The US has asked Ukraine not to carry out covert attacks on Russia during the uprising, officials say
The Biden administration asked Ukrainian officials not to carry out covert attacks in Russia while the Wagner group’s insurgency was underway and advised them not to do anything that would affect the outcome of events or benefit from the chaos, it said. US officials.
At the time of the US outreach to Ukraine, US officials did not know exactly what Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s head, was up to, according to US officials aware of the intelligence, but they knew that Mr. Prigozhin wanted to take military action to Remove from power Sergei K. Shoigu, the minister of defense, and General Valery V. Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff.
They didn’t know how he intended to do that, or what he intended with them, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. The scope came shortly after Mr Prigozhin began his rebellion, officials said.
In urging Kiev to exercise caution, US officials did not want to give President Vladimir V. Putin an excuse to claim that Mr. Prigozhin’s uprising was orchestrated by the United States or by Ukraine. They also said they believed a high-profile operation by Ukrainian forces in Russia was unlikely to have a major impact on Mr Prigozhin’s goals, but would, according to US assessments, allow Mr Putin to level accusations against the West.
U.S. officials specifically told Ukrainian officials it was not the time to launch cross-border strikes or covert sabotage missions, or engage in a game that Kiev believed could give them an advantage in the war. U.S. officials said that, as far as they knew, Ukrainian intelligence agencies agreed.
The warning appears to have worked in part, as Russian officials began signaling in recent days that they did not believe the West was behind the uprising and urged their embassies not to comment publicly on it.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday that Moscow had gathered information that he said showed the United States had told Kiev not to take advantage of the uprising.
“Instructions were sent to Kiev so that the Ukrainians would not use this situation to organize sabotage on Russian territory and other provocations in the near future,” Mr Lavrov said. told Russian television. “I can’t guarantee it one hundred percent, but this is reliable information that appears to be true.”
Mr Lavrov’s comments suggest that for once the Kremlin does not see the West as the primary culprit of the uprising – unlike the attacks in Russia believed to have been carried out by Ukraine, which the Kremlin often blames the West. The Kremlin, at least for now, seems to be planning to place the blame primarily on Mr Prigozhin.
The United States believes that most of the high-profile assassinations and acts of sabotage and drone attacks in Russia are the work of Ukrainian agents or sympathizers acting to some extent at the behest of parts of the Ukrainian government or intelligence community. But in many cases, the United States does not know exactly who authorized the various operations in Ukraine.
Washington and Kiev disagree over Ukraine’s covert action program and the effectiveness of operations in Russia. Senior US officials have periodically warned Ukrainians about their cross-border and covert actions in Russia, and repeatedly told them not to use US equipment in these operations.
Some Ukrainian officials believe the covert attacks are important because they show that Putin is not untouchable and that his control over the state is not as strong as he claims.
The warning from the United States stemmed largely from uncertainty about how events would unfold. The intelligence that US intelligence agencies developed in the days before the uprising began did not include Mr Prigozhin’s plans to take the city of Rostov and then march on Moscow, the officials said.
Some US officials believe that Mr. Prigozhin was improvising much of his plan as he marched on Moscow. That could explain the murky information about how he intended the endgame of his rebellion, officials said.
US officials feared a much bloodier outcome from likely clashes between Wagner troops en route north to Moscow and Russian security personnel, a senior US military official said.
But for reasons that are still not entirely clear, US officials said, Russian ground units, including the Russian National Guard, did not fire on Prigozhin’s advancing column. However, the Russian air force did attack the rebels, but suffered serious losses: at least six attack helicopters and Il-22 airborne command post aircraft were shot down.
US officials said they believed Mr Prigozhin was counting on support from at least some Russian commanders or security forces. When that public support failed to materialize and the Kremlin rushed to defend Moscow and mobilized thousands of security personnel, Mr. Prigozhin apparently began to have second thoughts about continuing.
At that point, Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko stepped in with a plan to defuse the crisis, giving Mr Prigozhin a face-saving exit, US officials said.