On SpyCast: A silent, intelligence-sharing tug of war in Ukraine

The day before President Donald Trump spoke with Vladimir Putin in pursuit of a peace agreement, Russia launched one of its biggest drone strikes against Ukraine. “I think some progress has been made,” Trump told reporters after the call on Monday. But who is surprised that Putin did not agree to an immediate 30-day ceasefire?

This episode of SpyCast takes us back to a moment when the course of the war could have taken a different turn. New York Times investigative reporter Adam Entous spent more than a year uncovering the main reasons why Ukraine’s counteroffensive failed in 2023.

He revealed an operation called Task Force Dragon — a U.S.-led intelligence fusion center in Wiesbaden, Germany. From an auditorium basement on a military base, American intel officers provided locations of Russian units, equipment, and command posts for the Ukrainians to shoot down. “The whole goal of the system was to go from [target] to shot being taken in as little amount of time as possible,” Adam told me.

But then came disagreements over troop movements and attack plans, as well as ammo shortages. Ukrainian generals started insisting on sending out drones to confirm U.S. intelligence, since the Americans wouldn’t share real-time satellite imagery. “It added hours, in some cases days, to the process of verifying a target that the Americans had already identified,” Adam said. “And you have a situation where the American general is on the phone with the Ukrainian general, basically pleading with him, ‘Just take the shot, trust me, it's right.’”

Adam took multiple trips to Ukraine, conducting hundreds of interviews with officials on both sides of the Atlantic. And he found a story shaped as much by politics as personalities.

Episode length: 28 minutes

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