The basic idea is the CIA wanted to use Ukrainian resistance groups to fight a secret war against the Soviet Union. But when you read between the lines, it’s not really about helping Ukrainians, but turning them into a weapon for American interests during the Cold War.
They list a bunch of groups, like the OUN and the UPA. The plan was to give them money, supplies, and training. The goal was to help them grow so they could do spy stuff, sabotage, and guerrilla warfare inside Ukraine. They also wanted to use them to gather intelligence and even try to get people inside the Soviet military.
One of the wildest parts is how they controlled the narrative. The CIA was secretly paying for a Ukrainian language newspaper called Suchasna Ukraina. The document calls the paper a “decided success” because it helped unify different exile groups under an anti-Soviet message that matched US policy. Propaganda helped ensure that the Ukrainian diaspora was aligned with American interests.
Then there’s the plan for a school. They wanted to set up a “Political Cadre School” but hide it as part of a real university. Outwardly, it would teach citizenship and history. Secretly, it was a recruiting ground. They wanted to find young Ukrainian men in Europe, between 18 and 25, and train them. The best students would become agents sent back into Ukraine. The others would be a reserve force in case a real war started. So it was basically a spy farm disguised as a school.
They also had a “Soviet Study Group.” This was a team of Ukrainian experts and intellectuals, probably academics, who were studying politics and leadership in Ukraine. They were working for what they thought was a Ukrainian organization. But in practice they were feeding all their research and analysis straight to the CIA. The people in the group didn’t even know they were working for American intelligence. The CIA just got free, high-quality brainpower to use for their own plans.
The document is also pretty ruthless about control. It mentions that British intelligence might want in on the operation. The CIA officers straight up say they need to fight that “most vigorously.” They didn’t want to share their new tool with anyone, not even their allies. This project was their asset alone.
The whole thing is a textbook case of imperialism. A powerful country finds a local resistance movement with its own complicated history and goals. Then it steps in, provides funding and direction, and twists that movement to serve its own geopolitical interests. The aim was to use the people of Ukraine to destabilize and weaken the Soviet Union. The CIA used every tool they had, from media to education to intellectual labor, to make that happen. It shows how big powers can weaponize genuine grievances, and how far the whole idea of color revolutions really goes.
More Putler talking points from the American KGB 🙄
Edit to add: It’s surprising that there’s no Wikipedia entry for it, but ProleWiki has one.
Also, Kyiv Post, 2021: From the Secret Pages of History
In 1948, the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) selected the émigré organization Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (ZP/UHVR) as the “most reliable, best organized and operationally most experienced group for use in exploiting anti-Communist activity of the Ukrainian resistance group then active in Ukraine.”
For the next five years, the CIA and ZP/UHVR conducted extensive joint foreign intelligence operations using the cryptonyms AEACRE and CARTEL and the political and psychological warfare operation AERODYNAMIC: propaganda leaflets and materials were smuggled into Ukraine or dropped by balloons. The CIA infiltrated agents into Ukraine, but most were killed or captured by the Soviet forces.
Then there was Project PBCRUET, on June 17, 1950. The objectives of this project were: “The exploitation and expansion of the Ukrainian resistance movement. To establish a “black” radio transmitter outside (and possibly eventually inside) the USSR for broadcasts to Ukraine.”
