On March 29^th, The New York Times published a landmark investigation exposing how the US was “woven” into Ukraine’s battle with Russia “far more intimately and broadly than previously understood,” with Washington almost invariably serving as “the backbone of Ukrainian military operations.” The outlet went so far as to acknowledge the conflict was a “proxy war” - an irrefutable reality hitherto aggressively denied in the mainstream - dubbing it a “rematch” of “Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria three decades later.”

That the US has since February 2022 supplied Ukraine with extraordinary amounts of weaponry, and been fundamental to the planning of many of Kiev’s military operations, large and small, is hardly breaking news. Indeed, elements of this relationship have previously been widely reported, with White House apparatchiks occasionally admitting to Washington’s role. Granular detail on this assistance provided by the New York Times probe is nonetheless unprecedented. For example, a dedicated intelligence fusion centre was secretly created at a vast US military base in Germany.

Dubbed “Task Force Dragon”, it united officials from every major US intelligence agency, and “coalition intelligence officers”, to produce extensive daily targeting information on Russian “battlefield positions, movements and intentions”, to “pinpoint” and “determine the ripest, highest-value targets” for Ukraine to strike using Western-provided weapons. The fusion centre quickly became “the entire back office of the war.” A nameless European intelligence chief was purportedly “taken aback to learn how deeply enmeshed his NATO counterparts had become” in the conflict’s “kill chain”:

“An early proof of concept was a campaign against one of Russia’s most-feared battle groups, the 58^th Combined Arms Army. In mid-2022, using American intelligence and targeting information, the Ukrainians unleashed a rocket barrage at the headquarters of the 58th in the Kherson region, killing generals and staff officers inside. Again and again, the group set up at another location; each time, the Americans found it and the Ukrainians destroyed it.”

Several other well-known Ukrainian broadsides, such as an October 2022 drone barrage on the port of Sevastopol, are now revealed by the New York Times to have been the handiwork of Task Force Dragon. Meanwhile, the outlet confirmed that each and every HIMARS strike conducted by Kiev was entirely dependent on the US, which supplied coordinates and advice on “positioning [Kiev’s] launchers and timing their strikes.” Local HIMARS operators also required special electronic key [cards]” to fire the missiles, “which the Americans could deactivate anytime.”

Yet, the investigation’s most striking passages highlight London’s principal role in influencing and managing Ukrainian - and by extension US - actions and strategy in the conflict. Both direct references and unambiguous insinuations littered throughout point ineluctably to the conclusion that the “proxy war” is of British concoction and design. If rapprochement between Moscow and Washington succeeds, it would represent the most spectacular failure to date of Britain’s concerted post-World War II conspiracy to exploit American military might and wealth for its own purposes.

‘Prevailing Wisdom’

A particularly revealing section of The New York Times probe details the execution of Ukraine’s August 2022 counteroffensive, targeting Kharkov and Kherson. Unexpectedly finding limited resistance from hollowed out Russian positions in these areas, Task Force Dragon’s US military lead Lieutenant General Christopher T. Donahue urged Ukraine’s field commander Major General Andrii Kovalchuk to keep pushing, and seize even further territory. He vehemently resisted, despite Donahue and other senior US military officials pressuring then-Ukrainian Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi to override his reticence.

Subsequently, the sense among Kiev’s foreign puppet masters that a golden opportunity to inflict an even more egregious blow on the Russians had been lost was pervasive. Irate, then-British Defence Minister Ben Wallace asked Donahue what he would do if Kovalchuk were his subordinate. “He would have already been fired,” Donahue said. Wallace succinctly responded, “I got this.” At his direct demand, Kovalchuk was duly defenestrated. As the New York Times explains, the British “had considerable clout” in Kiev and hands-on influence over Ukrainian officials.

Related News

How MI6 helped HTS seize Syria

News from Nowhere: Mr. Mephistopheles

This was because, “unlike the Americans,” Britain had formally inserted teams of military officers into the country to advise Ukrainian officials directly. Still, despite Kiev failing to fully capitalise as desired by London and Washington, the 2022 counteroffensive’s success produced widespread “irrational exuberance”. Planning for a followup the next year thus “began straightaway.” The “prevailing wisdom” within Task Force Dragon was this counteroffensive “would be the war’s last”, with Ukraine claiming “outright triumph”, or Russia being “forced to sue for peace.” 

Zelensky boasted internally, “we’re going to win this whole thing.” The plan was for Ukrainian forces to cut off Russia’s land-bridge to Crimea, before seizing the peninsula outright. As the New York Times records though, Pentagon officials were considerably less enthused about Kiev’s prospects. This scepticism seeped out into the public sphere in April 2023 via the Pentagon Leaks. One document warned Ukraine would fall “well short” of its goals in the counteroffensive, forecasting “modest territorial gains” at most.

The leaked intelligence assessment attributed this to “shortfalls” in Ukraine’s “force generation and sustainment”, extensive Russian defences constructed following their retreat from Kherson. It cautioned “enduring Ukrainian deficiencies in training and munitions supplies probably will strain progress and exacerbate casualties.” The New York Times notes Pentagon officials, moreover, “worried about their ability to supply enough weapons for the counteroffensive,” and wondered if the Ukrainians “in their strongest possible position, should consider cutting a deal.”

Even Task Force Dragon’s Lieutenant General Donahue had doubts, advocating “a pause” of a year or more for “building and training new brigades.” Yet, intervention by the British was, per the New York Times, sufficient to neutralise internal opposition to a fresh counteroffensive in the spring. They argued, “if the Ukrainians were going to go anyway, the coalition needed to help them.” Resultantly, enormous quantities of exorbitantly expensive, high-end military equipment were shipped to Kiev by almost every NATO member state for the purpose.

The counteroffensive was finally launched in June 2023. Relentlessly blitzed by artillery and drones from day one, tanks and soldiers were also routinely blown to smithereens by expansive Russian-laid minefields. Within a month, Ukraine had lost 20% of its Western-provided vehicles and armor, with nothing to show for it. When the counteroffensive fizzled out at the end of 2023, just 0.25% of territory occupied by Russia in the initial phase of the invasion had been regained. Meanwhile, Kiev’s casualties may have exceeded 100,000.

‘Knife Edge’

The New York Times reports that “the counteroffensive’s devastating outcome left bruised feelings on both sides,” with Washington and Kiev blaming each other for the catastrophe. A Pentagon official claims “the important relationships were maintained, but it was no longer the inspired and trusting brotherhood of 2022 and early 2023.” Given Britain’s determination to “keep Ukraine fighting at all costs”, this was bleak news indeed, threatening to halt all US support for the proxy war.

Still, there was one last perceived ace up London’s sleeve to keep Washington invested in the proxy conflict, and potentially escalate it into all-out hot war with Moscow. The New York Times reports that in March 2023, the US discovered Kiev “was furtively planning a ground operation into southwest Russia.” The CIA’s Ukraine chief confronted General Kyrylo Budanov, warning, “if he crossed into Russia, he would do so without American weapons or intelligence support.” He did so anyway, “only to be forced back.”

Rather than deterring further incursions, Ukraine’s calamitous intervention in Russia’s Bryansk region was a “foreshadowing” of Kiev’s all-out invasion of Kursk on August 6th that year. The New York Times records how from Washington’s perspective, the operation “was a significant breach of trust.” For one, “the Ukrainians had again kept them in the dark” - but worse, “they had secretly crossed a mutually agreed-upon line.” Kiev was using “coalition-supplied equipment” on Russian territory, breaching “rules laid down” when limited strikes inside Russia were greenlit months earlier.

As this journalist has exposed, Ukraine’s Kursk folly was a British invasion in all but name. London was central to its planning, provided the bulk of the equipment deployed, and deliberately advertised its involvement. As The Times reported at the time, the goal was to mark Britain as a formal belligerent in the proxy war, in the hope other Western countries - particularly the US - would follow suit, and “send more equipment and give Kyiv more leeway to use them in Russia.”

Initially, US officials keenly distanced themselves from the Kursk incursion. Empire house journal Foreign Policy reported that the Biden administration was not only enormously unhappy “to have been kept out of the loop,” but “skeptical of the military logic” behind the “counterinvasion”. In a further rebuke, on August 16^th Washington prohibited Ukraine’s use of British-made, long-range Storm Shadow missiles against Russian territory. Securing wider Western acquiescence to such strikes was reportedly also a core objective behind Kiev’s occupation of Kursk.

However, once Donald Trump prevailed in the November 2024 presidential election, Biden was encouraged to use his “last, lame-duck weeks” to make “a flurry of moves to stay the course… and shore up his Ukraine project.” In the process, per the New York Times, he “crossed his final red line,” allowing ATACMS and Storm Shadow strikes deep inside Russia, while permitting US military advisers to leave Kiev “for command posts closer to the fighting.”

Fast forward to today, and the Kursk invasion has ended in utter disaster, with the few remaining Ukrainian forces not captured or killed fleeing. Meanwhile, Biden’s flailing, farewell red line breaches have failed to tangibly shift the battlefield balance in Kiev’s favour at all. As the New York Times acknowledges, the proxy war currently “teeters on a knife edge.” There is no knowing what British intelligence may have in store to prevent long-overdue peace prevailing at last, but the consequences could be world-threatening.