Part of what made the reports of the assas­si­na­tion of Daria Dug­i­na so trou­bling is that it sig­naled the kind of esca­la­tion in the con­flict that can be hard to con­trol. High lev­el assas­si­na­tions tend to elic­it reprisals. Esca­lat­ed con­flicts can’t always be con­tained. And that brings us to the fol­low­ing arti­cle in Covert Action Month­ly about the grow­ing sus­pi­cions held by Dou­glas Valen­tine — an expert on the his­to­ry of the CIA’s Phoenix Pro­gram — that the CIA was involved with the plot against Dug­i­na. Valen­tine admits he’s bas­ing these sus­pi­cions pure­ly on spec­u­la­tion. But as we’re going to see, it’s pret­ty informed spec­u­la­tion, which includes the pub­li­ca­tion last week of a puff piece in the NY Times tout­ing a new­ly-cre­at­ed secret civil­ian assas­si­na­tion pro­gram run by Ukraine’s mil­i­tary. Mem­bers of the assas­si­na­tion unit — the “civil­ian vol­un­teers” — were made avail­able to the media to dis­cuss its oper­a­tions. So when mem­bers of a civil­ian assas­si­na­tion unit are being tout­ed in the NY Times, that cer­tain­ly sug­gests this is a CIA-approved oper­a­tion.

Under a law passed last year, Ukraine’s spe­cial forces can secret train, arm, and pay secret com­bat­ants fight­ing on Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry in time of war. Inter­est­ing­ly, Ukraine inter­prets these secret civil­ian fight­ers as have a legal basis for attack­ing civil­ians, which would be pro­hib­it­ed for sol­diers under inter­na­tion­al law. Inter­na­tion­al law actu­al­ly con­sid­ers them com­bat­ants once they engage in hos­til­i­ties, but Ukraine is mak­ing a dif­fer­ent legal deter­mi­na­tion. Oper­at­ing in a cell-like man­ner, mem­bers only know the iden­ti­ties of their fel­low cell mem­bers, so if these issues are ever inves­ti­gat­ed it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly going to be easy to get accu­rate info on who was actu­al­ly involved in any of the crimes car­ried out by these units.

And while the Ukrain­ian law said spe­cial forces are allowed to train these civil­ians units, it actu­al­ly sounds like the civil­ian vol­un­teers were ini­tial­ly trained under pro­grams oper­at­ed by Right Sec­tor and Azov’s Nation­al Corp. So Ukraine’s Nazi bat­tal­ions are set­ting up secret cells of civil­ian assas­sins. What could pos­si­bly go wrong?

Ok, first, here’s the report from Covert Action Mag­a­zine describ­ing Dou­glas Valen­tine’s dark sus­pi­cions. The kind of sus­pi­cions that, if true, sug­gests there’s going to be a lot more high-lev­el assas­si­na­tion attempts in the future. And poten­tial some very nasty blow­back:

Covert Action Mag­a­zine

Intel­li­gence Expert Believes CIA Behind Car Bomb Assas­si­na­tion of Daugh­ter of Alexan­der Dug­in

By Jere­my Kuz­marov -
August 24, 2022

CIA expert Dou­glas Valen­tine, author of the sem­i­nal book The Phoenix Pro­gram (1990), believes that the CIA was behind the car bomb that killed Darya Dug­i­na, a jour­nal­ist and daugh­ter of well-known Russ­ian intel­lec­tu­al Alexan­der Dug­in.

Ms. Dug­i­na, 29, was killed on Sat­ur­day night when a bomb blew up the Toy­ota Land Cruis­er she was dri­ving in a sub­urb of Moscow. She was the intend­ed tar­get along with her father, whose pro­mo­tion of a Eurasian Union has influ­enced the think­ing of Vladimir Putin and mem­bers of his inner cir­cle.

Russia’s Fed­er­al Secu­ri­ty Ser­vices (FSB) blamed the Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices for the killing, spec­i­fy­ing that the attack was car­ried out by a woman named Natalya Vovk (AKA Natalya Sha­ban), a mem­ber of the Azov Bat­tal­ion along with her broth­er who arrived in Rus­sia last month with her teenage daugh­ter.[1]

Vovk alleged­ly rent­ed an apart­ment from where she researched Ms. Dug­i­na, attend­ed “The Tra­di­tion” cel­e­bra­tion where her father gave a speech and Ms. Dug­i­na was killed, and after plant­i­ng the bomb, fled to Esto­nia via Pskov.

Accord­ing to Dou­glas Valen­tine, “Zelen­sky doesn’t go to the bath­room with­out ask­ing per­mis­sion from his CIA case offi­cer. Ten bil­lion dol­lars comes with a lot of strings attached. The CIA would have been inti­mate­ly involved in recruit­ing the woman assas­sin, prepar­ing the plan every step of the way includ­ing escape. That’s just Stan­dard Oper­at­ing Pro­ce­dure.”

Valen­tine admits of course that there is no direct evi­dence to impli­cate the CIA in Dugina’s killing and that he’s mak­ing an “edu­cat­ed guess,” how­ev­er, “clan­des­tine ops occur by def­i­n­i­tion with­out any­one know­ing they hap­pened.” Valen­tine fur­ther told CAM that “the CIA doesn’t con­duct a covert oper­a­tion of this grandios­i­ty unless it’s deni­able and worth the risk. That’s known. So there’s rarely any evi­dence.”

Phoenix Pro­gram Redux

Just days before Dugina’s assas­si­na­tion, The New York Times pub­lished a front-page arti­cle about Ukrain­ian guer­ril­la fight­ers, or par­ti­sans, who open­ly admit­ted to plant­i­ng car bombs tar­get­ing pro-Russ­ian police offi­cers and politi­cians behind Russ­ian lines.

Ukraine’s Spe­cial Ser­vices (SBU) is also known to have set up a Phoenix-style kid­nap­ping and assas­si­na­tion pro­gram tar­get­ing dis­si­dents, includ­ing may­ors and local gov­ern­ment offi­cials con­sid­ered sym­pa­thet­ic to Rus­sia.

Vasi­ly Pro­zorov, a for­mer SBU offi­cer, mean­while pro­claimed that the SBU had been advised by the CIA since 2014. “CIA employ­ees [who have been present in Kyiv since 2014] are resid­ing in clan­des­tine apart­ments and sub­ur­ban hous­es,”” he said. “How­ev­er, they fre­quent­ly come to the SBU’s cen­tral office for hold­ing, for exam­ple, spe­cif­ic meet­ings or plot­ting secret oper­a­tions.”

Valen­tine told CAM in April that the CIA “is apply­ing the same orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture in Ukraine as it used in South Viet­nam to con­duct an updat­ed ver­sion of the typ­i­cal ‘two tier’ Phoenix pro­gram. The top tier is to assure polit­i­cal con­trol, the low­er tier to paci­fy the pop­u­la­tion.”

Valen­tine con­tin­ued:

“CIA for­eign intel­li­gence offi­cers advise SBU secu­ri­ty ser­vice to assure ‘top tier’ inter­nal secu­ri­ty and polit­i­cal con­trol; and Ukrain­ian CIA agents run ops into Don­bas, Rus­sia and Belarus, send­ing ille­gal trav­el­ers, smug­glers, and agents to set up agent nets and pen­e­trate the ene­my in his ter­ri­to­ry, [and car­ry out] sab­o­tage and sub­ver­sion. SBU and Ukrain­ian CIA are where hit-lists get authored. CIA offi­cers advise mil­i­tary, mili­tias and mer­ce­nar­ies in deni­able polit­i­cal, para­mil­i­tary and psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions to ter­ror­ize and oth­er­wise per­suade civil­ian pop­u­la­tion to sup­port Zelen­sky while demor­al­iz­ing and fight­ing the ene­my.”

As in Viet­nam, some of the CIA agents may be oper­at­ing under the cov­er of State Depart­ment-run police train­ing pro­grams which were insti­tut­ed in Ukraine after the 2014 Maid­an coup.[4] Oth­ers have been assigned to spe­cial­ized para­mil­i­tary units fight­ing in east­ern Ukraine.[5]

Valen­tine stat­ed that the “orig­i­nal Phoenix was respon­si­ble for the planned assas­si­na­tion of between 25,000 to 40,000 peo­ple in South Viet­nam. Based on the Phoenix orga­ni­za­tion­al mod­el, assas­si­na­tion became a stan­darized com­po­nent of mil­i­tary and CIA oper­a­tions. It has since been per­fect­ed, as evi­denced by the assas­si­na­tion of Dug­i­na and scores of oth­er exam­ples from Cen­tral Amer­ic­ca to Iran to Africa and the Far East.”

...

1. A Russ­ian web­site of the NemeZi­da project, which pub­lish­es data on Ukrain­ian ser­vice­men post­ed in April that Natalya Sha­ban, born in 1979, served in the Azov-based Nation­al Guard. (The Nation­al Guard is not the same as the U.S. Nation­al Guard; rather, it was formed direct­ly by the hard­core Azov Reg­i­ment, with many mem­bers not direct­ly mem­bers of the Azov.) The April post­ing dis­plays a copy of Vovk/Shaban’s cer­tifi­cate indi­cat­ing mil­i­tary unit No. 3057, in which the 12th brigade of the Nation­al Guard of Ukraine is sta­tioned. Sha­ban is the name that her daugh­ter, Sophia Sha­ban, used when they entered Russia—and the assump­tion is that Natalya Vovk is the maid­en name of Natalya Sha­ban. The pho­to­graph of the Nation­al Guard mem­ber is a close match with the Natalya Vovk rent­ing an apart­ment next to Darya Dugina’s res­i­dence.

————-

“Intel­li­gence Expert Believes CIA Behind Car Bomb Assas­si­na­tion of Daugh­ter of Alexan­der Dug­in” By Jere­my Kuz­marov; Covert Action Mag­a­zine; 08/24/2022

“Accord­ing to Dou­glas Valen­tine, “Zelen­sky doesn’t go to the bath­room with­out ask­ing per­mis­sion from his CIA case offi­cer. Ten bil­lion dol­lars comes with a lot of strings attached. The CIA would have been inti­mate­ly involved in recruit­ing the woman assas­sin, prepar­ing the plan every step of the way includ­ing escape. That’s just Stan­dard Oper­at­ing Pro­ce­dure.””

Was the CIA inti­mate­ly involved in the plan­ning of Dug­i­na’s assas­si­na­tion? If so that’s the kind of esca­la­tion that trig­ger some very unpleas­ant blow­back. And would Valen­tine was admit­ted­ly just engaged in informed spec­u­la­tion about the CIA’s involve­ment in the plot, it’s hard to ignore the cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence he cit­ed. There’s the direct­ly claims of for­mer SBU offi­cer Vasi­ly Pro­zorov about the CIA’s direct involve­ment in advis­ing SBU oper­a­tions, which is lit­tle sur­prise. But it’s that NY Times arti­cle from last week describ­ing a civil­ian ‘par­ti­san’ net­work that is per­haps the most com­pelling cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence that the US gov­ern­ment at least approves of Ukraine’s assas­si­na­tion pro­grams. Because as we’re going to see, the that NY Times piece is basi­cal­ly a pub­lic rela­tions piece tout­ing the new­ly cre­at­ed civil­ian par­ti­san assas­si­na­tion net­work. And when puff pieces about civil­ian assas­si­na­tion pro­grams are show­ing up in places like the NY Times, that’s a clue about the CIA’s atti­tude regard­ing these pro­grams:

...
Just days before Dugina’s assas­si­na­tion, The New York Times pub­lished a front-page arti­cle about Ukrain­ian guer­ril­la fight­ers, or par­ti­sans, who open­ly admit­ted to plant­i­ng car bombs tar­get­ing pro-Russ­ian police offi­cers and politi­cians behind Russ­ian lines.

Ukraine’s Spe­cial Ser­vices (SBU) is also known to have set up a Phoenix-style kid­nap­ping and assas­si­na­tion pro­gram tar­get­ing dis­si­dents, includ­ing may­ors and local gov­ern­ment offi­cials con­sid­ered sym­pa­thet­ic to Rus­sia.

Vasi­ly Pro­zorov, a for­mer SBU offi­cer, mean­while pro­claimed that the SBU had been advised by the CIA since 2014. “CIA employ­ees [who have been present in Kyiv since 2014] are resid­ing in clan­des­tine apart­ments and sub­ur­ban hous­es,”” he said. “How­ev­er, they fre­quent­ly come to the SBU’s cen­tral office for hold­ing, for exam­ple, spe­cif­ic meet­ings or plot­ting secret oper­a­tions.”
...

Ok, and now here’s last week’s NY Times puff peace about the secret — but not so secret any­more — civil­ian par­ti­san assas­si­na­tion squad: the “com­mu­ni­ty vol­un­teers”. As we’ll see, the Zelen­skiy gov­ern­ment was mak­ing mem­bers of the unit avail­able for inter­views with the media. So the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment want­ed to make it pub­licly known that it has already set up a secret civil­ian assas­si­na­tion squad tar­get­ing those deemed to be trai­tors.

The “com­mu­ni­ty vol­un­teers” are over­seen by branch­es of the mil­i­tary but trained by groups like Right Sec­tor and Azov’s Nation­al Corp. Mem­bers are placed into sep­a­rate cells and don’t know the iden­ti­ties of oth­er cells, and tasked with iden­ti­fy­ing and ter­ror­iz­ing or killing civil­ians deemed to be trai­tors. It’s one of the main fea­tures of the whole enter­prise. Under a Ukrain­ian law passed last year, the military’s Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Forces are autho­rized to train, arm and pay secret com­bat­ants fight­ing on Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry in time of war. And accord­ing to Ukrain­ian inter­pre­ta­tion of the laws of war, these civil­ians are legal­ly allowed to tar­get civil­ians, which would nor­mal­ly be pro­hib­it­ed by the laws of war. Inter­na­tion­al law still con­sid­ers that civil­ians become com­bat­ants once they take up hos­til­i­ties, but Ukrain­ian is going ahead with its legal inter­pre­ta­tions any­way:

The New York Times

Behind Ene­my Lines, Ukraini­ans Tell Rus­sians ‘You Are Nev­er Safe’

Clan­des­tine resis­tance cells are spot­ting tar­gets, sab­o­tag­ing rail lines and killing those deemed col­lab­o­ra­tors as they seek to unnerve Russ­ian forces.

By Andrew E. Kramer
Aug. 17, 2022

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — They sneak down dark­ened alleys to set explo­sives. They iden­ti­fy Russ­ian tar­gets for Ukrain­ian artillery and long-range rock­ets pro­vid­ed by the Unit­ed States. They blow up rail lines and assas­si­nate offi­cials they con­sid­er col­lab­o­ra­tors with the Rus­sians.

Slip­ping back and forth across the front lines, the guer­ril­la fight­ers are known in Ukraine as par­ti­sans, and in recent weeks they have tak­en an ever more promi­nent role in the war, rat­tling Russ­ian forces by help­ing deliv­er humil­i­at­ing blows in occu­pied areas they thought were safe.

Increas­ing­ly, Ukraine is tak­ing the fight against Russ­ian forces into Russ­ian-con­trolled areas, whether with elite mil­i­tary units, like the one cred­it­ed on Tues­day with a huge explo­sion at a Russ­ian ammu­ni­tion depot in the occu­pied Crimean Penin­su­la, or an under­ground net­work of the guer­ril­las.

Last week, Ukrain­ian offi­cials said, the par­ti­sans had a hand in a a suc­cess­ful strike on a Russ­ian air base, also in Crimea, which Moscow annexed eight years ago. It destroyed eight fight­er jets.

“The goal is to show the occu­piers that they are not at home, that they should not set­tle in, that they should not sleep com­fort­ably,” said one guer­ril­la fight­er, who spoke on con­di­tion that, for secu­ri­ty rea­sons, he only be iden­ti­fied by his code name, Svarog, after a pagan Slav­ic god of fire.

In recent days the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary made Svarog and sev­er­al oth­er of the oper­a­tives avail­able for inter­views in per­son or online, hop­ing to high­light the par­ti­sans’ widen­ing threat to Russ­ian forces and sig­nal to West­ern donors that Ukraine is suc­cess­ful­ly ral­ly­ing local resources in the war, now near­ly six months old. A senior Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary offi­cial famil­iar with the pro­gram also described the work­ings of the resis­tance.

Their accounts of attacks could not be ver­i­fied com­plete­ly but aligned with reports in the Ukrain­ian media and with descrip­tions from Ukraini­ans who had recent­ly fled Russ­ian-occu­pied areas.

Svarog and I met over lemon­ade and cheese pas­tries at a Geor­gian restau­rant in Zapor­izhzhia, a city under Ukrain­ian con­trol about 65 miles north of the occu­pied town of Meli­topol.

He spoke with inti­mate knowl­edge of par­ti­san activ­i­ties, pro­vid­ing a rare glimpse into one of the most hid­den aspects of the war.

The Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary began train­ing par­ti­sans in the months before the inva­sion, as Rus­sia massed troops near the bor­ders. The effort has paid off in recent weeks as Ukrain­ian forces are press­ing a coun­terof­fen­sive in the south, although Russ­ian forces, with far greater advan­tages in heavy weapons, still sur­round Ukraine from the east and north.

...

With lit­tle move­ment of the front lines, insur­gent activ­i­ty is now inten­si­fy­ing, as the fight­ers strike stealth­ily in envi­rons they know inti­mate­ly, using car bombs, boo­by traps and tar­get­ed killings with pis­tols — and then blend­ing into the local pop­u­la­tion.

Before the war, Svarog occa­sion­al­ly joined week­end train­ing with Right Sec­tor and Nation­al Corps, a branch of the Azov move­ment, both of which are aligned with para­mil­i­tary units in Ukraine. They were just two of dozens of orga­ni­za­tions run­ning mil­i­tary train­ing for civil­ians through­out Ukraine dur­ing the eight-year war with Russ­ian-backed sep­a­ratists.

Svarog said he was among the trainees in these pub­lic pro­grams. Behind the scenes, Ukraine’s Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Forces were form­ing a more struc­tured, and secret, pro­gram that includ­ed instruc­tion on sab­o­tage, explo­sives and stash­ing weapon caches in antic­i­pa­tion of Russia’s attack.

After the inva­sion, Svarog said, he was direct­ed to a stor­age shed out­side Meli­topol, where he found slabs of high explo­sives, det­o­na­tors, Kalash­nikov rifles, a grenade launch­er and two pis­tols equipped with silencers.

Meli­topol, the south­ern Ukrain­ian town where Svarog oper­ates, has since emerged as a cen­ter of the resis­tance. He recount­ed the care­ful cas­ing of tar­gets, fol­lowed by attacks.

By Sat­ur­day, par­ti­sans had struck with explo­sives sev­en days in a row, accord­ing to the town’s exiled may­or, Ivan Fedorov, who boast­ed of the achieve­ment to Ukrain­ian media as part of the more pub­lic embrace of par­ti­san oper­a­tions by offi­cials.

The attacks have been going on for sev­er­al months. This spring, Svarog said, he and sev­er­al mem­bers of the cell in Meli­topol sneaked through the town at night to boo­by-trap a car in the park­ing lot of a Russ­ian-con­trolled police sta­tion.

Car­ry­ing wire cut­ters, tape and fish­ing line, the fight­ers moved through court­yards and back alleys to avoid Russ­ian check­points.

They first cut an elec­tri­cal wire, black­ing out a street­light, then dashed quick­ly into the dark­ness where they plant­ed a bomb, wrapped in tape with the sticky side fac­ing out­ward, into a wheel well. The fish­ing line was taped both to the inside of the wheel and to a det­o­na­tor, rig­ging the bomb to explode when the wheel turned.

“Any­body who would dri­ve that car would be a trai­tor,” Svarog said. “Nobody there is keep­ing pub­lic order.” The bomb killed one police offi­cer and wound­ed anoth­er.

In a strike last week, he said, his cell boo­by-trapped the car of Oleg Shostak, a Ukrain­ian who had joined the Russ­ian polit­i­cal par­ty Unit­ed Rus­sia in Meli­topol. The insur­gents tar­get­ed him because they sus­pect­ed him of tai­lor­ing pro­pa­gan­da to appeal to local res­i­dents.

Svarog, who said he did not take part in this par­tic­u­lar mis­sion, said his team placed a bomb under the driver’s seat, rigged to explode when the engine start­ed.

Mr. Shostak was wound­ed in the explo­sion but sur­vived, said Mr. Fedorov, the exiled may­or. The attack was sep­a­rate­ly report­ed by Ukrain­ian author­i­ties and described by dis­placed peo­ple leav­ing Meli­topol through a check­point to Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry on Sun­day.

Whether tar­get­ed peo­ple sur­vive or die in the attacks, par­ti­sans say, is less impor­tant than the sig­nal sent with each strike: You are nev­er safe.

Under a Ukrain­ian law passed by Par­lia­ment last year, the military’s Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Forces are autho­rized to train, arm and pay secret com­bat­ants fight­ing on Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry in time of war. In the law, they are called “com­mu­ni­ty vol­un­teers.”

The par­ti­sans say they are civil­ians and the legal basis for their activ­i­ty is there­fore reg­u­lat­ed under the Ukrain­ian law, not the laws of war that pro­hib­it, for exam­ple, a sol­dier from tar­get­ing a civil­ian offi­cial.

But under inter­na­tion­al law civil­ians become com­bat­ants when they start tak­ing part in hos­til­i­ties. The par­ti­sans work for the gov­ern­ment, even the mil­i­tary, and whether the murky area they inhab­it does in fact fall under inter­na­tion­al law — and whether their activ­i­ties vio­late those rules — is a mat­ter for debate.

Not all their activ­i­ties are vio­lent. Sep­a­rate­ly, two par­ti­sans oper­at­ing in occu­pied south­east­ern Ukraine described a branch of the under­ground called Yel­low Rib­bon, which posts leaflets and spray paints graf­fi­ti.

The bases on Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry where oper­a­tives are trained are moved con­stant­ly to avoid dis­cov­ery, accord­ing to a senior Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary offi­cial. The offi­cial spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss sen­si­tive mil­i­tary infor­ma­tion.

Each oper­a­tive has a dif­fer­ent a role to play, the offi­cial said: scout­ing a tar­get, gath­er­ing intel­li­gence on a target’s move­ments, and car­ry­ing out an attack. Indi­vid­ual cells are kept sep­a­rate and do not know one anoth­er, lest a detained par­ti­san reveal iden­ti­ties under inter­ro­ga­tion.

Two enti­ties with­in the mil­i­tary are respon­si­ble for over­see­ing oper­a­tions behind ene­my lines, the offi­cial said: the mil­i­tary intel­li­gence ser­vice, known as HUR, and Ukraine’s Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Forces. An inter­a­gency task force over­sees oper­a­tions of both the intel­li­gence agency and Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Forces branch­es of the under­ground, what is known as the Resis­tance Move­ment, or Rukh Oporu in Ukrain­ian.

The offi­cial described a poi­son­ing in the Zapor­izhzhia region that killed around 15 Russ­ian sol­diers and the sab­o­tage of a grain ele­va­tor, in the Kher­son region, that pre­vent­ed Russ­ian forces from steal­ing 60,000 tons of grain. Nei­ther oper­a­tion could be inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied.

Par­ti­sans were also behind an explo­sion on Sat­ur­day that dis­abled a rail­road bridge con­nect­ing Meli­topol to Crimea, halt­ing the sup­ply of mil­i­tary equip­ment com­ing into the Zapor­izhzhia region.

The par­ti­sans are search­ing for those they con­sid­er trai­tors, too.

The Ukrain­ian under­ground in occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry con­sid­ers police offi­cers, munic­i­pal and region­al gov­ern­ment employ­ees and teach­ers who agree to work under the Russ­ian edu­ca­tion­al cur­ricu­lum as col­lab­o­ra­tors, accord­ing to Svarog and anoth­er par­ti­san using the nick­name Viking. They said they did not see doc­tors, fire­fight­ers and employ­ees of util­i­ty com­pa­nies as trai­tors.

Teach­ers are a focus now, with schools sched­uled to open in Sep­tem­ber.

“The Rus­sians want to teach by their pro­gram, not the truth,” Viking said. “A child is vul­ner­a­ble to pro­pa­gan­da and if raised in this pro­gram, will become an idiot like the Rus­sians,” he said. “A teacher who agrees to teach by the Russ­ian pro­gram is a col­lab­o­ra­tor.”

Par­ti­sans will not attack teach­ers, he said, but have sought to humil­i­ate them through leaflets they often post on util­i­ty poles with dark warn­ings for col­lab­o­ra­tors, as part of their psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions.

One went up recent­ly, he said, with the names and pho­tographs of prin­ci­pals plan­ning to open schools in Sep­tem­ber.

It said: “For col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Rus­sians, there will be pay­back.”

————

“Behind Ene­my Lines, Ukraini­ans Tell Rus­sians ‘You Are Nev­er Safe’” By Andrew E. Kramer; The New York Times; 08/17/2022

“In recent days the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary made Svarog and sev­er­al oth­er of the oper­a­tives avail­able for inter­views in per­son or online, hop­ing to high­light the par­ti­sans’ widen­ing threat to Russ­ian forces and sig­nal to West­ern donors that Ukraine is suc­cess­ful­ly ral­ly­ing local resources in the war, now near­ly six months old. A senior Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary offi­cial famil­iar with the pro­gram also described the work­ings of the resis­tance.”

It’s a remark­able jux­ta­po­si­tion: the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary is engaged in a kind of pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign for Ukraine’s assas­si­na­tion force. An assas­si­na­tion force over­seen by the mil­i­tary but com­prised of non-sol­dier civil­ians. Civil­ian-par­ti­sans trained by groups like Right Sec­tor and Azov’s Nation­al Corps. So this is a secret civil­ian assas­si­na­tion squad trained by neo-Nazis now engaged in a pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign:

...
With lit­tle move­ment of the front lines, insur­gent activ­i­ty is now inten­si­fy­ing, as the fight­ers strike stealth­ily in envi­rons they know inti­mate­ly, using car bombs, boo­by traps and tar­get­ed killings with pis­tols — and then blend­ing into the local pop­u­la­tion.

Before the war, Svarog occa­sion­al­ly joined week­end train­ing with Right Sec­tor and Nation­al Corps, a branch of the Azov move­ment, both of which are aligned with para­mil­i­tary units in Ukraine. They were just two of dozens of orga­ni­za­tions run­ning mil­i­tary train­ing for civil­ians through­out Ukraine dur­ing the eight-year war with Russ­ian-backed sep­a­ratists.

Svarog said he was among the trainees in these pub­lic pro­grams. Behind the scenes, Ukraine’s Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Forces were form­ing a more struc­tured, and secret, pro­gram that includ­ed instruc­tion on sab­o­tage, explo­sives and stash­ing weapon caches in antic­i­pa­tion of Russia’s attack.

After the inva­sion, Svarog said, he was direct­ed to a stor­age shed out­side Meli­topol, where he found slabs of high explo­sives, det­o­na­tors, Kalash­nikov rifles, a grenade launch­er and two pis­tols equipped with silencers.
...

And note the spe­cial priv­i­leges these civil­ian assas­sins get: Under a Ukrain­ian law passed in 2021, the mil­i­tary’s Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Forces are autho­rized to train, arm and pay secret com­bat­ants fight­ing on Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry in time of war. But these secret com­bat­ants are appar­ent­ly still con­sid­ered civil­ians and there­fore can legal­ly attack civil­ian offi­cials. It’s a legal loop­hole for set­ting up a domes­tic Phoenix Pro­gram. Except it’s not actu­al­ly the legal loop­hole Ukraine claims it is. These secret assas­sins should still be con­sid­ered com­bat­ants. But that’s all pre­sum­ably part of the pur­pose in keep their iden­ti­ties a secret because this appears to be a wild­ly ille­gal assas­si­na­tion pro­gram under inter­na­tion­al law:

...
Under a Ukrain­ian law passed by Par­lia­ment last year, the military’s Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Forces are autho­rized to train, arm and pay secret com­bat­ants fight­ing on Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry in time of war. In the law, they are called “com­mu­ni­ty vol­un­teers.”

The par­ti­sans say they are civil­ians and the legal basis for their activ­i­ty is there­fore reg­u­lat­ed under the Ukrain­ian law, not the laws of war that pro­hib­it, for exam­ple, a sol­dier from tar­get­ing a civil­ian offi­cial.

But under inter­na­tion­al law civil­ians become com­bat­ants when they start tak­ing part in hos­til­i­ties. The par­ti­sans work for the gov­ern­ment, even the mil­i­tary, and whether the murky area they inhab­it does in fact fall under inter­na­tion­al law — and whether their activ­i­ties vio­late those rules — is a mat­ter for debate.

...

Each oper­a­tive has a dif­fer­ent a role to play, the offi­cial said: scout­ing a tar­get, gath­er­ing intel­li­gence on a target’s move­ments, and car­ry­ing out an attack. Indi­vid­ual cells are kept sep­a­rate and do not know one anoth­er, lest a detained par­ti­san reveal iden­ti­ties under inter­ro­ga­tion.

Two enti­ties with­in the mil­i­tary are respon­si­ble for over­see­ing oper­a­tions behind ene­my lines, the offi­cial said: the mil­i­tary intel­li­gence ser­vice, known as HUR, and Ukraine’s Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Forces. An inter­a­gency task force over­sees oper­a­tions of both the intel­li­gence agency and Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Forces branch­es of the under­ground, what is known as the Resis­tance Move­ment, or Rukh Oporu in Ukrain­ian.
...

And giv­en that the exiled may­or of Meli­topol, Ivan Fedorov, has been boast­ing of the achieve­ment of the par­ti­sans late­ly, it’s worth recall­ing the episode back in March when Russ­ian sol­diers occu­py­ing the town arrest­ed Fedorov, him­self is a mem­ber of Right Sec­tor, on charges of ter­ror­ism, before releas­ing him unharmed in the face of pub­lic protests. So when we’re now learn­ing about this secret civil­ian assas­si­na­tion pro­gram that Fedorov has been tout­ing late­ly, it does raise all sorts of inter­est­ing ques­tions about those ter­ror­ism alle­ga­tions against him:

...
Meli­topol, the south­ern Ukrain­ian town where Svarog oper­ates, has since emerged as a cen­ter of the resis­tance. He recount­ed the care­ful cas­ing of tar­gets, fol­lowed by attacks.

By Sat­ur­day, par­ti­sans had struck with explo­sives sev­en days in a row, accord­ing to the town’s exiled may­or, Ivan Fedorov, who boast­ed of the achieve­ment to Ukrain­ian media as part of the more pub­lic embrace of par­ti­san oper­a­tions by offi­cials.
...

Final­ly, note how even teach­ers in the occu­pied areas are tar­gets. And while the par­ti­sans claim they aren’t direct­ly assas­si­nat­ing teach­ers, it’s pret­ty obvi­ous that they are try­ing to get these teach­ers assas­si­nat­ed. Plas­ter­ing their names and faces on util­i­ty poles is basi­cal­ly a death sen­tence in the cur­rent envi­ron­ment. if these tar­get­ed teach­ers do end up dead, it’s not like we can rule out direct action from these assas­si­na­tion squads. For all we know, pub­licly post­ing names and pic­tures of their intend­ed vic­tims might be phase 1 in the assas­si­na­tion cam­paign to give plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty when the vic­tims show up dead. They’re oper­at­ing in secret, after all:

...
Whether tar­get­ed peo­ple sur­vive or die in the attacks, par­ti­sans say, is less impor­tant than the sig­nal sent with each strike: You are nev­er safe.

...

The par­ti­sans are search­ing for those they con­sid­er trai­tors, too.

The Ukrain­ian under­ground in occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry con­sid­ers police offi­cers, munic­i­pal and region­al gov­ern­ment employ­ees and teach­ers who agree to work under the Russ­ian edu­ca­tion­al cur­ricu­lum as col­lab­o­ra­tors, accord­ing to Svarog and anoth­er par­ti­san using the nick­name Viking. They said they did not see doc­tors, fire­fight­ers and employ­ees of util­i­ty com­pa­nies as trai­tors.

Teach­ers are a focus now, with schools sched­uled to open in Sep­tem­ber.

“The Rus­sians want to teach by their pro­gram, not the truth,” Viking said. “A child is vul­ner­a­ble to pro­pa­gan­da and if raised in this pro­gram, will become an idiot like the Rus­sians,” he said. “A teacher who agrees to teach by the Russ­ian pro­gram is a col­lab­o­ra­tor.”

Par­ti­sans will not attack teach­ers, he said, but have sought to humil­i­ate them through leaflets they often post on util­i­ty poles with dark warn­ings for col­lab­o­ra­tors, as part of their psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions.

One went up recent­ly, he said, with the names and pho­tographs of prin­ci­pals plan­ning to open schools in Sep­tem­ber.

It said: “For col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Rus­sians, there will be pay­back.”
...

No edu­ca­tion for kids in occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries it seems. How many of these tar­get­ed teacher will end up fac­ing vig­i­lante ‘jus­tice’? Time will tell. But the mes­sage is clear: Ukraini­ans deemed to be trai­tors will be hunt­ed down by this secret gov­ern­ment hit squad. And that mes­sage — in the form of the inter­view with mem­bers of this secret civil­ian assas­si­na­tion pro­gram — was being sent in the lead­ing US news­pa­per with an exten­sive his­to­ry for laun­der­ing CIA nar­ra­tives. It’s pret­ty obvi­ous US intel­li­gence ful­ly approves of this ini­tia­tive. And that’s all part of the cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence around Valen­tine’s spec­u­la­tion regard­ing the CIA’s involve­ment in Ukraine’s grow­ing assas­si­na­tion ambi­tions. Ambi­tions that start with send­ing a “no one is safe” mes­sage to tar­get­ed pop­u­la­tion, but could end up in a “no on is safe” sit­u­a­tion for every­one after these basic rules of war have been blown to bits.

What will the US gov­ern­ment do when Ukraine’s Phoenix Pro­gram gets turned on US cit­i­zens? That’s the ques­tion raised by a dis­turb­ing new piece in Con­sor­tium News by Scott Rit­ter about the Ukrain­ian “black­lists” against any­one who does­n’t toe the line on the nar­ra­tives relat­ed to Ukraine. Black­lists that dou­ble as an implic­it kill list. And black­lists that, at least in one case, were basi­cal­ly financed and tout­ed by the US gov­ern­ment. That’s part of what makes the ques­tions about how the US will respond to Ukrain­ian assas­si­na­tion teams such a dis­turb­ing ques­tion.

We’ve long know about the Myrotvorets black­list that Ukraine has been oper­at­ing since 2016. Recall how Myrovorets was defend­ed by Anton Gerashchenko after it pub­lished the names and con­tact infor­ma­tion of thou­sands of jour­nal­ists — includ­ing West­ern jour­nal­ists — and labeled them ter­ror­ist accom­plices for their report­ing on Ukraine. And as Rit­ter notes, the recent­ly assas­si­nat­ed Daria Dug­in was indeed on the Myrovorets ene­mies list before her assas­si­na­tion. Her entry was updat­ed with a diag­o­nal “liq­ui­dat­ed” graph­ic across her pho­to. Because it’s a kill list.

It also turns out that Myrovorets kill list recent­ly got quite a few addi­tion­al entries. And those addi­tion­al entries just hap­pened to be the names of peo­ple who showed up on a dif­fer­ent “black­list” cre­at­ed in July. The list was assem­bled by the Ukrain­ian Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion and unveiled at an event spon­sored by a US-fund­ed NGO that the US State Depart­ment attend­ed. Beyond that, it turns out the Ukrain­ian Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion is fund­ed, in part, by the US. So this was a black­list cre­at­ed by a US-fund­ed Ukrain­ian ‘anti-dis­in­for­ma­tion’ enti­ty that was unveiled at a US-NGO event that the State Depart­ment attend­ed. That’s basi­cal­ly a US-gov­ern­ment-endorsed black­list.

Adding insult to injury, here’s a tweet thread from Pro­pOrNot — the anony­mous ‘anti-dis­in­for­ma­tion’ out­fit that has a his­to­ry of pub­lish­ing its own lists of ‘trai­tors’ — cel­e­brat­ing the Ukrain­ian Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion’s list:

THREAD: The Ukrain­ian Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion just released a list of Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dists, & it’s real­ly good!We’ve been fight­ing these thugs for years. Let’s take a look at some of our his­to­ry with them: /1https://t.co/BTJiGhQbJA— Pro­pOrNot ID Ser­vice ???? (@propornot) July 26, 2022

But that list did­n’t last long. It was pulled from the Ukrain­ian Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion web­site fol­low­ing push­back from a num­ber of the Amer­i­cans who showed up on the list. But the list did­n’t go away. It basi­cal­ly reap­peared on Myrotvorets.

Did the US finance the cre­ation of a “black­list” that end­ed up on a Ukrain­ian kill list web­site? It sure looks like it. And don’t for­get Dou­glas Valen­tine’s warn­ings in rela­tion to the assas­si­na­tion of Daria Dug­in: there’s a high prob­a­bil­i­ty that the CIA is assist­ing Ukraine in these kinds of oper­a­tions. And that’s why we should prob­a­bly start ask­ing how the US can be expect­ed to respond should those CIA-trained Ukrain­ian assas­si­na­tion teams start direct­ing their ter­ror towards US cit­i­zens. Or domes­tic lone wolf lunatics who just decide on their own that these gov­ern­ment-backed kill lists are rea­son enough to take ‘jus­tice’ into their own hands:

Con­sor­tium News

SCOTT RITTER: The Death List

The odi­ous lega­cy of Stepan Ban­dera dri­ves the sup­pres­sion of those who dare chal­lenge the nar­ra­tive of the Russ­ian-Ukrain­ian con­flict pro­mul­gat­ed by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, its West­ern allies and a com­pli­ant main­stream media.

By Scott Rit­ter
Spe­cial to Con­sor­tium News
August 31, 2022

In May 1986 I received orders to attend a coun­tert­er­ror­ism aware­ness course at the John F. Kennedy Spe­cial War­fare School, in Fort Bragg, North Car­oli­na. For the next two weeks I learned about the var­i­ous ter­ror­ist threats fac­ing the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary, and was taught var­i­ous skills to over­come them, such as high-speed eva­sive dri­ving, counter-sur­veil­lance method­ol­o­gy and reac­tive shoot­ing tech­niques.

Upon my return to Twen­ty-Nine Palms, where I was sta­tioned as a Marine Corps intel­li­gence offi­cer, I was giv­en the task of putting my new­ly learned skills to work by car­ry­ing out a base-wide coun­tert­er­ror­ism exer­cise. I bor­rowed a scout-sniper team from the infantry bat­tal­ion on base, and set them up in an apart­ment off base, where I turned them into a ter­ror­ist cell tasked with col­lect­ing intel­li­gence on the senior offi­cers who lived and worked on the base. The only rule was that the ter­ror­ists could not engage with civil­ians — no fam­i­lies were to be impact­ed by the drill.

Over the course of the next 30 days, my ter­ror­ist team was able to “assas­si­nate” every bat­tal­ion com­man­der, the reg­i­men­tal com­man­der and the base com­man­der, using impro­vised explo­sive devices and sniper fire — and had the pho­tographs to prove it.

The take­away from this exer­cise was that if some­one want­ed you dead, you were prob­a­bly going to die.

Vig­i­lance was your only real defense — to be alert for any­thing sus­pi­cious. In short, to live a life gov­erned by para­noia. In the age of ter­ror­ism, if you feel like some­one is seek­ing to do you harm, it is prob­a­bly because some­one is seek­ing to do you harm.

Using Those Skills

Through­out my pro­fes­sion­al life, I have had occa­sion to use the skills I learned at Fort Bragg on sev­er­al occa­sions — I was tar­get­ed for assas­si­na­tion while work­ing as a U.N. weapons inspec­tor in Iraq and I was informed that I was the sub­ject of a “hit” put out by the Russ­ian mafia for my role in break­ing up an illic­it mis­sile com­po­nent smug­gling ring.

I would con­duct a 360-degree inspec­tion of my vehi­cle before enter­ing it, look­ing for signs of tam­per­ing. And I would con­duct counter-sur­veil­lance drills while dri­ving, accel­er­at­ing at odd inter­vals to see if any­one kept pace, or rapid­ly exit­ing a high­way to see if any­one fol­lowed.

Today, I’m a 61-year-old writer liv­ing in the sub­urbs of Albany, New York. It’s a qui­et neigh­bor­hood, where every­one knows every­one. And yet, due to recent cir­cum­stances, I once again find myself inspect­ing my vehi­cle before get­ting inside, keep­ing a watch­ful eye out for strange vehi­cles dri­ving down my street and con­duct­ing counter-sur­veil­lance maneu­vers while dri­ving.

Why the para­noia? Sim­ply put, my name has been added to a Ukrain­ian “kill list.” Think I’m get­ting too wound up? Ask the fam­i­ly of Daria Dug­i­na, the 29-year-old daugh­ter of the Russ­ian philoso­pher Alexan­der Dug­in. Both she and her father were on the same list. Both were tar­get­ed for death by an assas­sin dis­patched by the Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty ser­vices. Only a last-sec­ond change of plans, which put Alexan­der Dug­in behind the wheel of a dif­fer­ent car, kept him from being killed in the blast that took the life of his daugh­ter.

I’ve been writ­ing for some time now about the Ukrain­ian Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion and their pub­li­ca­tion in mid-July of a “black­list” con­tain­ing the names of 72 intel­lec­tu­als, jour­nal­ists, activists and politi­cians from sev­er­al coun­tries who were labeled “Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dists” by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment for hav­ing the audac­i­ty to speak crit­i­cal­ly, yet fac­tu­al­ly, about the ongo­ing Russ­ian-Ukrain­ian con­flict.

I took umbrage over this list for sev­er­al rea­sons, first and fore­most that the salaries of the Ukraini­ans who com­piled this list appeared to be paid by the U.S. tax­pay­er using funds appro­pri­at­ed by Con­gress for that very pur­pose. The idea of Con­gress pass­ing a law which empow­ered the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment to do some­thing — sup­press the First Amend­ment guar­an­tees of free speech and a free press — that Con­gress was Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­hib­it­ed from doing angered me.

So, too, did the fact that the Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion announced the exis­tence of this “black­list” at a func­tion orga­nized by a U.S.-funded NGO and attend­ed by State Depart­ment offi­cials who sat mute while their Ukrain­ian col­leagues labeled the per­sons on this list “infor­ma­tion ter­ror­ists” who deserved to be arrest­ed and pros­e­cut­ed as “war crim­i­nals.”

At the time, I cau­tioned that the use of such inflam­ma­to­ry lan­guage meant that the “black­list” could be turned into a “kill list” sim­ply by hav­ing a fanat­ic decide to take jus­tice into his or her own hands. Giv­en that the U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ed the cre­ation of this list, orga­nized the meet­ing where it was pre­sent­ed to the world and gave an implic­it stamp of approval to the list and its accom­pa­ny­ing label­ing through the atten­dance of U.S. gov­ern­ment offi­cials, these fanat­ics don’t have to be for­eign sourced. Plen­ty of peo­ple in the U.S. adhere to the same hate-filled ide­ol­o­gy that exists in Ukraine today and which gave birth to the “black­list.”

Some of them are my neigh­bors.

In June I drove down to Bethel, New York (the site of the orig­i­nal Wood­stock music fes­ti­val), to par­tic­i­pate in a Spar­tan Obsta­cle Course Race. To get there, I had to dri­ve past Ellenville, a sleepy lit­tle town that is home to a camp belong­ing to the Ukrain­ian Amer­i­can Youth Asso­ci­a­tion which, every sum­mer, coor­di­nates with the Orga­ni­za­tion for the Defense of Four Free­doms of Ukraine to hold a “Heroes’ Hol­i­day” hon­or­ing vet­er­an of the Ukrain­ian People’s Army and the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists.

I just real­ized the prin­ci­pal CYM‑A camp is in Ellenville, NY, the same Ulster coun­ty I live in. CYM‑A [aka SUMA]‘s Ellenville camp (“Oselia”) pic­tured below: the year it opened (1955), on the 25th anniver­sary of the UPA lead­er’s death (1975), and its “Heroes Mon­u­ment” today. pic.twitter.com/1AHa9sDKL1— Ban­dera Lob­by Blog (@mossrobeson__) May 17, 2019

The camp boasts a “Heroes’ Mon­u­ment”, con­sists of a 42-foot-tall struc­ture with a Ukrain­ian tri­dent at the top flanked by the busts of Yevhen Kono­valets, Symon Petliu­ra, Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Ban­dera —four lead­ing fig­ures in the his­to­ry of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism, all of whom were involved in the mur­ders, col­lec­tive­ly, of hun­dreds of thou­sands of Jews, Poles and Rus­sians..

Ban­dera has been ele­vat­ed to the sta­tus of a nation­al hero in Ukraine, and his birth­day is con­sid­ered a nation­al hol­i­day.

That a mon­u­ment to men respon­si­ble for geno­ci­dal mass mur­der and who, in the case of two of them (Shukhevych and Ban­dera) open­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with Nazi Ger­many, could be erect­ed in the Unit­ed States is dis­turb­ing.

That every year Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can adher­ents of the odi­ous ide­ol­o­gy of Stepan Ban­dera gath­er to cel­e­brate his lega­cy at a “children’s camp” where the youth are arrayed in brown uni­forms that make them look like what they, in fact, are — ide­o­log­i­cal storm troop­ers for a hate­ful neo-Nazi ide­ol­o­gy that pro­motes the racial supe­ri­or­i­ty of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple, is an nation­al abom­i­na­tion.

I just real­ized the prin­ci­pal CYM‑A camp is in Ellenville, NY, the same Ulster coun­ty I live in. CYM‑A [aka SUMA]‘s Ellenville camp (“Oselia”) pic­tured below: the year it opened (1955), on the 25th anniver­sary of the UPA lead­er’s death (1975), and its “Heroes Mon­u­ment” today. pic.twitter.com/1AHa9sDKL1— Ban­dera Lob­by Blog (@mossrobeson__) May 17, 2019

From Ellenville to Bethel, I saw evi­dence of this hate­ful real­i­ty in every blue-and-yel­low Ukrain­ian flag flut­ter­ing in the wind — and every red-and-black ban­ner of the Ban­dera-wor­ship­ping Ukrain­ian neo-Nazi fanat­ics that flut­tered next to them.

Stepan Ban­dera Lega­cy

The lega­cy of Stepan Ban­dera is at the very heart of what pass­es for Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism today. It dom­i­nates the polit­i­cal are­na inside Ukraine, where all com­pet­ing polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy and affil­i­a­tions have been out­lawed by Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky.

It is behind the sup­pres­sion of all dis­sent­ing voic­es — for­eign and domes­tic — that dare chal­lenge the nar­ra­tive about the Russ­ian-Ukrain­ian con­flict being pro­mul­gat­ed by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, its West­ern allies, and a com­pli­ant main­stream media.

After Con­sor­tium News pub­lished my let­ter to my New York con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion (Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gilli­brand and Rep. Paul Tonko), in which I called them out for vot­ing for Pub­lic Law 117–128 appro­pri­at­ing $40 bil­lion in U.S. tax­pay­er mon­ey to under­write the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary, there was con­cert­ed action by oth­ers impact­ed by the Ukrain­ian “black­list,” which the leg­is­la­tion had fund­ed. This was led by Diane Sare, the LaRouche Par­ty can­di­date chal­leng­ing Schumer for his Sen­ate seat.

The pub­lic­i­ty about con­gres­sion­al­ly-fund­ed sup­pres­sion of free speech appeared to be too much for those who are com­plic­it in a frontal assault on the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. The Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Disinformation’s “black­list” was removed from the inter­net.

Vic­to­ry, how­ev­er, was short lived. With­in days of the Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Disinformation’s “black­list” being tak­en down, a list pub­lished by the Ukrain­ian “Myrotvorets” (Peacemaker’s) Cen­ter incor­po­rat­ed names that had been on the Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion “black­list.”.

The Myrotvorets list has been in exis­tence since 2014 and has been described as “effec­tive­ly a death list for politi­cians, jour­nal­ists, entre­pre­neurs and oth­er pub­lic fig­ures who have been ‘cleared for fir­ing’” by the list’s cre­ators.

Daria Dugina’s name was on that list.

And now so is mine, along with sev­er­al oth­er West­ern­ers, such as Cana­di­an jour­nal­ist Eva Bartlett and British rock musi­cian Roger Waters.

[See image of Scott Rit­ter’s name on Myrotvorets death list]

The Biden admin­is­tra­tion is silent about this abom­i­na­tion.

So is Con­gress.

Accord­ing to 6 USCS § 101, the term ter­ror­ism is

“any activ­i­ty that involves an act that is dan­ger­ous to human life or poten­tial­ly destruc­tive of crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture or key resources; and is a vio­la­tion of the crim­i­nal laws of the Unit­ed States or of any State or oth­er sub­di­vi­sion of the Unit­ed States; and appears to be intend­ed to intim­i­date or coerce a civil­ian pop­u­la­tion, to influ­ence the pol­i­cy of a gov­ern­ment by intim­i­da­tion or coer­cion, or to affect the con­duct of a gov­ern­ment by mass destruc­tion, assas­si­na­tion, or kid­nap­ping.”

There is lit­tle doubt that the mur­der of Daria Dug­i­na was an act of ter­ror­ism per­pe­trat­ed on behalf of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. (Her pho­to on the list now has the word “liq­ui­dat­ed” writ­ten diag­o­nal­ly across it in red.)

While the Ukraini­ans deny any such alle­ga­tions, Russ­ian author­i­ties have assem­bled a con­vinc­ing fac­tu­al case to the con­trary.

The exis­tence of the Myrotvorets “death list” is an instru­ment of ter­ror and should be tak­en down at the insis­tence of the U.S. Gov­ern­ment.

The fail­ure of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment to shut down the Myrotvorets Cen­ter and con­demn its activ­i­ties would con­sti­tute mate­r­i­al sup­port of ter­ror­ism.

The U.S. should also rec­og­nize any orga­ni­za­tions which embrace the ide­ol­o­gy of Stepan Ban­dera as ter­ror­ist enti­ties — includ­ing those respon­si­ble for rais­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of brown-shirt­ed neo-Nazis in the heart­land of Amer­i­ca.

...

———–

“SCOTT RITTER: The Death List” by Scott Rit­ter; Con­sor­tium News; 08/31/2022

“Why the para­noia? Sim­ply put, my name has been added to a Ukrain­ian “kill list.” Think I’m get­ting too wound up? Ask the fam­i­ly of Daria Dug­i­na, the 29-year-old daugh­ter of the Russ­ian philoso­pher Alexan­der Dug­in. Both she and her father were on the same list. Both were tar­get­ed for death by an assas­sin dis­patched by the Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty ser­vices. Only a last-sec­ond change of plans, which put Alexan­der Dug­in behind the wheel of a dif­fer­ent car, kept him from being killed in the blast that took the life of his daugh­ter.”

Just because you’re para­noid does­n’t mean they aren’t out to get you. Espe­cial­ly when your name shows up on an appar­ent gov­ern­ment-backed ene­mies list. And most espe­cial­ly when that gov­ern­ment-backed ene­mies list was financed by your own gov­ern­ment. Scott Rit­ter has cause for con­cern. It start­ed with the pub­li­ca­tion of a “black­list” back in July by the Ukrain­ian Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion. A black­list that was unveiled at a func­tion orga­nized by a US-fund­ed NGO and attend­ed by the State Depart­ment. This was a US-gov­ern­ment-endorsed Ukrain­ian black­list. A black­list filled with the names of US cit­i­zens like Scott Rit­ter:

...
I’ve been writ­ing for some time now about the Ukrain­ian Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion and their pub­li­ca­tion in mid-July of a “black­list” con­tain­ing the names of 72 intel­lec­tu­als, jour­nal­ists, activists and politi­cians from sev­er­al coun­tries who were labeled “Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dists” by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment for hav­ing the audac­i­ty to speak crit­i­cal­ly, yet fac­tu­al­ly, about the ongo­ing Russ­ian-Ukrain­ian con­flict.

I took umbrage over this list for sev­er­al rea­sons, first and fore­most that the salaries of the Ukraini­ans who com­piled this list appeared to be paid by the U.S. tax­pay­er using funds appro­pri­at­ed by Con­gress for that very pur­pose. The idea of Con­gress pass­ing a law which empow­ered the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment to do some­thing — sup­press the First Amend­ment guar­an­tees of free speech and a free press — that Con­gress was Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­hib­it­ed from doing angered me.

So, too, did the fact that the Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion announced the exis­tence of this “black­list” at a func­tion orga­nized by a U.S.-funded NGO and attend­ed by State Depart­ment offi­cials who sat mute while their Ukrain­ian col­leagues labeled the per­sons on this list “infor­ma­tion ter­ror­ists” who deserved to be arrest­ed and pros­e­cut­ed as “war crim­i­nals.”

At the time, I cau­tioned that the use of such inflam­ma­to­ry lan­guage meant that the “black­list” could be turned into a “kill list” sim­ply by hav­ing a fanat­ic decide to take jus­tice into his or her own hands. Giv­en that the U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ed the cre­ation of this list, orga­nized the meet­ing where it was pre­sent­ed to the world and gave an implic­it stamp of approval to the list and its accom­pa­ny­ing label­ing through the atten­dance of U.S. gov­ern­ment offi­cials, these fanat­ics don’t have to be for­eign sourced. Plen­ty of peo­ple in the U.S. adhere to the same hate-filled ide­ol­o­gy that exists in Ukraine today and which gave birth to the “black­list.”
...

Fol­low­ing some push­back, the black­list was removed from the internet...only to be tak­en up by the noto­ri­ous Myrotvorets web­site that’s been com­pil­ing lists of ‘trai­tors’ since 2016. It’s the kind of move that sug­gests the US gov­ern­ment was­n’t par­tic­u­lar­ly com­fort­able with financ­ing a group that cre­ates black­lists of US cit­i­zens, but was per­fect­ly fine if that group hands the list off to a dif­fer­ent group that’s hard to trace back to US fund­ing. And then we find that Daria Dug­in’s entry on that Myrovorets ene­mies list was updat­ed with a “Liq­ui­dat­ed” mes­sage fol­low­ing her assas­si­na­tion. That’s kind of the heart of Rit­ter’s com­plaint: it’s not hard for any­one to arrive at the con­clu­sion that the Myrotvorets black­list is endorsed by the US gov­ern­ment, includ­ing Ban­derites liv­ing in the US:

...
After Con­sor­tium News pub­lished my let­ter to my New York con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion (Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gilli­brand and Rep. Paul Tonko), in which I called them out for vot­ing for Pub­lic Law 117–128 appro­pri­at­ing $40 bil­lion in U.S. tax­pay­er mon­ey to under­write the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary, there was con­cert­ed action by oth­ers impact­ed by the Ukrain­ian “black­list,” which the leg­is­la­tion had fund­ed. This was led by Diane Sare, the LaRouche Par­ty can­di­date chal­leng­ing Schumer for his Sen­ate seat.

The pub­lic­i­ty about con­gres­sion­al­ly-fund­ed sup­pres­sion of free speech appeared to be too much for those who are com­plic­it in a frontal assault on the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. The Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Disinformation’s “black­list” was removed from the inter­net.

Vic­to­ry, how­ev­er, was short lived. With­in days of the Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Disinformation’s “black­list” being tak­en down, a list pub­lished by the Ukrain­ian “Myrotvorets” (Peacemaker’s) Cen­ter incor­po­rat­ed names that had been on the Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion “black­list.”.

...

Daria Dugina’s name was on that list.

And now so is mine, along with sev­er­al oth­er West­ern­ers, such as Cana­di­an jour­nal­ist Eva Bartlett and British rock musi­cian Roger Waters.

[See image of Scott Rit­ter’s name on Myrotvorets death list]

...

There is lit­tle doubt that the mur­der of Daria Dug­i­na was an act of ter­ror­ism per­pe­trat­ed on behalf of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. (Her pho­to on the list now has the word “liq­ui­dat­ed” writ­ten diag­o­nal­ly across it in red.)
...

A “liq­ui­dat­ed” stamp. It’s not exact­ly sub­tle. And while the West had lit­tle trou­ble cel­e­brat­ing the assas­si­na­tion of Dug­i­na on Russ­ian soil, the fact that Ukraine’s assas­si­na­tion squads are oper­at­ing on non-Ukrain­ian soil should serve as a warn­ing. Ukraine’s Phoenix Pro­gram has inter­na­tion­al reach. And inter­na­tion­al back­ing. At least for now.

And while it’s hard to imag­ine Ukraine would risk inflam­ing its key spon­sor by car­ry­ing out assas­si­na­tion of promi­nent US cit­i­zens on US soil today, let’s keep in mind that the US has been tee­ter­ing on the verge of open fas­cism for quite a few years now. Just how handy might a Ukrain­ian Phoenix Pro­gram be for a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion? Or can­di­date look­ing for a big­ger and more explo­sive Jan 6 show­down. It’s not hard to come up with all sorts of domes­tic bad actors who would love to have a CIA-trained elite assas­si­na­tion squad ready to do a few favors. And that’s all why the grim answer to the ques­tion of how the US might respond to a Ukrain­ian Phoenix Pro­gram ‘liq­ui­dat­ing’ US cit­i­zens is prob­a­bly: it depends. That kind of blow­back is just more momen­tum for insur­rec­tionary fas­cists, after all.

What’s the US gov­ern­men­t’s response going to be when US cit­i­zens on the Myrotvorets ‘hit list’ start expe­ri­enc­ing untime­ly deaths? That’s one of the dis­turb­ing ques­tions raised by the fol­low­ing Covert Actions Mag­a­zine report about the grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple around the world find­ing them­selves on a Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment-backed bare­ly-veiled kill list. Because as the piece points out, not only did the Myrovorets kill list orig­i­nate from the US-financed Ukrain­ian Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion (CCD), but the home­page of Myrovorets actu­al­ly lists Lan­g­ley, Vir­ginia, as its loca­tion. Lan­g­ley, famous for being the home of the CIA, is list­ed right there on the upper right hand cor­ner of the home­page. And that’s why we have to ask: so what’s the US gov­ern­ment going to say when US cit­i­zens on a black­list orig­i­nal­ly financed by the US end up dead for noth­ing more than point­ing out incon­ve­nient facts? It’s hard to come up with a worse 1st Amend­ment free speech cri­sis, but here we are:

Covert Action Mag­a­zine

Ukrain­ian “Hit List” Pub­lish­es Names and Address­es of Alleged “Russ­ian Pro­pa­gan­dists:” Turns Out To Be Based Not in Ukraine But in Lan­g­ley VA Where CIA Head­quar­ters Is Locat­ed

By Jere­my Kuz­marov -
Sep­tem­ber 19, 2022

Just a coin­ci­dence, right?

Under Pub­lic Law 117–128, the U.S. Con­gress is fund­ing an orga­ni­za­tion called Ukrain­ian Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion (CCD), whose pro­fessed pur­pose, accord­ing to its web­site, is to “counter Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion.” But its real pur­pose may be to cre­ate the equiv­a­lent of a “fat­wah list” of alleged trai­tors whom patri­ot­ic Amer­i­cans and/or Ukraini­ans will feel they have a green light to assas­si­nate.

The fat­wa list includes such “trai­tors” as writ­ers Chris Hedges and Glenn Green­wald, polit­i­cal sci­en­tist John Mearsheimer, Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters, Sen­a­tor Rand Paul (R‑KY), for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Tul­si Gab­bard, con­ser­v­a­tive mil­i­tary ana­lyst Edward Luttwak who was placed on the list for sug­gest­ing that ref­er­en­dums should be held in the Donet­sk and Luhan­sk regions con­cern­ing their rela­tions to Ukraine, and Hen­ry Kissinger, who is wor­ried about the prospects of a war between the U.S. and Rus­sia.

The pro­files of many peo­ple tar­get­ed under the “hit list” has been post­ed on a web­site, Myrotvorets (mean­ing “peace­mak­er” in Ukrain­ian), whose domain name is list­ed as being in Lan­g­ley, Vir­ginia, head­quar­ters of the CIA.

Estab­lished in 2014 fol­low­ing the Maid­an coup with assis­tance from a U.S. army intel­li­gence offi­cer, Joel Hard­ing, Myrotvorets aims to out Russ­ian intel­li­gence ser­vice (FSB) agents and Wag­n­er mer­ce­nar­ies along­side pro-Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dists and fea­tures grue­some pho­tos of dead Rus­sians. Its wel­come mes­sage adver­tis­es itself as a “CIA project.”

Sad­ly, many on the Myrotvorets ene­mies list have already been assas­si­nat­ed. When this occurs, the Ukrain­ian word ???????????? (“LIQUIDATED”) is stamped across their pic­ture in big red letters—as hap­pened when Ital­ian jour­nal­ist Andrea Roc­chel­li was mur­dered.

In an indi­ca­tion of its foul char­ac­ter, Myrotvorets has list­ed the names of more than 300 chil­dren, among them 13-year-old Faina Savenko­va who has writ­ten on social media about the ter­ror met­ed out by the Ukrain­ian Army in east­ern Ukraine.

Craven Acts of Ter­ror­ism

The expan­sion of the Ukrain­ian government’s assas­si­na­tion cam­paign—mod­eled after the CIA-run Phoenix oper­a­tion in Viet­nam—was exem­pli­fied with the killing of killing of Sergey Gorenko, the Luhan­sk People’s Repub­lic (LPR) Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al, and his deputy, Yeka­te­ri­na Ste­glenko, after a Kyiv bomb rocked the head­quar­ters of the Pros­e­cu­tor General’s office in Luhan­sk on Sep­tem­ber 16.
[Source: tvpworld.com]

The New York Times ear­li­er report­ed on Ukrain­ian com­man­do teams who admit­ted to plant­i­ng car bombs tar­get­ing pro-Russ­ian police offi­cers and politi­cians behind Russ­ian lines.

Also on Sep­tem­ber 16, at least five U.S.-made HIMARS mis­siles hit the civ­il admin­is­tra­tion build­ing in Kher­son city in an assas­si­na­tion attempt on Kir­ill Stremousov, the deputy chair of the mil­i­tary-civil­ian admin­is­tra­tion. Eka­te­ri­na Gubare­va, a gov­ern­ment employ­ee who was wound­ed, (a dri­ver was killed), called the strike a “craven act of ter­ror­ism.”[1]

Scott Rit­ter Speaks Out

Scott Rit­ter, the for­mer Marine Intel­li­gence Offi­cer who exposed the fraud sur­round­ing the Weapons of Mass Destruc­tion (WMD) in Iraq, is among those on the CCD’s list of trai­tors who has been list­ed as an “ene­my of Ukraine” on the Myrotvorets web­site.

...

Pub­lic Law 177–128 abridges free­dom of speech and a free press by sup­port­ing the Gov­ern­ment of Ukraine’s pub­li­ca­tion of the “black­list,” which sin­gles out U.S. cit­i­zens as “Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dists” for exer­cis­ing their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights per­tain­ing to free speech and a free press.

...

Par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous, Rit­ter said, is the use of the label “infor­ma­tion ter­ror­ist” by the CCD, which “basi­cal­ly gives a green light for crit­ics of gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to be adju­di­cat­ed as ter­ror­ists,” and could “mean sanc­tion­ing the mur­der of Amer­i­cans abroad or at home.”

Accord­ing to Rit­ter, the threat of Ukrain­ian state ter­ror­ism extend­ing into the U.S. is very real.

There are many Ukraini­ans liv­ing near him in upstate New York, he said, who wor­ship Stepan Ban­dera, a Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist and Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor in World War II.

Accord­ing to his­to­ri­an Nor­man J.W. Goda, Bandera’s lieu­tenants launched a pogrom that killed 4,000 Lvov Jews in a few days, using weapons rang­ing from guns to met­al poles.

What kind of mes­sage does it send, Rit­ter asked, for the U.S. gov­ern­ment to be sup­port­ing these groups and to label crit­ics of its poli­cies as “infor­ma­tion ter­ror­ists”?

“If you think the web­site is a joke, ask Alexan­der Dug­in who had to attend the funer­al of his daugh­ter [Darya Dug­i­na who was killed in a car bomb by ter­ror­ists in Moscow on August 23].”

Rit­ter con­sid­ers him­self an Amer­i­can patri­ot who served his coun­try for years in the mil­i­tary and as a weapons inspec­tor in Iraq.

He recalled being called “Saddam’s shill” and all kinds of oth­er names for report­ing the truth about the myth­ic WMD, and said that if peo­ple had absorbed what he said, the war in Iraq could have been avoid­ed and mil­lions of lives saved.

With regard to Ukraine, Rit­ter said he is again being denounced, this time for mak­ing fac­tu­al state­ments, such as that a) NATO has bases on Ukrain­ian soil; b) the war is a proxy con­flict between the U.S. and Rus­sia; and c) sanc­tions have harmed the U.S. and EU coun­tries more than Rus­sia.

Rit­ter said that he is fur­ther being attacked because he under­took a care­ful foren­sic analy­sis of the atroc­i­ty in Bucha in March/April, which con­clud­ed that it “seemed to have been car­ried out by forces sub­or­di­nate to the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment.”[2]

Rit­ter says that he invites debate and dis­agree­ment about his assessments—including from peo­ple work­ing at the CCD.

“If peo­ple dis­agree with my facts and con­clu­sions, then debate me—but don’t seek to silence me through intim­i­da­tion or label me an infor­ma­tion ter­ror­ist which could poten­tial­ly mark me for death.”

...

1. Leaked audio records show Ilya Bon­darchuk, a Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence offi­cial who coor­di­nat­ed the assas­si­na­tion pro­gram in Crimea and Kher­son, try­ing to pay an assas­sin who was told to car­ry out the dirty deed “before everyone’s eyes, so that they see it.”

2. Rit­ter has also recent­ly helped expose, through care­ful inves­ti­ga­tion, that Ukraine and not Rus­sia was respon­si­ble for the attacks around the Zaporozhye nuclear pow­er plant—Europe’s largest nuclear pow­er plant—using the cov­er of an inter­na­tion­al inspec­tion mis­sion in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law.

———–

“Ukrain­ian “Hit List” Pub­lish­es Names and Address­es of Alleged “Russ­ian Pro­pa­gan­dists:” Turns Out To Be Based Not in Ukraine But in Lan­g­ley VA Where CIA Head­quar­ters Is Locat­ed”
By Jere­my Kuz­marov; Covert Action Mag­a­zine; 09/19/2022

“The pro­files of many peo­ple tar­get­ed under the “hit list” has been post­ed on a web­site, Myrotvorets (mean­ing “peace­mak­er” in Ukrain­ian), whose domain name is list­ed as being in Lan­g­ley, Vir­ginia, head­quar­ters of the CIA.”

It’s not exact­ly sub­tle. The Myrotvorets web­site lit­er­al­ly states it’s locat­ed in Lan­g­ley, Vir­ginia on its home page. Right in the upper-right cor­ner of the home page. And it’s not like this is an attempt by Myrotvorets to claim an asso­ci­a­tion with the US gov­ern­ment that does­n’t exist. The site was set up in 2014 with assis­tance from a US intel­li­gence offi­cer. And the lists of tar­gets found on the site was gen­er­at­ed by the Ukrain­ian Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion (CCD), which is financed by the US gov­ern­ment. Recall how the list was ini­tial­ly host­ed on the CCD’s web­site but was pulled due to out­cry over the US-financ­ing of black­list. Then the list popped up on Myrotvorets. That’s a big part of what makes the con­tent of this site so dis­turb­ing. It’s basi­cal­ly cel­e­brat­ing the deaths of tar­get­ed indi­vid­u­als with the US gov­ern­men­t’s endorse­ment:

...
Under Pub­lic Law 117–128, the U.S. Con­gress is fund­ing an orga­ni­za­tion called Ukrain­ian Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion (CCD), whose pro­fessed pur­pose, accord­ing to its web­site, is to “counter Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion.” But its real pur­pose may be to cre­ate the equiv­a­lent of a “fat­wah list” of alleged trai­tors whom patri­ot­ic Amer­i­cans and/or Ukraini­ans will feel they have a green light to assas­si­nate.

...

Estab­lished in 2014 fol­low­ing the Maid­an coup with assis­tance from a U.S. army intel­li­gence offi­cer, Joel Hard­ing, Myrotvorets aims to out Russ­ian intel­li­gence ser­vice (FSB) agents and Wag­n­er mer­ce­nar­ies along­side pro-Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dists and fea­tures grue­some pho­tos of dead Rus­sians. Its wel­come mes­sage adver­tis­es itself as a “CIA project.”

Sad­ly, many on the Myrotvorets ene­mies list have already been assas­si­nat­ed. When this occurs, the Ukrain­ian word ???????????? (“LIQUIDATED”) is stamped across their pic­ture in big red letters—as hap­pened when Ital­ian jour­nal­ist Andrea Roc­chel­li was mur­dered.

In an indi­ca­tion of its foul char­ac­ter, Myrotvorets has list­ed the names of more than 300 chil­dren, among them 13-year-old Faina Savenko­va who has writ­ten on social media about the ter­ror met­ed out by the Ukrain­ian Army in east­ern Ukraine.

...

Pub­lic Law 177–128 abridges free­dom of speech and a free press by sup­port­ing the Gov­ern­ment of Ukraine’s pub­li­ca­tion of the “black­list,” which sin­gles out U.S. cit­i­zens as “Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dists” for exer­cis­ing their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights per­tain­ing to free speech and a free press.
...

And as Rit­ter reminds us, Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist train­ing camps for chil­dren are scat­tered across the US, includ­ing upstate New York. Recall that July 2019 arti­cle in the Kyiv Post describ­ing camp “Spilka Ukrayin­skoyi Molo­di” in upstate New York where chil­dren are indoc­tri­nat­ed with Ban­derite ide­olo­gies and engage in mil­i­tary-style games. That’s pre­sum­ably the camp Rit­ter is pre­sum­ably refer­ring to:

...
Par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous, Rit­ter said, is the use of the label “infor­ma­tion ter­ror­ist” by the CCD, which “basi­cal­ly gives a green light for crit­ics of gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to be adju­di­cat­ed as ter­ror­ists,” and could “mean sanc­tion­ing the mur­der of Amer­i­cans abroad or at home.”

Accord­ing to Rit­ter, the threat of Ukrain­ian state ter­ror­ism extend­ing into the U.S. is very real.

There are many Ukraini­ans liv­ing near him in upstate New York, he said, who wor­ship Stepan Ban­dera, a Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist and Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor in World War II.
...

Final­ly, regard­ing Riiter’s obser­va­tion that he’s being attacked in part for his analy­sis that refut­ed the claims of Russ­ian atroc­i­ties in Bucha while point­ing out that the evi­dence appears to indi­cate that many of those civil­ian deaths could be attrib­uted to forces sub­or­di­nate to the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, recall the video evi­dence of Azov forced oper­at­ing under the com­mand of Sergey “Boats­man” Korotkikh engag­ing in war crimes in Bucha dur­ing this time. Also recall how the Ukrain­ian author­i­ties actu­al­ly admit­ted to cre­at­ing the mass graves blamed on the Russ­ian solid­ers in Bucha, but those reports just end­ed up falling down the mem­o­ry hole. In oth­er words, Rit­ter has­n’t just been mak­ing accu­sa­tions that the Ukrain­ian finds uncom­fort­able. He’s mak­ing accu­sa­tions with pub­licly avail­able evi­dence behind them. That’s part of the con­text of this hit list. It’s silenc­ing peo­ple who are say­ing things that can be eas­i­ly proven:

...
With regard to Ukraine, Rit­ter said he is again being denounced, this time for mak­ing fac­tu­al state­ments, such as that a) NATO has bases on Ukrain­ian soil; b) the war is a proxy con­flict between the U.S. and Rus­sia; and c) sanc­tions have harmed the U.S. and EU coun­tries more than Rus­sia.

Rit­ter said that he is fur­ther being attacked because he under­took a care­ful foren­sic analy­sis of the atroc­i­ty in Bucha in March/April, which con­clud­ed that it “seemed to have been car­ried out by forces sub­or­di­nate to the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment.”[2]

Rit­ter says that he invites debate and dis­agree­ment about his assessments—including from peo­ple work­ing at the CCD.

“If peo­ple dis­agree with my facts and con­clu­sions, then debate me—but don’t seek to silence me through intim­i­da­tion or label me an infor­ma­tion ter­ror­ist which could poten­tial­ly mark me for death.”
...

Is dead whistle­blow­ers the goal here? Of course not. The goal is silence. Death threats are just the means to those ends. Death threats and/or actu­al death for the ‘liq­ui­dat­ed’.

And yet, as Rit­ter and the oth­er out­spo­ken fig­ures on that list aren’t shut­ting up. They haven’t been intim­i­dat­ed into silence. What’s the next step? We’ll see. But giv­en the lack of any real push back by West­ern gov­ern­ments, we can be pret­ty con­fi­dent there’s going to be a next step.

How close can Rus­sia and NATO get to a direct con­flict with­out it spilling into WWIII? That’s just one of the pro­found­ly dis­turb­ing ques­tions raised in a report pub­lished last month by inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Jack Mur­phy describ­ing a grow­ing US-led sab­o­tage cam­paign being con­duct­ed inside Rus­sia. A sab­o­tage cam­paign that the US isn’t direct­ly exe­cut­ing, but is over­see­ing and sup­port­ing. And the intel­li­gence ser­vice actu­al­ly direct­ly run­ning these oper­a­tions is described as a key NATO ally. Yes, the CIA is over­see­ing sab­o­tage oper­a­tions inside Rus­sia run by an unnamed key NATO ally. US spe­cial forces are also report­ed­ly play­ing a role, includ­ing pro­vid­ing real-time intel­li­gence inside Rus­sia using still-clas­si­fied drones.

At least that’s what was report­ed in a report willed with anony­mous intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty sources, which brings us to anoth­er high­ly dis­turb­ing aspect of this sto­ry: while steps have been made to ensure the US will have plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty should the sabo­teurs get cap­tured, the US and its NATO allies still want the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment to know that NATO is exe­cut­ing this sab­o­tage cam­paign. Cre­at­ing a sense of para­noia inside the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment is part of the plan. Which, per­haps, explains why these anony­mous US intel­li­gence sources went to Jack Mur­phy with the sto­ry in the first place.

We’re also told that oth­er Euro­pean spy agen­cies have been run­ning sab­o­tage oper­a­tions of their own, out­side the over­sight of the CIA, adding to the poten­tial chaos of the sit­u­a­tion. Beyond that, we’re told that one of the chal­lenges the CIA has run into is mul­ti­ple sab­o­tage teams dis­rupt­ing each oth­er’s oper­a­tions when they tar­get the same infra­struc­ture, result­ing a need for some sort of “decon­flic­tion” efforts between the var­i­ous sab­o­tage teams. So there are appar­ent­ly so many sab­o­tage teams run­ning around inside Rus­sia that NATO can’t even keep track of them.

This is a good time to recall some of the ear­li­er reports we’ve already had about sab­o­tage oper­a­tions tar­get­ing Rus­sia:

* There was Nord Stream attacks. Don’t for­get the update we received last month about the inves­ti­ga­tion into the blow­ing up of the Nord Stream pipelines: inves­ti­ga­tors aren’t see­ing proof of Russ­ian cul­pa­bil­i­ty.

* Recall how the NY Times pub­lished a front-page arti­cle about Ukrain­ian guer­ril­la fight­ers oper­at­ing inside Rus­sia just days before Darya Dug­i­na’s assas­si­na­tion by an appar­ent Azov oper­a­tive.

* Recall how the Myrotvorets “hit list” web­site that includ­ed Dug­i­na and cel­e­brat­ed her assas­si­na­tion list­ed Lan­g­ley, Vir­ginia, as its home loca­tion. A hit list, we should add, that includes a num­ber of Amer­i­cans.

* Recall the damn­ing Gray­zone report about the secret British intel­li­gence plot to blow up Crimea’s Kerch bridge. Is the UK pos­si­bly the “key NATO ally” in this sto­ry? We don’t know, but the back that British intel­li­gence was involved with plot­ting some­thing as provoca­tive as blow­ing up that bridge sug­gests the UK is tak­ing an esca­la­to­ry approach to this con­flict.

So it appears that a secret-but-not-actu­al­ly-secret NATO sab­o­tage cam­paign direct­ly strik­ing inside Rus­sia is now part of this con­flict. Along with the yet-to-be-deter­mined Russ­ian response:

JackMurphyWrites.com

The CIA is using a Euro­pean NATO ally’s spy ser­vice to con­duct a covert sab­o­tage cam­paign inside Rus­sia under the agency’s direc­tion, accord­ing to for­mer U.S. intel­li­gence and mil­i­tary offi­cials.

Decem­ber 24, 2022 by Jack Mur­phy

The cam­paign involves long stand­ing sleep­er cells that the allied spy ser­vice has acti­vat­ed to hin­der Moscow’s inva­sion of Ukraine by wag­ing a secret war behind Russ­ian lines.

Years in the plan­ning, the cam­paign is respon­si­ble for many of the unex­plained explo­sions and oth­er mishaps that have befall­en the Russ­ian mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex since Russia’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary, accord­ing to three for­mer U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials, two for­mer U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cials and a U.S. per­son who has been briefed on the cam­paign. The for­mer offi­cials declined to iden­ti­fy spe­cif­ic tar­gets for the CIA-direct­ed cam­paign, but rail­way bridges, fuel depots and pow­er plants in Rus­sia have all been dam­aged in unex­plained inci­dents since the Krem­lin launched its full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary. 

While no Amer­i­can per­son­nel are involved on the ground in Rus­sia in the exe­cu­tion of these mis­sions, agency para­mil­i­tary offi­cers are com­mand­ing and con­trol­ling the oper­a­tions, accord­ing to two for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cials and a for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cial. The para­mil­i­tary offi­cers are assigned to the CIA’s Spe­cial Activ­i­ties Cen­ter but detailed to the agency’s Euro­pean Mis­sion Cen­ter, said the two for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cials. Using an allied intel­li­gence ser­vice to give the CIA an added lay­er of plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty was an essen­tial fac­tor in U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s deci­sion to approve the strikes, accord­ing to a for­mer U.S. spe­cial oper­a­tions offi­cial.

While com­mand and con­trol over the sab­o­tage pro­gram resides with the CIA for legal rea­sons, the NATO ally has a strong say in which oper­a­tions go for­ward since it is their peo­ple tak­ing the risks. Sources repeat­ed­ly pushed back against any notion that the NATO ally was a CIA proxy, describ­ing it is a close part­ner­ship. The Euro­pean ally whose oper­a­tives are con­duct­ing the sab­o­tage cam­paign is not being named here because doing so might endan­ger the oper­a­tional secu­ri­ty of cells that are still oper­a­tional inside of Rus­sia. 

Any covert action under­tak­en by U.S. agen­cies must be autho­rized by a pres­i­den­tial find­ing. After the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty con­clud­ed that Rus­sia had inter­fered with the 2016 U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma signed such a find­ing for covert action against Rus­sia before he left office, accord­ing to The Wash­ing­ton Post. The find­ing involved the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency and the military’s Cyber Com­mand in addi­tion to the CIA and includ­ed a scheme to plant “cyber­weapons in Russia’s infra­struc­ture,” accord­ing to the Post. 

That 2016 find­ing also includ­ed lan­guage about sab­o­tage oper­a­tions, accord­ing to a for­mer CIA offi­cial. Oth­er for­mer offi­cials said that the cur­rent sab­o­tage cam­paign would have required either an entire­ly new find­ing or an amend­ment to a pre-exist­ing find­ing on Rus­sia.

CIA spokesper­son Tam­my Thorp denied any agency involve­ment in the wave of mys­te­ri­ous explo­sions that have struck Russia’s defense and trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture in 2022. “The alle­ga­tion that CIA is some­how sup­port­ing sabo­teur net­works in Rus­sia is cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly false,” the spokesper­son said. Under Title 50 of the U.S. Code which autho­rizes covert actions, the CIA can law­ful­ly deny the exis­tence of these oper­a­tions to every­one except the so-called “Gang of Eight” – the chair­men and rank­ing minor­i­ty mem­bers of the con­gres­sion­al intel­li­gence com­mit­tees, the speak­er and minor­i­ty leader of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and the major­i­ty and minor­i­ty lead­ers of the Sen­ate.

The NATO ally’s cam­paign over­seen by the CIA is only one of sev­er­al covert oper­a­tions efforts being under­tak­en by West­ern nations in Rus­sia, accord­ing to two for­mer U.S. spe­cial oper­a­tions offi­cials. Alarmed by Russia’s Feb­ru­ary inva­sion, oth­er Euro­pean intel­li­gence ser­vices have acti­vat­ed long-dor­mant resis­tance net­works in their own coun­tries, who in turn have been run­ning oper­a­tives into Rus­sia to cre­ate chaos with­out CIA help, accord­ing to a for­mer U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cial. In addi­tion, as has been wide­ly report­ed, Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence and spe­cial oper­a­tions forces are run­ning their own oper­a­tions behind Russ­ian lines. 

The mul­ti­ple sab­o­tage cam­paigns are hav­ing an impact, accord­ing to Mick Mul­roy, a for­mer CIA para­mil­i­tary offi­cer. “I do not know who is behind these attacks, but their val­ue is sub­stan­tial and serves mul­ti­ple pur­pos­es,” he said. “Rus­sia has had a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem keep­ing up with its logis­ti­cal sup­ply lines. These attacks fur­ther com­pli­cate its effort to sup­ply its forces.”

They also serve to sow doubt in Krem­lin minds, because they show that Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin “does not have con­trol over what is hap­pen­ing in his own coun­try,” said Mul­roy. “Is it a covert pro­gram, is it dis­grun­tled Rus­sians sab­o­tag­ing their own plant, or is it pure incom­pe­tence of the work­ers? I don’t know, and per­haps the Krem­lin doesn’t either. This mat­ters to para­noid auto­crats.”

Indeed, by refus­ing to take cred­it for indi­vid­ual acts of sab­o­tage com­mit­ted by the Euro­pean spy ser­vice under the CIA’s direc­tion the two agen­cies hope to send the Krem­lin a mes­sage while send­ing Rus­sia secu­ri­ty ser­vices scram­bling in all direc­tions to find the cul­prits, accord­ing to a for­mer U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cial. “With sab­o­tage and sub­ver­sion, there is a psy­cho­log­i­cal com­po­nent,” the for­mer offi­cial said.

“There have been many fires across Rus­sia over the past few months, par­tic­u­lar­ly in weapons-man­u­fac­tur­ing plants and oth­er cru­cial sites,” said Rus­sia ana­lyst Olga Laut­man, a non-res­i­dent fel­low at the Cen­ter for Euro­pean Pol­i­cy Analy­sis. “Russ­ian media has report­ed on these fires as sep­a­rate inci­dents. They have not cre­at­ed any pro­pa­gan­da around these inci­dents and treat them as acci­dents.”

For instance, when a Russ­ian Aero­space Defense Forces build­ing burned down in late April, killing more than 20 peo­ple, Russ­ian state media report­ed that the blaze was caused by faulty wiring. But the Krem­lin under­stands that these are not just acci­den­tal fires and indus­tri­al acci­dents, despite what offi­cial media broad­cast, accord­ing to a for­mer U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cial.

The over­lap­ping nature of the var­i­ous covert action cam­paigns behind Russ­ian lines has cre­at­ed prob­lems for the West­ern spy ser­vices run­ning those mis­sions. Over the sum­mer, it became clear to CIA offi­cers that there was increas­ing­ly a need for decon­flic­tion amongst their own sur­ro­gate forces in Rus­sia, accord­ing to two for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cials. Numer­ous inci­dents took place in which rail lines or pow­er lines were cut that unin­ten­tion­al­ly inter­fered with oth­er mis­sions, one of them said.

Worse yet, two sab­o­tage cells com­pro­mised each oth­er while cas­ing the same tar­get, accord­ing to the two for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cials. One oper­a­tive died and anoth­er was cap­tured in the result­ing fire­fight with Russ­ian secu­ri­ty ser­vices, they said. A lot of work has been done since then to pre­vent a repeat of such inci­dents, accord­ing to one of the for­mer spe­cial oper­a­tions offi­cials. 

The roots of these sab­o­tage mis­sions inside Rus­sia go deep. The allied spy ser­vice had emplaced some of the caches of explo­sives and gear used by these cells more than a decade pre­vi­ous­ly, accord­ing to two for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cials. At the time, that spy ser­vice was act­ing uni­lat­er­al­ly, with­out any CIA par­tic­i­pa­tion, accord­ing to a for­mer U.S. spe­cial oper­a­tions offi­cial and a per­son who has been briefed on the sab­o­tage cam­paign. 

The CIA became involved in reac­tion to Russia’s 2014 par­tial inva­sion of Ukraine. After the Krem­lin occu­pied the Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry of Crimea and parts of east­ern Ukraine, the agency began plan­ning with the allied spy ser­vice to push more oper­a­tives into Rus­sia with orders to lay low until they were need­ed. The first of these sleep­er cells under the com­bined con­trol of the CIA and the allied spy ser­vice infil­trat­ed into Rus­sia in 2016, accord­ing to a for­mer U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cial and a U.S. per­son who has been briefed on the cam­paign.

With the CIA’s knowl­edge, the allied spy ser­vice pro­vid­ed the under­cov­er sleep­er cell oper­a­tives with what the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty calls “leg­ends” – false biogra­phies that would explain their pres­ence in Rus­sia – and the doc­u­ments to back those cov­er sto­ries up. There is also what a for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cial called “an exten­sive net­work” of front com­pa­nies that were estab­lished as plat­forms to sup­port such behind-the-lines oper­a­tions. “Some of them go back almost 20 years,” the for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cial said.

Both intel­li­gence agen­cies have made it a pri­or­i­ty to ensure that the oper­a­tives had plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty should they be dis­cov­ered by the Russ­ian secu­ri­ty ser­vices, accord­ing to two for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cials. Anoth­er pri­or­i­ty is to min­i­mize the risk to Russ­ian civil­ians. “Part of their tar­get­ing guid­ance is to stay away from civil­ian deaths,” said a for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cial.

After the 2016 infil­tra­tions, more teams slipped into Rus­sia over the next sev­er­al years. Some smug­gled in new muni­tions, while oth­ers have relied on the orig­i­nal caches, accord­ing to two for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cials and a per­son who has been briefed on the sab­o­tage cam­paign. 

Two days before February’s inva­sion of Ukraine, the allied spy ser­vice through which the CIA is run­ning the sab­o­tage cam­paign used a covert com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem to acti­vate its sleep­er cells across Rus­sia, accord­ing to a for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cial and a per­son who has been briefed on the cam­paign. Those cells dis­creet­ly moved to the loca­tions of buried muni­tions caches around the coun­try and dug up explo­sives and oth­er mate­r­i­al need­ed for upcom­ing oper­a­tions. After inven­to­ry­ing and check­ing their equip­ment, the oper­a­tives wait­ed for the orders to hit their tar­gets.

When Russ­ian tanks crossed the Ukrain­ian bor­der on Feb­ru­ary 26, the sleep­er cells were stand­ing by, ready to act.

Some of the first sab­o­tage attacks behind Russ­ian lines occurred out­side Rus­sia, in Belarus, when “a clan­des­tine net­work of rail­way work­ers, hack­ers, and dis­si­dent secu­ri­ty forces” began attack­ing rail lines that con­nect­ed Rus­sia and Ukraine, accord­ing to The Wash­ing­ton Post. “Start­ing on Feb. 26, two days after the inva­sion began, a suc­ces­sion of five sab­o­tage attacks against sig­nal­ing cab­i­nets brought train traf­fic to an almost com­plete halt,” the Post report­ed, quot­ing a for­mer rail­way work­er now liv­ing in Poland. 

As the war in Ukraine has con­tin­ued, some of the teams over­seen by the CIA and the NATO ally’s spy ser­vice have moved back and forth across inter­na­tion­al bor­ders to col­lect more muni­tions and to con­duct mis­sion rehearsals, accord­ing to a for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cial.

The CIA and the host nation’s elite spe­cial oper­a­tions unit have over­seen some of those mis­sion rehearsals, which are con­duct­ed in the allied spy service’s home coun­try, accord­ing to a for­mer U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cial and a per­son who has been briefed on the cam­paign. JSOC has also sup­port­ed the sab­o­tage oper­a­tions with tar­get­ing infor­ma­tion from intel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance and recon­nais­sance plat­forms, such as drones, that can see and hear deep into Rus­sia, they said.

“The elite-lev­el teams that we have the best rela­tion­ships with are almost always giv­en air sur­veil­lance sup­port for major sab­o­tage ops” behind Russ­ian lines, the per­son who has been briefed on the cam­paign said, adding that some of the ISR plat­forms are mod­els that have nev­er been pub­licly revealed. “Drones we don’t even know about yet are loi­ter­ing all over the Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian air­space,” the per­son said.

The CIA has been con­duct­ing sab­o­tage oper­a­tions since the agency’s incep­tion in 1947. Dur­ing the Cold War the agency planned and exe­cut­ed such oper­a­tions from Cuba to Viet­nam and through­out Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. Sim­i­lar mis­sions were also a key part of the agency’s plans for West­ern Europe, should the Sovi­et Union ever have invad­ed.

But while those plans for a Sovi­et-occu­pied Europe involved so-called “stay behind” net­works of par­ti­sans – civil­ians liv­ing nor­mal lives until the ene­my invades, at which point they acti­vate to begin con­duct­ing sab­o­tage and espi­onage mis­sions – the cur­rent cam­paign inside Rus­sia itself bears a clos­er resem­blance to CIA oper­a­tions ahead of the 2003 U.S. inva­sion of Iraq. 

In the run up to that inva­sion, CIA Ground Branch para­mil­i­tary offi­cers trained 70 Kur­dish cells and then deployed them into Sad­dam Hus­sein-con­trolled por­tions of Iraq, tar­get­ing infra­struc­ture. “We end­ed up with a lot of teams…operating inside Iraqi-con­trolled space,” said for­mer CIA oper­a­tions offi­cer Sam Fad­dis, who led one of the agency teams. Their activ­i­ties includ­ed derail­ing a 90-car train and blow­ing up the office of an Iraqi intel­li­gence offi­cer. “It’s a way of say­ing screw you, we’re here, this is over,” Fad­dis said. 

...

The U.S. gov­ern­ment has met news of the mys­te­ri­ous fires and explo­sions in Rus­sia with silence. But Ukraine has been goad­ing the Krem­lin on social media about the events, sug­gest­ing more than once that care­less smok­ers are respon­si­ble for unex­plained fires at Russ­ian mil­i­tary facil­i­ties. After a mys­te­ri­ous August fire destroyed a Russ­ian ammu­ni­tion depot in Bel­go­rod just across the bor­der from Ukraine, the Ukrain­ian Defense Ministry’s Twit­ter account taunt­ed Moscow with a warn­ing that “smok­ing kills!”

“Anoth­er det­o­na­tion of ammo ‘due to the heat’ in the Bel­go­rod region in rus­sia,” Ukraine’s Defense Min­istry quipped on Twit­ter in August after news of an explo­sion at an ammu­ni­tion depot in Bel­go­rod. “In a few months we will find out whether russ­ian ammo can explode because of the cold.” 

Ukrain­ian offi­cials have also begun to hint at their own abil­i­ty to strike tar­gets with guer­ril­la oper­a­tions behind ene­my lines — both with­in occu­pied parts of Ukraine and in Rus­sia. In August, a senior Ukrain­ian offi­cial told The New York Times that an attack on a Russ­ian air­base in Crimea was car­ried out by “par­ti­sans” and that a Ukrain­ian “elite mil­i­tary unit” was respon­si­ble for blow­ing up a Russ­ian ammu­ni­tion depot on the occu­pied penin­su­la. 

“It’s been wide­ly report­ed that after the 2014 inva­sion of Crimea, U.S. intel­li­gence start­ed a robust train­ing pro­gram for Ukrain­ian spe­cial oper­a­tions forces. It is like­ly that these same forces are lead­ing the effort of these sab­o­tage oper­a­tions in Crimea now,” said Mul­roy.

Mean­while, the mys­te­ri­ous explo­sions deep in Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry have con­tin­ued. While these acts of sab­o­tage can have both a psy­cho­log­i­cal and sub­stan­tive impact on the Kremlin’s offen­sive, they also run the risk of esca­lat­ing con­flict between the West­ern world and Rus­sia beyond either side’s abil­i­ty to esti­mate — or con­trol.

So far, the tar­gets struck by the oper­a­tives being run by the CIA through the allied spy ser­vice have large­ly been of tac­ti­cal, rather than strate­gic, val­ue. How­ev­er, the dan­ger exists that the acts of sab­o­tage could, along with bat­tle­field loss­es, poten­tial­ly paint Putin into a cor­ner and risk nuclear esca­la­tion.

Such strikes let Russia’s lead­ers know that they can be hit in their back­yard. That could have a dou­ble effect of con­strain­ing Russia’s mil­i­tary options while encour­ag­ing Putin to esca­late the con­flict fur­ther, accord­ing to observers. “Though their mil­i­tary val­ue can be debat­ed, such acts might play to Putin’s great­est con­cerns and have out­sized impact on his esca­la­to­ry cal­cu­lus,” said for­mer CIA offi­cer Dou­glas Lon­don. 

But such con­sid­er­a­tions need not nec­es­sar­i­ly inhib­it covert oper­a­tions, accord­ing to Michael Kof­man, direc­tor of Rus­sia stud­ies at the Cen­ter for Naval Analy­ses. “There is always the dan­ger of mis­cal­cu­la­tion regard­ing an adver­saries’ red lines,” Kof­man said. “It is a per­sis­tent risk, but it must be weighed against one’s objec­tives and an opponent’s like­ly options for retal­i­a­tion. The key is to nav­i­gate a space between risk aver­sion to the point of paral­y­sis, and wan­ton reck­less­ness.”

As the war has dragged on, some NATO allies have backed away from sup­port­ing behind ene­my lines oper­a­tions in Rus­sia. As the war matured, the polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions of such oper­a­tions fright­ened some gov­ern­ments, how­ev­er the Unit­ed States and its key NATO ally run­ning the sab­o­tage pro­grams have remained aggres­sive and for­ward lean­ing.

The longer the war lasts, the more like­ly it is that the sab­o­tage cam­paign will become more brazen, accord­ing to a for­mer spe­cial oper­a­tions offi­cial, par­tic­u­lar­ly if Putin esca­lates to the use of Weapons of Mass Destruc­tion. “As we need to send a stronger mes­sage to Putin, you may see ops in Moscow and oth­er key cities,” the for­mer offi­cial said.

A note on the pub­li­ca­tion of this arti­cle:

Many will ask why an arti­cle of this impor­tance is appear­ing on my per­son­al web­site rather than in a pres­ti­gious pub­li­ca­tion. I will not detail the entire jour­ney this arti­cle took at this time, but will say that while work­ing with edi­tors at main­stream pub­li­ca­tions I was asked to do things that were ille­gal and uneth­i­cal in one instance, and in anoth­er instance I felt that a senior CIA offi­cial was able to edit my arti­cle by mak­ing off the record state­ments, before he leaked a sto­ry to the New York Times to under­mine this piece.

I don’t begrudge the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty for attempt­ing to keep covert oper­a­tions out of the news­pa­pers. That’s their job, and in this case they were quite effec­tive at it. How­ev­er, I do blame the press for not ful­fill­ing the most basic premise of their job.

This arti­cle went through a vig­or­ous fact check­ing process, and was deemed news­wor­thy as the strate­gic bomb­ings of Laos and Cam­bo­dia or the CIA’s secret drone cam­paign in Pak­istan. Yet, it near­ly nev­er saw the light of day. Jour­nal­ists can lack the cir­cum­spec­tion to exam­ine how their orga­ni­za­tions come to mim­ic the insti­tu­tions of pow­er that they claim to speak truth to. At some point the equi­ties they build with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and mil­i­tary com­mands become more impor­tant than inform­ing the pub­lic.

Indeed, the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment knows per­fect­ly well who is spon­sor­ing these sab­o­tage strikes. More­over, the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty wants them to know. The only par­ty left in the dark is the pub­lic at large, left unaware of the shad­ow war tak­ing place behind the scenes.

Ulti­mate­ly, I felt that I was being asked to com­pro­mise my work and put careers ahead of my own integri­ty.

That’s why this piece appears here.

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“The CIA is using a Euro­pean NATO ally’s spy ser­vice to con­duct a covert sab­o­tage cam­paign inside Rus­sia under the agency’s direc­tion, accord­ing to for­mer U.S. intel­li­gence and mil­i­tary offi­cials.” by Jack Mur­phy; JackMurphyWrites.com; 12/24/2022

” Years in the plan­ning, the cam­paign is respon­si­ble for many of the unex­plained explo­sions and oth­er mishaps that have befall­en the Russ­ian mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex since Russia’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary, accord­ing to three for­mer U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials, two for­mer U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cials and a U.S. per­son who has been briefed on the cam­paign. The for­mer offi­cials declined to iden­ti­fy spe­cif­ic tar­gets for the CIA-direct­ed cam­paign, but rail­way bridges, fuel depots and pow­er plants in Rus­sia have all been dam­aged in unex­plained inci­dents since the Krem­lin launched its full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary. ”

Years in the plan­ning. This isn’t some impromp­tu sab­o­tage cam­paign. What we’re see­ing play out was envi­sioned years ago. Which obvi­ous­ly includ­ed plans to car­ry out this high risk sab­o­tage cam­paign while employ­ing lay­ers of plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty. Plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty for the US, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly for NATO because it appears that the unnamed NATO ally the CIA is work­ing with is direct­ly involved in car­ry­ing out these sab­o­tage mis­sions. That’s a big part of the sto­ry here: the CIA is hid­ing behind anoth­er NATO mem­ber in this oper­a­tion. It’s not exact­ly a low-risk gam­ble here:

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While no Amer­i­can per­son­nel are involved on the ground in Rus­sia in the exe­cu­tion of these mis­sions, agency para­mil­i­tary offi­cers are com­mand­ing and con­trol­ling the oper­a­tions, accord­ing to two for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cials and a for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cial. The para­mil­i­tary offi­cers are assigned to the CIA’s Spe­cial Activ­i­ties Cen­ter but detailed to the agency’s Euro­pean Mis­sion Cen­ter, said the two for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cials. Using an allied intel­li­gence ser­vice to give the CIA an added lay­er of plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty was an essen­tial fac­tor in U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s deci­sion to approve the strikes, accord­ing to a for­mer U.S. spe­cial oper­a­tions offi­cial.

While com­mand and con­trol over the sab­o­tage pro­gram resides with the CIA for legal rea­sons, the NATO ally has a strong say in which oper­a­tions go for­ward since it is their peo­ple tak­ing the risks. Sources repeat­ed­ly pushed back against any notion that the NATO ally was a CIA proxy, describ­ing it is a close part­ner­ship. The Euro­pean ally whose oper­a­tives are con­duct­ing the sab­o­tage cam­paign is not being named here because doing so might endan­ger the oper­a­tional secu­ri­ty of cells that are still oper­a­tional inside of Rus­sia. 
...

But it’s not just the CIA. US spe­cial forces are involved too via JSOC’s sup­port on areas like tar­get­ing infor­ma­tion from intel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance and recon­nais­sance plat­forms, such as drones, that can see and hear deep into Rus­sia. High­ly clas­si­fied drones that the world does­n’t even know about yet just loi­ter­ing Russ­ian air­space, accord­ing to these anony­mous sources:

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The over­lap­ping nature of the var­i­ous covert action cam­paigns behind Russ­ian lines has cre­at­ed prob­lems for the West­ern spy ser­vices run­ning those mis­sions. Over the sum­mer, it became clear to CIA offi­cers that there was increas­ing­ly a need for decon­flic­tion amongst their own sur­ro­gate forces in Rus­sia, accord­ing to two for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cials. Numer­ous inci­dents took place in which rail lines or pow­er lines were cut that unin­ten­tion­al­ly inter­fered with oth­er mis­sions, one of them said.

Worse yet, two sab­o­tage cells com­pro­mised each oth­er while cas­ing the same tar­get, accord­ing to the two for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cials. One oper­a­tive died and anoth­er was cap­tured in the result­ing fire­fight with Russ­ian secu­ri­ty ser­vices, they said. A lot of work has been done since then to pre­vent a repeat of such inci­dents, accord­ing to one of the for­mer spe­cial oper­a­tions offi­cials. 

...

As the war in Ukraine has con­tin­ued, some of the teams over­seen by the CIA and the NATO ally’s spy ser­vice have moved back and forth across inter­na­tion­al bor­ders to col­lect more muni­tions and to con­duct mis­sion rehearsals, accord­ing to a for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cial.

The CIA and the host nation’s elite spe­cial oper­a­tions unit have over­seen some of those mis­sion rehearsals, which are con­duct­ed in the allied spy service’s home coun­try, accord­ing to a for­mer U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cial and a per­son who has been briefed on the cam­paign. JSOC has also sup­port­ed the sab­o­tage oper­a­tions with tar­get­ing infor­ma­tion from intel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance and recon­nais­sance plat­forms, such as drones, that can see and hear deep into Rus­sia, they said.

“The elite-lev­el teams that we have the best rela­tion­ships with are almost always giv­en air sur­veil­lance sup­port for major sab­o­tage ops” behind Russ­ian lines, the per­son who has been briefed on the cam­paign said, adding that some of the ISR plat­forms are mod­els that have nev­er been pub­licly revealed. “Drones we don’t even know about yet are loi­ter­ing all over the Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian air­space,” the per­son said.
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And yet, at the same time, we’re learn­ing about these years-long efforts prepar­ing for a deni­able sab­o­tage cam­paign, we’re also told by these anony­mous sources that mul­ti­ple Euro­pean spy agen­cies are run­ning their own sep­a­rate sab­o­tage oper­a­tions inde­pen­dent of the CIA. Cru­cial­ly, we’re also told by these anony­mous sources that cre­at­ing a sit­u­a­tion where Rus­si­a’s secu­ri­ty ser­vices are forced to scram­ble in response to attacks with­out know­ing the cul­prit is part of a broad­er psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions cam­paign. It points towards the pre­car­i­ous nature of the sit­u­a­tion: mul­ti­ple intel­li­gence agen­cies are sep­a­rate sab­o­tage oper­a­tions in a man­ner where it’s going to be very dif­fi­cult for Rus­sia to deter­mine who was ulti­mate­ly respon­si­ble, or who else the respon­si­ble par­ty was work­ing with, but can still be very con­fi­dent that guilty actors was a NATO mem­ber. It’s like a recipe for goad­ing Rus­sia into this into a Rus­sia vs NATO direct con­flict:

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The NATO ally’s cam­paign over­seen by the CIA is only one of sev­er­al covert oper­a­tions efforts being under­tak­en by West­ern nations in Rus­sia, accord­ing to two for­mer U.S. spe­cial oper­a­tions offi­cials. Alarmed by Russia’s Feb­ru­ary inva­sion, oth­er Euro­pean intel­li­gence ser­vices have acti­vat­ed long-dor­mant resis­tance net­works in their own coun­tries, who in turn have been run­ning oper­a­tives into Rus­sia to cre­ate chaos with­out CIA help, accord­ing to a for­mer U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cial. In addi­tion, as has been wide­ly report­ed, Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence and spe­cial oper­a­tions forces are run­ning their own oper­a­tions behind Russ­ian lines. 

The mul­ti­ple sab­o­tage cam­paigns are hav­ing an impact, accord­ing to Mick Mul­roy, a for­mer CIA para­mil­i­tary offi­cer. “I do not know who is behind these attacks, but their val­ue is sub­stan­tial and serves mul­ti­ple pur­pos­es,” he said. “Rus­sia has had a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem keep­ing up with its logis­ti­cal sup­ply lines. These attacks fur­ther com­pli­cate its effort to sup­ply its forces.”

They also serve to sow doubt in Krem­lin minds, because they show that Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin “does not have con­trol over what is hap­pen­ing in his own coun­try,” said Mul­roy. “Is it a covert pro­gram, is it dis­grun­tled Rus­sians sab­o­tag­ing their own plant, or is it pure incom­pe­tence of the work­ers? I don’t know, and per­haps the Krem­lin doesn’t either. This mat­ters to para­noid auto­crats.”

Indeed, by refus­ing to take cred­it for indi­vid­ual acts of sab­o­tage com­mit­ted by the Euro­pean spy ser­vice under the CIA’s direc­tion the two agen­cies hope to send the Krem­lin a mes­sage while send­ing Rus­sia secu­ri­ty ser­vices scram­bling in all direc­tions to find the cul­prits, accord­ing to a for­mer U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cial. “With sab­o­tage and sub­ver­sion, there is a psy­cho­log­i­cal com­po­nent,” the for­mer offi­cial said.

“There have been many fires across Rus­sia over the past few months, par­tic­u­lar­ly in weapons-man­u­fac­tur­ing plants and oth­er cru­cial sites,” said Rus­sia ana­lyst Olga Laut­man, a non-res­i­dent fel­low at the Cen­ter for Euro­pean Pol­i­cy Analy­sis. “Russ­ian media has report­ed on these fires as sep­a­rate inci­dents. They have not cre­at­ed any pro­pa­gan­da around these inci­dents and treat them as acci­dents.”

For instance, when a Russ­ian Aero­space Defense Forces build­ing burned down in late April, killing more than 20 peo­ple, Russ­ian state media report­ed that the blaze was caused by faulty wiring. But the Krem­lin under­stands that these are not just acci­den­tal fires and indus­tri­al acci­dents, despite what offi­cial media broad­cast, accord­ing to a for­mer U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cial.
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And then there’s the fact that Ukraine is run­ning sab­o­tage oper­a­tions of its own. And while it may be run­ning these oper­a­tions inde­pen­dent­ly from the CIA, it’s not at all clear how Rus­sia is going to know if that’s real­ly the case. In oth­er words:

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Ukrain­ian offi­cials have also begun to hint at their own abil­i­ty to strike tar­gets with guer­ril­la oper­a­tions behind ene­my lines — both with­in occu­pied parts of Ukraine and in Rus­sia. In August, a senior Ukrain­ian offi­cial told The New York Times that an attack on a Russ­ian air­base in Crimea was car­ried out by “par­ti­sans” and that a Ukrain­ian “elite mil­i­tary unit” was respon­si­ble for blow­ing up a Russ­ian ammu­ni­tion depot on the occu­pied penin­su­la. 

“It’s been wide­ly report­ed that after the 2014 inva­sion of Crimea, U.S. intel­li­gence start­ed a robust train­ing pro­gram for Ukrain­ian spe­cial oper­a­tions forces. It is like­ly that these same forces are lead­ing the effort of these sab­o­tage oper­a­tions in Crimea now,” said Mul­roy.
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To top it all off, we’re told that, while some NATO mem­bers appear to be back­ing away from these types of sab­o­tage oper­a­tions, the US and its “key NATO ally” have remained aggres­sive and are like­ly to get more aggres­sive as the war drags on, par­tic­u­lar­ly if Rus­sia uses WMDs. Or, pre­sum­ably, is seen as cross­ing sim­i­lar ‘red line’:

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As the war has dragged on, some NATO allies have backed away from sup­port­ing behind ene­my lines oper­a­tions in Rus­sia. As the war matured, the polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions of such oper­a­tions fright­ened some gov­ern­ments, how­ev­er the Unit­ed States and its key NATO ally run­ning the sab­o­tage pro­grams have remained aggres­sive and for­ward lean­ing.

The longer the war lasts, the more like­ly it is that the sab­o­tage cam­paign will become more brazen, accord­ing to a for­mer spe­cial oper­a­tions offi­cial, par­tic­u­lar­ly if Putin esca­lates to the use of Weapons of Mass Destruc­tion. “As we need to send a stronger mes­sage to Putin, you may see ops in Moscow and oth­er key cities,” the for­mer offi­cial said.
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And as ana­lysts also point out, the more effec­tive this sab­o­tage oper­a­tion is at con­strain­ing Rus­si­a’s mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Ukraine, the greater the incen­tives on Putin to esca­late the con­flict fur­ther. That’s all why con­cerns about the risks of a nuclear esca­la­tion loom large in this sit­u­a­tion: NATO is attempt­ing to mil­i­tar­i­ly back Rus­sia into a cor­ner via direct attacks on Rus­si­a’s infra­struc­ture. Sure, these direct attacks are osten­si­bly deni­able, but they aren’t intend­ed to be denied entire­ly. Rus­sia is sup­posed to know that a NATO mem­ber was behind the attacks, even if it can’t name the spe­cif­ic mem­ber. It’s like a nuclear game of chick­en with a major trolling ele­ment spiked in:

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So far, the tar­gets struck by the oper­a­tives being run by the CIA through the allied spy ser­vice have large­ly been of tac­ti­cal, rather than strate­gic, val­ue. How­ev­er, the dan­ger exists that the acts of sab­o­tage could, along with bat­tle­field loss­es, poten­tial­ly paint Putin into a cor­ner and risk nuclear esca­la­tion.

Such strikes let Russia’s lead­ers know that they can be hit in their back­yard. That could have a dou­ble effect of con­strain­ing Russia’s mil­i­tary options while encour­ag­ing Putin to esca­late the con­flict fur­ther, accord­ing to observers. “Though their mil­i­tary val­ue can be debat­ed, such acts might play to Putin’s great­est con­cerns and have out­sized impact on his esca­la­to­ry cal­cu­lus,” said for­mer CIA offi­cer Dou­glas Lon­don. 
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So we have to ask, who is this key NATO ally that is in a posi­tion to car­ry out these sab­o­tage mis­sions inside Rus­sia on behalf of the CIA? We aren’t told, but it’s worth not­ing this detail: the sab­o­tage does­n’t appear to be car­ried out by net­works of GLAD­IO-style local par­ti­sans. Instead, it’s fol­low­ing a mod­el the sim­i­lar to the approach the US used with the 2003 inva­sion of Iraq, where Kur­dish sab­o­tage teams were sent into areas of Iraq under Iraqi-gov­ern­ment con­trol. it’s the kind of dis­tinc­tion that sug­gests the sab­o­tage may be car­ried out by for­eign­ers liv­ing and work­ing in Rus­sia:

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The CIA has been con­duct­ing sab­o­tage oper­a­tions since the agency’s incep­tion in 1947. Dur­ing the Cold War the agency planned and exe­cut­ed such oper­a­tions from Cuba to Viet­nam and through­out Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. Sim­i­lar mis­sions were also a key part of the agency’s plans for West­ern Europe, should the Sovi­et Union ever have invad­ed.

But while those plans for a Sovi­et-occu­pied Europe involved so-called “stay behind” net­works of par­ti­sans – civil­ians liv­ing nor­mal lives until the ene­my invades, at which point they acti­vate to begin con­duct­ing sab­o­tage and espi­onage mis­sions – the cur­rent cam­paign inside Rus­sia itself bears a clos­er resem­blance to CIA oper­a­tions ahead of the 2003 U.S. inva­sion of Iraq. 

In the run up to that inva­sion, CIA Ground Branch para­mil­i­tary offi­cers trained 70 Kur­dish cells and then deployed them into Sad­dam Hus­sein-con­trolled por­tions of Iraq, tar­get­ing infra­struc­ture. “We end­ed up with a lot of teams…operating inside Iraqi-con­trolled space,” said for­mer CIA oper­a­tions offi­cer Sam Fad­dis, who led one of the agency teams. Their activ­i­ties includ­ed derail­ing a 90-car train and blow­ing up the office of an Iraqi intel­li­gence offi­cer. “It’s a way of say­ing screw you, we’re here, this is over,” Fad­dis said. 
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Along those lines, note how the sab­o­tage net­works set up by this unnamed NATO ally were, in some cas­es, set up almost 20 years ago involv­ing an “exten­sive net­work” of front com­pa­nies. And the explo­sives and oth­er sab­o­tage gear involved was smug­gled into the coun­try a decade ago. This fur­ther sug­gests that the eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty of this mys­tery key NATO part­ner inside Rus­sia was used as the front to set this sab­o­tage net­work up:

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The roots of these sab­o­tage mis­sions inside Rus­sia go deep. The allied spy ser­vice had emplaced some of the caches of explo­sives and gear used by these cells more than a decade pre­vi­ous­ly, accord­ing to two for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cials. At the time, that spy ser­vice was act­ing uni­lat­er­al­ly, with­out any CIA par­tic­i­pa­tion, accord­ing to a for­mer U.S. spe­cial oper­a­tions offi­cial and a per­son who has been briefed on the sab­o­tage cam­paign. 

The CIA became involved in reac­tion to Russia’s 2014 par­tial inva­sion of Ukraine. After the Krem­lin occu­pied the Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry of Crimea and parts of east­ern Ukraine, the agency began plan­ning with the allied spy ser­vice to push more oper­a­tives into Rus­sia with orders to lay low until they were need­ed. The first of these sleep­er cells under the com­bined con­trol of the CIA and the allied spy ser­vice infil­trat­ed into Rus­sia in 2016, accord­ing to a for­mer U.S. mil­i­tary offi­cial and a U.S. per­son who has been briefed on the cam­paign.

With the CIA’s knowl­edge, the allied spy ser­vice pro­vid­ed the under­cov­er sleep­er cell oper­a­tives with what the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty calls “leg­ends” – false biogra­phies that would explain their pres­ence in Rus­sia – and the doc­u­ments to back those cov­er sto­ries up. There is also what a for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cial called “an exten­sive net­work” of front com­pa­nies that were estab­lished as plat­forms to sup­port such behind-the-lines oper­a­tions. “Some of them go back almost 20 years,” the for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cial said.

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After the 2016 infil­tra­tions, more teams slipped into Rus­sia over the next sev­er­al years. Some smug­gled in new muni­tions, while oth­ers have relied on the orig­i­nal caches, accord­ing to two for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cials and a per­son who has been briefed on the sab­o­tage cam­paign. 
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This is a good time to recall how West­ern oil com­pa­nies have been invest­ing in Rus­sia for decades, despite a high­ly tumul­tuous rela­tion­ship with the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment at times, includ­ing the UK’s BP. So if you’re won­der­ing about the kind of eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty between Rus­sia and the West, keep in mind that the world’s largest petro­le­um com­pa­nies have had a major inter­est in Rus­sia that end­ed up get­ting severe­ly dis­rupt­ed with this war.

So that’s the omi­nous update we got last months. An omi­nous update about a secret NATO plot that the plot­ters appear to want the Krem­lin to know about. Plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty is the game here. Not com­plete deni­a­bil­i­ty. Rus­sia is sup­posed to know about this sab­o­tage cam­paign and respond to it. And now it knows. Which also rais­es the ques­tion of what the response to a secret-not-so-secret sab­o­tage cam­paign might look like.