The war in Ukraine is in a flexion point, with President Trump looking for a rapprochement with the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin, and pressing for the end of the fighting.
But for almost three years before the return to power of Mr. Trump, the United States and Ukraine were united in an extraordinary partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning and technology whose evolution and internal mechanisms were known only in a small circle of American and allies.
With considerable transparency, the Pentagon offered a public accounting of the 66.5 billion dollars of weapons that he provided to Ukraine. But an investigation by the New York Times reveals that the involvement of America in the war was much deeper than previously understood. The secret partnership has both guided the large battle strategy and has channeled precise targeting information up to Ukrainian soldiers on the field.
Here are five takeaways of the investigation.
An American base in Wiesbaden, Germany, provided Ukrainians with the coordinates of the Russian forces on their ground.
The idea behind the partnership was that close American cooperation with Ukraine would compensate for the great advantages of Russia in the workforce and in weapons. To guide the Ukrainians while unfolding their increasingly sophisticated arsenal, the Americans created an operation called Task Force Dragon.
The secret partnership center was at the garrison of the American army in Wiesbaden, Germany. Every morning, US military officers and Ukrainians set aimed priorities: roller coaster, equipment or infrastructure. The American and coalition intelligence officers searched satellite images, radio emissions and intercepted communications to find Russian positions. Task Force Dragon therefore gave Ukrainians the coordinates so that they could shoot against them.
Military officials worried that it could be unduly provocative to call the “objective” objectives. Instead they have been called “points of interest”.
The intelligence and artillery of the United States helped Ukrainian to quickly turn the tide against the Russian invasion.
In the spring of 2022, the Biden administration agreed to send high mobility artillery systems, or Himars, which used rockets led by the satellite for shots up to 50 miles.
In the first year of the war, the Ukrainians were extremely dependent on the Americans for the intelligence, and the dragon of the Task Force controlled and supervised practically every hit of Himars.
The strikes caused the Libra of Russian victims’ rates, and the counter-offensive of Ukraine 2022 had largely success: in December, the Ukrainians had an unlikely to David-Contro-Goliath against their Russian enemy.
The Biden administration continued to move its red lines.
From the first, the administration officials tried to establish a red line: America was not fighting Russia; He helped Ukraine. However, they feared that the steps made to achieve this could cause Mr. Putin to attack NATO’s goals or perhaps to maintain his nuclear threats. Although the administration has developed an increasingly serious tolerance of the risk to help Ukraine to cope with the evolution threat, many of the most potentially provocative measures have been secretly taken.
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Breeting a ban on American boots on Ukrainian ground, Wiesbaden was allowed to put about a dozen military councilors in Kyiv. To avoid attracting the attention of the public on their presence, the Pentagon initially called them “experts on the subject”. Subsequently, the team was expanded, at about three dozen, and to the military councilors he was eventually authorized to go to Ukrainian command posts closer to the fighting.
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In 2022, the United States Navy was authorized to share targeting information for Ukrainian drones attacks on warships just beyond the territorial waters of the Russian Annexaa crime. The CIA was allowed to support Ukrainian operations within the waters of Crimea; The autumn, the espionage agency secretly helped Ukrainian drones to hit Russian warships in the port of Sebastopoli.
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In January 2024, the US military and Ukrainian military officers in Wiesbaden jointly planned a long-haul missile campaign provided by the coalition, together with the Ukrainian drones-to attack about 100 Russian military objectives in Crimea. The campaign, appointed Lunar Hail operation, largely managed to force the Russians to report equipment, structures and forces in Crimea in the Russian mainland.
In the end, the military and the US military was allowed to help with strikes in Russia.
The hardest red line was the Russian border. But in the spring of 2024, to protect the northern city of Kharkiv from a Russian assault, the administration authorized the creation of a “OPS box” – an area of Russian territory within which the US officers in Wiesbaden could provide precise coordinated Ukrainians. The first iteration of the box extended through a wide range of the northern border of Ukraine. The box was expanded after North Korea sent troops to help fight the raid of the Ukrainians in the Kursk Russia region. The American army was subsequently authorized to allow missile strikes in an area of southern Russia in which the Russians staged forces and equipment for their offensive in Eastern Ukraine.
Long date policy has forbidden the CIA to provide intelligence on the objectives on Russian soil. But the CIA may require “variaze”, carve to support strikes for specific objectives. The intelligence had identified a vast storage of ammunition in Toropets, 290 miles north of the Ukrainian border. On September 18, 2024, a swarm of drones slammed into the storage of ammunition. The explosion, powerful like a small earthquake, opened a crater the width of a football field. Later, the CIA was allowed to allow the Ukrainian strikes of drones in southern Russia to try to slow down progress in Eastern Ukraine.
Political disagreements in Ukraine contributed to the collapse of the counter -offensive of 2023.
The counter -offensive of 2023 was intended to build momentum after the triumphs of the first year. But after the partners held the war games in Wiesbaden and agreed a strategy, the plan ran headlong in Ukrainian politics.
The head of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, General Valery Zaluzhny, embraced the plan, whose fulcrum was an assault in the direction of the southern city of Melitopol which would cut the Russian supply lines. But his rival and subordinate, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, had his plan – to impale the Russian forces in the occupied oriental city of Bakhmut. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, He sided with him and divided the ammunition and forces between two main fronts instead of one. The Ukrainians have never recovered Bakhmut and, in a few months, the counter -offensive ended in bankruptcy. Russia now had the upper hand.