrainians how ‘to kill Russians.’ Going back
decades, the CIA has provided limited training to Ukrainian intelligence units
to try and shore up an independent Kyiv and prevent Russian subversion, but
cooperation ramped up after the Crimea invasion, said a former CIA executive.”
After perusing these informative reports, not only the
defensive rationale for Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine on Feb. 24
becomes abundantly clear but it also shines light on the fact that Russia’s intervention
in Syria was actually in retaliation for the CIA arming and training
mercenaries and neo-Nazi militias in east Ukraine in order to destabilize
Russia.
Following the Maidan coup in 2014 after Russia annexed the
Crimean peninsula and the CIA initiated the covert program to train and arm
neo-Nazi militias in order to provoke Russia, the Kremlin’s immediate response
to the escalation by Washington was that it jumped into the fray in Syria in
September 2015, after a clandestine visit to Moscow by General Qassem
Soleimani, the slain commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force who was assassinated in
an American airstrike on a tip-off from the Israeli intelligence at the Baghdad
airport on January 3, 2020.
When Russia deployed its forces and military hardware to
Syria in September 2015, the militant proxies of Washington and its regional
clients were on the verge of driving a wedge between Damascus and the Alawite
heartland of coastal Latakia, which could have led to the imminent downfall of
the Bashar al-Assad government.
With the help of Russia’s air power and long-range artillery,
the Syrian government has since reclaimed most of Syria’s territory from the
insurgents, excluding Idlib in the northwest occupied by Turkish-backed
militants and Deir al-Zor and the Kurdish-held areas in the east, thus
inflicting a humiliating defeat on Washington and its regional allies, Israel,
Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf States.
Karl Marx presciently said: “History repeats itself, first
as a tragedy and then as a farce.” Those who don’t learn from traumatic
experiences are bound to repeat their calamitous mistakes.
Citations:
[1] US
sends Switchblade drones to Ukraine:
[2] Slovakia
Says It Will Give Ukraine S-300 If It Gets Replacement:
[3] How
Biden scuttled Polish aircraft deal:
[4] Poland
will not send fighter jets into Ukraine, Andrzej Duda:
[5] For
the U.S., a Tenuous Balance in Confronting Russia:
[6] U.S.
quietly assists Ukraine with intelligence:
[7] CIA
training program in Ukraine helped Kyiv prepare for Russian invasion:
[8] Pentagon
push to send more trainers to Ukraine was scrapped:
[9] CIA-trained
Ukrainian paramilitaries may take central role if Russia invades:
About the author:
Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based geopolitical and national
security analyst focused on geo-strategic affairs and hybrid warfare in the
Af-Pak and Middle East regions. His domains of expertise include
neocolonialism, military-industrial complex and petro-imperialism. He is a
regular contributor of diligently researched investigative reports to
alternative news media.
20 March 2022.
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