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I had already assumed the US was spying on Ukraine. It helps Ukraine. [1]

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Date: 2023-04-09  

Not a spy satellite, but they don't usually provide pictures of those.

As part of the recent leak of purported US secrets regarding Ukraine, one of the tidbits was that the US was “spying” on Ukraine. Spying has many forms and many information targets, not all of which are negative to the country being spied upon. In the case of Ukraine, there are very few to no state secrets that Ukraine has that is critical to US interests.

I can’t really imagine there are many technology targets we’d steal from them. We’re giving them so much equipment returning the favor with information regarding tech the US doesn’t already have would be an easy means of paying back the US. In other words, if Ukraine had tech the US didn’t already have, they would probably sell it (if owned by the Ukrainian government). So we can most likely cross off spying to steal technology secrets.

It’s unclear to me why people would think we would attempt to steal military plans from Ukraine. We understand “need to know.” We should also understand the US doesn’t need to know exact military plans. If the Ukrainians want our help on planning, they’ll ask for it. If they don’t want our help, what would it gain the United States to steal those plans? It would only increase risk of those plans leaking. And if we don’t trust them to use our weapons correctly, then we simply wouldn’t give them the weapons. So if someone can give me a good reason as to why the US would spy on Ukrainian military secrets, let me know. Ukraine will already be sharing the critical stuff.

We almost certainly have “advisors” in Ukraine. The Ukrainians also needs to share sufficient information regarding their own forces with NATO in order for NATO to intelligently assist with supplies. So force structure, condition, and supply levels would already be being shared to some extent. There would be no need for the US to actively steal information regarding the general state of Ukrainian forces.

So what would the US spy on Ukraine for? Corruption and Russian spies. One of Ukraine’s problems, and in particular Zelenskyy’s problems, is knowing who to trust. We know at the start of the war there was a concerted campaign to pay off numerous officials around the country. We have been told that most either turned down the bribes, or were cleared by Ukrainian Intelligence to accept the money but not deliver whatever was promised to Russia. But even so, how many Ukrainians turned traitors or have been planted Russian agents and weren’t caught? It is most likely a nontrivial number. One of the “services” the United States and the Five Eyes in general (The Five Eyes are Canada, New Zealand, Australia, UK and US who share lots of intelligence) can do is to monitor Ukrainian communications and suspicious banking transfers.

This spying would most likely take the form of monitoring phone calls, emails, texts, and satellite tracking of individuals of interest. Should the United States intercept information which indicates a Ukrainian may be compromised it would be possible to pass that information along to Zelenskyy. Because these intercepts are entirely outside the Ukrainian Intelligence services it would provide Zelenskyy with essentially would be an outside “audit” of his own intelligence services. He could run tips received from the US through his on service and see the results. There is no guarantee US isn’t compromised through these channels, but signals intelligence would be hard for a Russian mole in the US agency to manufacture and/or hide without great risk.

The other “service” would be identifying avenues of corruption within the Ukrainian government. So this corruption isn’t necessarily driven by Russia, but is certainly against the Ukraine’s interests as a state. Corrupt individuals are more easily turned by enemy agents should that corruption be discovered by Russia. Criminal organizations can be used by Russian agents for smuggling items or people. And then there is simply the inefficiency that corruption causes. All of this information can be passed to Zelenskyy and it is all spying on Ukraine which can end up benefiting Ukraine.

As for the leaks themselves. It’s impossible to know for sure what they all mean. If it is a NATO operation to mislead Russia, it would need to include something of value which is true in order to hide the lies that are meant to lead Russia astray. I also have yet to hear of specific information that I find all that concerning.

Yes, knowing how many brigades are being trained and when they are done training has some value. But its not information Russian doesn’t already have. It’s not too hard to have agents stationed near different military bases reporting on the comings and goings around the base. It’s also not too hard to have agents stationed along every railroad and highway coming into Ukraine. Even if they can’t tell what’s on the train (though we’ve seen plenty of trains where the equipment is out in the open), they can record the number of cars, direction, and times. Even without this leak, Russia was going to know roughly how many new brigades were trained.

Similarly, five week old pictures of Bakhmut won’t do much either. They’ll be able to gain some information for sure, but most could already be determined even by the poor quality Russian satellites every two weeks. And much will have changed in those five weeks as well. And what is important that hasn’t changed, will be changed very quickly giving Russia very little time to take advantage of it. It’s not like Russia is a nimble force capable of taking advantage of subtle weaknesses. They’re still going to just advance with the same old tactics. They’re not allowed to do anything else.

So in all, I see very little to be concerned by in these leaks. If someone has a particular tidbit that does seem concerning, please share. I have not had time to track down every little bit of information on them. And for those FBI or NSA agents reading this article; I have not read any classified information.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/9/2162938/-I-had-already-assumed-the-US-was-spying-on-Ukraine-It-helps-Ukraine

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