How The CIA Helped Build Ukraine’s Intelligence Advantage

Ukraine’s intelligence services have become one of Kyiv’s most effective weapons. The bombings and covert operations that have killed senior Russian military officials in recent years are the visible result of a decade-long effort, supported by the CIA, to rebuild Ukrainian intelligence after Russia’s seizure of Crimea.

Following Russia’s 2014 invasion, the CIA worked closely with Ukrainian intelligence agencies, helping reform institutions weakened by corruption, Russian infiltration and their Soviet-era legacy. Over time, that partnership produced intelligence services capable of conducting increasingly sophisticated operations against Moscow.

Unlike military aid packages, intelligence cooperation remained a consistent feature of the US-Ukraine relationship.

Much of that cooperation remains classified. However, reporting by The New York Times, The Washington Post and other outlets has revealed a decade-long effort involving intelligence sharing and the development of specialized units capable of operating deep behind enemy lines.

Rebuilding After Russia’s First Invasion

Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 exposed deep weaknesses inside Ukraine’s security services, including the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). Years of corruption and Russian influence had left many institutions compromised.

In the years that followed, Ukraine began laying the foundations for a modern intelligence service. Valerii Kondratiuk played a key role in that process, first within the SBU and later as head of HUR, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, helping expand Ukraine’s intelligence capabilities while deepening cooperation with the CIA.

In 2015, the CIA helped support the creation of the SBU’s Fifth Directorate, a specialized unit that combined counterintelligence and special operations. According to reporting by The New Yorker, the unit developed networks of agents inside occupied territory, conducted surveillance operations and carried out some of Ukraine’s earliest covert actions against Russian proxy forces.

Former CIA operations officer Ed Bogan told me the partnership succeeded in part because Ukrainian officers understood the stakes immediately. “Figures such as SBU chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko and Valerii Kondratiuk understood both the opportunity and necessity of strengthening ties with Washington,” said Bogan.

What impressed him most was the urgency. “Ukrainians approached the challenge with the same sense of determination many Americans felt after 9/11,” Bogan said. “There was an understanding that the stakes were existential and the only option was to keep moving forward.”

Douglas Davis, co-founder of Valoryx Group, a defense consulting firm, told me that leaders such as Kondratiuk understood that closer ties with Washington would require overcoming decades of Soviet-era mistrust. According to Davis, they worked patiently to establish credibility with their American counterparts, recognizing that trust had to be earned before deeper intelligence cooperation could develop.

That mentality and focus on trust-building, combined with years of training, operational experience and institutional reform, helped lay the foundation for the intelligence services Ukraine would rely on when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.

The Budanov Generation

Among the officers who emerged from this period was future HUR chief Kyrylo Budanov.

The Times reported in February 2024 that Budanov served in Unit 2245, an elite military intelligence formation that worked closely with the CIA after 2015. The unit specialized in recovering Russian military equipment, communications systems and other material that could be analyzed by both Ukrainian and American intelligence services.

The intelligence gathered from captured Russian equipment provided valuable insight into Moscow’s capabilities while helping deepen cooperation between Ukrainian and American services.

General Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief poses in his office on February 15, 2023 in Kyiv.

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Budanov was later wounded while conducting operations against Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine and received rehabilitation at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in the United States. He would go on to lead Ukraine’s military intelligence agency.

Officers trained during the years immediately following Crimea now occupy senior leadership positions throughout Ukraine’s intelligence and security services.

Many have become the architects of Ukraine’s intelligence campaigns while fostering a culture of competition that has driven innovation across agencies such as HUR and the SBU.

According to Dmytro Zhmailo, co-founder and deputy head of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, this rivalry has become a strength rather than a weakness of Ukraine’s security apparatus.

“Competition exists in any field of activity, including among Ukrainian security services and intelligence units,” Zhmailo told me. “This is an entirely healthy process, where competition motivates you to become better and deliver results. It does not hinder but improves results.”

That rivalry has helped produce some of Ukraine’s most audacious operations, including the SBU’s Operation Spiderweb in June 2025. After 18 months of preparation, Ukrainian operatives reportedly smuggled drones deep into Russia and launched coordinated strikes against strategic bomber bases, showcasing capabilities that would have been difficult to imagine in the aftermath of Crimea.

Trust Is Earned

As Ukrainian intelligence services became more capable, American confidence in their abilities grew as well.

“Intelligence partnerships evolve through reciprocity,” Bogan explained. “When one side consistently provides useful information and demonstrates competence, the other side becomes more comfortable sharing as well.”

For years, Ukrainian officers demonstrated both. As trust and cooperation expanded, so did the willingness to share increasingly sensitive intelligence and capabilities.

Ukrainian agencies were not simply recipients of American assistance. As they generated increasingly valuable intelligence on Russia’s military and security services, they became important partners in their own right, transforming the relationship into a two-way exchange of capabilities and information.

“Eventually, the relationship becomes more than transactional,” Bogan said. “It becomes transformational.”

From Intelligence Collection To Economic Warfare

The partnership’s impact became increasingly visible after Russia’s full-scale invasion. A December New York Times investigation noted that CIA officers and US military planners had assisted Ukraine in refining its campaign against Russia’s energy sector.

Rather than attacking refineries indiscriminately, planners reportedly focused on hard-to-replace components. In one case, a CIA expert identified a critical refinery coupler whose destruction could leave a facility offline for weeks.

The same logic reportedly informed Ukraine’s campaign against Russia’s so-called shadow fleet, the network of aging vessels used to export sanctioned Russian oil around the world. According to US and Ukrainian officials cited by The Times, the CIA was authorized to support elements of that effort as well.

These campaigns demonstrate how far the relationship has evolved since 2014. What began as intelligence support for battlefield operations increasingly became a tool for imposing costs on Russia’s broader war machine.

A Two-Way Partnership

Following the public confrontation between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in February 2025, Washington temporarily suspended intelligence cooperation with Kyiv, raising concerns about the future of US support.

However, The Times reported that CIA Director John Ratcliffe successfully argued for maintaining the agency’s presence inside Ukraine despite broader political disagreements over military aid. The CIA reportedly retained personnel in the country and expanded funding for several Ukraine-related programs.

The decision reflected a reality often overlooked in discussions about Western assistance: Ukraine also provides value to the United States. As Bogan put it, “Ukraine understands Russia in ways that Western services never fully can.”

The relationship forged after Crimea was never simply about Washington helping Kyiv. Over time it became a partnership in which both sides provided something the other lacked: American resources and global reach, and Ukrainian insight into Russia that no Western service could replicate.

“We have a unique database on the Russian military – details on troop numbers, movements, even what their generals eat,” Ukrainian member of parliament Oleksandra Ustinova told me. “That’s how we target them.”