Warning: The OP is largely CIA propaganda.

Excerpt:

One of the biggest secrets of the Ukraine war is how much the CIA doesn't know. The Agency is as uncertain about Volodymyr Zelensky's thinking and intentions as it is about Vladimir Putin's. And as the Russian leader faces his biggest challenge in the aftermath of a failed mutiny, the Agency is straining to understand what the two sides will do—because President Joe Biden has determined that the United States (and Kyiv) will not undertake any actions that might threaten Russia itself or the survival of the Russian state, lest Putin escalate the conflict and engulf all of Europe in a new World War. In exchange, it expects that the Kremlin won't escalate the war beyond Ukraine or resort to the use of nuclear weapons.

America's stance is under threat because the near-mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, raises the question as to whether Moscow has run out of options.

"Putin's back is really against the wall" a senior defense intelligence official tells Newsweek, warning that while the CIA fully grasps how much Russia is stuck in Ukraine, it is very much in the dark with regard to what Putin might do about it. With talk of Russian nuclear weapons possibly being deployed to Belarus, and in light of Prigozhin's public exposure of the terrible costs of fighting, something that Moscow has suppressed, the official says that it is a particularly delicate moment. "What is happening off the battlefield is now most important," says the official, who was granted anonymity in order to speak candidly. "Both sides pledge to limit their actions, but it falls to the United States to enforce those pledges. This all hinges on the quality of our intelligence."

"There is a clandestine war, with clandestine rules, underlying all of what is going on in Ukraine," says a Biden administration senior intelligence official who also spoke with Newsweek. The official, who is directly involved in Ukraine policy planning, requested anonymity to discuss highly classified matters. The official (and numerous other national security officials who spoke to Newsweek) say that Washington and Moscow have decades of experience crafting these clandestine rules, necessitating that the CIA play an outsize role: as primary spy, as negotiator, as supplier of intelligence, as logistician, as wrangler of a network of sensitive NATO relations and perhaps most important of all, as the agency trying to ensure the war does not further spin out of control.

"Don't underestimate the Biden administration's priority to keep Americans out of harm's way and reassure Russia that it doesn't need to escalate," the senior intelligence officer says. "Is the CIA on the ground inside Ukraine?" he asks rhetorically. "Yes, but it's also not nefarious."

Newsweek has examined in depth the scale and scope of the CIA's activities in Ukraine, especially in light of growing Congressional questions about the extent of U.S. aid and whether President Biden is keeping his pledge not to have "boots on the ground." Neither the CIA nor the White House would give specific responses for confirmation, but they asked that Newsweek not reveal the specific locations of CIA operations inside Ukraine or Poland, that it not name other countries involved in the clandestine CIA efforts and that it not name the air service that is supporting the clandestine U.S. logistics effort. After repeated requests for an on-the-record comment, the CIA declined. Neither the Ukrainian nor Russian governments responded to requests for comment.

Intelligence experts say this war is unique in that the United States is aligned with Ukraine, yet the two countries are not allies. And though the United States is helping Ukraine against Russia, it is not formally at war with that country. Thus, much of what Washington does to aid Ukraine is kept secret–and much of what is normally in the realm of the U.S. military is being carried out by the Agency. Everything that is done, including work inside Ukraine itself, must comply with limits established by Biden.

Over the course of its three-month investigation, Newsweek spoke to over a dozen intelligence experts and officials. Newsweek also sought out contrary views. All of the credible experts and officials Newsweek spoke to agreed that the CIA has been successful in discreetly playing its part in dealing with Kyiv and Moscow, in moving mountains of information and materiel and in dealing with a diverse set of other countries, some of whom are quietly helping while also trying to stay out of Russia's crosshairs. And they didn't dispute that on the CIA's main task—knowing what's going on in the minds of the leaders of Russia and Ukraine—the Agency has had to struggle.

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It fell to the CIA to manage this underworld, working through its foreign intelligence counterparts and secret police rather than public politicians and diplomats. The Agency established its own operating bases and staging areas. The CIA sought help from Ukraine's neighbors in better understanding Putin as well as Zelensky and his administration. Agency personnel went into and out of Ukraine on secret missions, to assist with the operations of new weapons and systems, some of which were not publicly divulged. But the CIA operations were always conducted with an eye to avoid direct confrontation with Russian troops.

"The CIA has been operating inside Ukraine, under strict rules, and with a cap on how many personnel can be in country at any one time," says another senior military intelligence official. "Black special operators are restricted from conducting clandestine missions, and when they do, it is within a very narrow scope." (Black special operations refers to those that are conducted clandestinely.)

Simply, CIA personnel can routinely go—and can do—what U.S. military personnel can't. That includes inside Ukraine. The military, on the other hand, is restricted from entering Ukraine, except under strict guidelines that have to be approved by the White House. This limits the Pentagon to a small number of Embassy personnel in Kyiv. Newsweek was unable to establish the exact number of CIA personnel in Ukraine, but sources suggest it is less than 100 at any one time.

After all the members of the U.S. military were publicly withdrawn from Ukraine in February 2022 including special operations forces that had been behind the scenes, the White House established the roles that different agencies could play in the U.S. response. President Biden signed national security directives and a "presidential finding" authorizing certain covert operations against Russia. "Lanes of the road" were established between the Pentagon and the CIA, just as they had been established in Afghanistan immediately after 9/11. Burns and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin work closely together; the relations of the two agencies, according to the CIA, have never been better.

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