By David Sole
The New York Times has finally pulled back the curtain, just a bit, that has hidden the true nature of the Ukraine war as a proxy war directed by and for US imperialism. On Sunday, March 30, 2025 the lead on-line story in the Times ran a major research piece headlined “The Partnership: The Secret History of America’s Role in the Ukraine War.” The article has many important revelations and some fundamental missing pieces.
It might be mentioned first that the US role is “secret” because the New York Times, along with almost all the capitalist media, kept the truth secret since the onset of Russia’s Special Military Operation in February 2022 and for at least 8 years prior. In fact, many independent journalists have worked hard to expose the nature of the proxy war. But the Times was consistent in reporting only the Pentagon/State Department “official story.” In fact, for the first 90 days of the war the Times did not have a single article or guest column that told the truth about the conflict.
Some of the highlights of the new Times report include formation, only two months into the war, of a “partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning and technology [which] would become the secret weapon.” Weapons supplied to Ukraine by the US include “more than half-billion rounds of small-arms ammunition and grenades, 10,000 Javelin anti-armor weapons, 3,000 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, 272 howitzers, 76 tanks, 40 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, 20 Mi-17 helicopters and three Patriot air defense batteries.”
Every aspect of the war included US planning. “American and Ukrainian offices planned Kyiv’s counteroffensive. A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field.”
The US role grew as the war continued. “Time and again, the Biden administration authorized clandestine operations it had previously prohibited. American military advisers were dispatched to Kyiv and later allowed to travel closer to the fighting. Military and C.I.A. officers in Wiesbaden helped plan and support a campaign of Ukrainian strikes in Russian-annexed Crimea. Finally, the military and then the C.I.A. received the green light to enable pinpoint strikes deep inside Russia itself.”
To provide ever greater intelligence to Ukraine, a command center in Wiesbaden, Germany grew to include “officers from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.”
The US support was part of a worldwide operation. The US effort was led by General Christopher T. Donahue “a star in the clandestine world of special forces. Alongside C.I.A. kill teams and local partners, he had hunted terrorist chiefs in the shadows of Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. As leader of the elite Delta Force, he had helped build a partnership with Kurdish fighters to battle the Islamic State in Syria.”
The German command center became the heart of Ukraine’s war effort. “Soon the Ukrainians, nearly 20 in all — intelligence officers, operational planners, communications and fire-control specialists — began arriving in Wiesbaden. Every morning, officers recalled, the Ukrainians and Americans gathered to survey Russian weapons systems and ground forces and determine the ripest, highest-value targets. The priority lists were then handed over to the intelligence fusion center, where officers analyzed streams of data to pinpoint the targets’ locations.”
The role of the US in this proxy war was key. “Wiesbaden would oversee each HIMARS strike. General Donahue and his aides would review the Ukrainians’ target lists and advise them on positioning their launchers and timing their strikes. The Ukrainians were supposed to only use coordinates the Americans provided. To fire a warhead, HIMARS operators needed a special electronic key card, which the Americans could deactivate anytime.”
But the Times still is keeping “secret” from its wide readership the role of the US in the 2014 CIA backed coup in Ukraine which installed a pro-Nazi, pro-US regime. The US build up of the Ukraine military, from 2014 to 2022 and its use targeting ethnic Russians who make up a majority of the Ukraine population in the east and south, still isn’t acknowledged. Also, the long-standing US plan for Ukraine to fight and weaken Russia in a proxy war with a goal of Ukraine being inducted in NATO is never talked about in the capitalist press.
Another question needs answering. Why, at this particular time, is the New York Times revealing to the US public such a detailed account of the proxy nature of this war? It is a result of the overall defeat of the US-backed Ukraine military by the Russian Federation. This has led to a section of the US ruling class working through the Trump administration to try to extricate the US from a losing enterprise. Their aim is to try to woo Russia by abandoning their Ukrainian proxies and turn the US political, economic and military might against socialist China. The Times, which faithfully served the now lost cause of the Ukraine proxy war, is being forced to expose the massive US role in the war.
Trump, meanwhile, does not want an end to the Ukraine war. He is steadily pressing the UK and the other NATO nations to drastically increase their military budgets and their role in the war. Of course, those nations have to contend with their own populations who are going to have to pay for increased military spending with cuts to their own vital social programs.
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