About two months ago, a Ukrainian sabotage operation in Russia’s Belgorod region, near Ukraine’s northeastern border, went terribly wrong. Dozens of operatives were killed in artillery fire, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. It was a poorly planned operation, one source said. “The enemy was more prepared than expected,” the other source told me. “It was luck or a leak.”
The unusually large operation drew in multiple units from Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (GUR). They often support each other with numbers — as some are involved in amphibious missions, others with drones, reconnaissance, or raids. The target still is “targetable.” But after that day, about half of one small special unit is dead.
The famed Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, who predicted Russia’s 2022 invasion, leads the GUR, and has been the target of at least 10 Russian assassination attempts, was described to me as out of sorts.
These losses are mourned quietly and out of public view — as they would be in the U.S. But in Kyiv, sabotage operations on Russian soil are one of the few ways that Ukraine can inflict pain on their aggressors. That’s because the Biden administration continues to prohibit Ukraine from using American weapons to hit Russia, save for an exception President Joe Biden made in the battle for Kharkiv. As former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO ret. Gen. Philip Breedlove succinctly put it to me last year, “The West has built sanctuary for Mr. Putin.”
Ukrainian officials rarely speak of their attacks inside Russia, nor the covert efforts that extend beyond it. I learned that operations are currently underway in Africa, where mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group have found power and influence (in addition to the battlefield in Ukraine). In fact, one conversation I had was interrupted by frantic calls regarding a time-sensitive problem in such an operation.
My glimpse into Ukraine’s spy games began with a call from an unknown number. I had been sitting in a hookah bar in Kyiv, angling to speak with a senior officer of the revered Third Assault Brigade. But a voice on the other end of the line told me that a senior intelligence official would see me now.
There was no time to grab my laptop, or to change out of my cheap jean shorts and tank top. I just had to jump into a cab. So I walked through the double doors of a high security building and started our meeting with a smile and an apology for my dress. The official, who insisted on a candid conversation on background, was gracious.
So began our back and forth volley. I asked if Ukraine was conducting any operations in North Korea, Iran, or China. Each of these countries offered its own flavor of support to Russia, be it training, weapons, equipment, or an economic olive branch. “We do what is possible to constrain Russian possibilities, capabilities,” the official said.
I pressed for more. “No comment,” the official said. “I don't want to say — I can't.” Eventually, the official said that Ukraine tries to implement “all possible measures” to stop illegal imports to Russia. “We are trying to do something sometimes effectively, sometimes not effectively, for stopping these channels,” the official said.
Officials in Ukraine are still trying to convince Washington to ease its restrictions so that U.S. weapons can be used to attack Russian airfields, fuel bases, and military industrial sites, the official said. But the Biden administration hasn’t budged. It is often slow to provide the support Ukraine needs, the official said.
Before our interview, I learned that some analysts in the U.S. believe Ukraine should strike Russian oil supply terminals, not its refineries. They say it would inhibit Russia’s refuel of aircraft and vehicles, cutting off logistics supply. “The Americans had some ideas, asked us about not striking [the] Russians' oil terminals,” the official told me. He also said they were very protected and quite far away. “We are working with targets which we can reach. We are very constrained in our instruments and we try to use it effectively and efficiently.”
We moved on to talk about Vladimir Putin. The Russian president has a “personal mania” for Ukraine, the official said. And when Putin’s reign is finally over? “If you analyze Russian history, after a strong so-called leader, there is a time of weak leaders. After some time, somebody will win the fight for the first place, for the throne. Who will it be? It is a big enigma.”
It may come as no surprise that Ukraine now has a commercial industry around hating Putin. Toilet paper and door mats with his portrait, t-shirts saying “FCK PTN,” firing ranges with his face as the bulls-eye. I drank “Putin’s a dick” beer, aka “Putin Khuilo,” in an underground bar. Maybe in a small way, all of it helps to ease the pain in yet another chapter of Ukraine’s tragic history with Russia.
And yet, a secret fidelity to Moscow can still be found in the streets of Kyiv. I learned this after walking the ruins of the city’s largest children’s hospital, an hour after Russia struck the complex on July 8. I had spoken with a survivor and watched first responders clear out a newly concave building to reach the children inside. Hours later, people poured into the hospital’s entryway, holding heavy bags of food and water for the victims and first responders. It was a comforting sight that I didn’t know I needed to see, in the aftermath of Moscow’s ambitions. And yet, sabotage was here too: Some of the donated water was tainted. “A friend of a friend ended up in the hospital from that water,” American medic Rima Ziuraitis told me.
Moscow is also trying to poison people’s minds. It set its sights on Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces. He led the defense of Kyiv when the war began, and the bloody battle of Bakhmut, draining resources from the Wagner Group so it couldn’t take other territory. Syrskyi also led the Kharkiv counteroffensive, a major victory for Ukraine.
Just days into Syrskyi’s tenure as commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, Ukraine’s Security Service and Center for Countering Disinformation swiftly flagged a major disinformation campaign to discredit him. ("There was a month when, according to our calculations, Russia launched more than a thousand different information attacks on various platforms," SBU cybersecurity chief Illia Vitiuk told Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform.)
And yet, Syrskyi was also born in Russia and attended military school in Moscow. So Russian media exploited his Russian roots, a Ukrainian lawmaker told me. The disinformation has served to undermine him inside Ukraine. There is now talk of potentially replacing Syrskyi.
“Kirt,” a deputy commander from the Third Assault Brigade who is responsible for battle training, told me he nearly succumbed to Russian disinformation. “When I am sitting in Russian captivity, listening to their radio… shit. I am starting to hate myself and hate my country,” he says. A former chief of the Azov Brigade’s military commanders’ school, Kirt defended the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol before he was taken prisoner by the Russians who captured the mill. He was held in a small underground cell in Donetsk for four months. He says he was beaten with rubber, wood, and steel from legs to head. But that was just physical. “They try playing on your emotion and soul,” he said.
When we met in a cafe, he was just returning from a funeral for a soldier in his unit. “It’s our day to day,” Kirt said as he sipped green tea. The water in the prison in Donetsk was the same color, he told me.
Russia still holds an estimated 900 Azov soldiers — some are Kirt’s sergeant major, noncommissioned officers, friends, and students. He says they are humiliated and beaten multiple times a day. And then there is the radio. “Russian radio [says] that Ukraine didn't fight… our rockets only killed a lot of children, a lot of babushkas, grandmothers. And Russian rockets each hit thousands and thousands of Ukrainian officers’ barracks, the whole training base destroyed. And they always [say] that they captured one more city, they captured Kyiv and Lviv.” They want to break your will, Kirt says.
I asked him about the waves of loss — his friends, his now Russian-occupied home in Mariupol, his postponed dream of having children with his wife. “You can't describe in just words, you need to write a poem,” he tells me.
But when he describes everyday life on the battlefield, fighting for Ukraine’s freedom, his words are more cryptic. “If you're walking through hell, just keep going.”
Far from the front, reminders of the war still broke my heart: Some of the beautiful flowers being sold in an underground passageway in Kyiv came from Zaporizhzhia, still delivered every day in the midst of the fighting. One evening, I had a professional opera singer as a driver — Iurii Goryn told me he needed the work because his salary has been docked.
Before that came a visit to Kyiv’s World War II museum, some weapons from that era not on display but still in use. At the park outside, a little girl overheard a group of us speaking English and said in her own flawless English, “Are you American? You’re the first Americans I have ever met!” A barrage of additional questions followed. Her excessive curiosity was endearing and I invited her family to join our group inside the museum. I watched as Eva, 10, carried a kite, the only bright object in a building filled with black-and-white photos of the dead and gloves made from human skin.
Her 13-year-old brother, named Sasha like me, could identify every military vehicle and missile — a pastime that grew when the war began. Their father showed me videos taken through the windows of their glassy home in a tall, modern building. Russia’s airborne attacks intercepted… their own personal light show.
As I was leaving Kyiv, I saw a soldier step off a train and embrace his son. I have never seen a father hug his child that way. Not hard. But tenderly. Maybe I was exhausted from a string of sleepless nights without AC in the rolling blackouts caused by Russia’s targeting of energy infrastructure. Maybe all of the days had gotten to me. I looked away with tears dropping out of my eyes, wondering. Will that boy’s father keep coming back to him? Will that boy one day have to fight the Russians too?
And how many children lost a parent in that large, failed Belgorod operation? Their photos may not be placed in the memorials and graveyards that grow bigger by the day. But for those faceless, nameless officers who died for Ukraine in Russia, those who know remember.
