AFUs’ offensive on Kursk region broke trust between US and Ukraine: it was Syrskyi’s blackmail - NYT
Ukraine launched an offensive against the Kursk region of the Russian Federation without warning the US side. The Ukrainian Armed Forces used weapons provided by the United States that were intended for other purposes. The Pentagon viewed Ukraine's operation in the Kursk region as a step toward undermining trust.
According to Censor.NET, this is stated in a New York Times investigation into the role of the United States in Ukrainian operations against Russia.
It is noted that as of the summer of 2024, the Ukrainian army in the north and east was "dangerously stretched". Nevertheless, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Oleksandr Syrskyi, continued to tell the Americans that he "needed a victory."
Back in March 2024, the Americans allegedly discovered that Ukrainian intelligence was secretly planning a ground operation in southwestern Russia.
At the time, the CIA representative in Kyiv directly warned the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate, Kirill Budanov, that if Ukrainian troops crossed the Russian border, they would do so without American weapons or intelligence.
According to the NYT, at such moments, representatives of the administration of former US President Joe Biden joked that intelligence would tell them more about the plans of the Russians spying on them than about the plans of their Ukrainian partners.
The attack on Kursk violated the agreement with the United States
The publication notes that the invasion of Kursk began at the time of the rotation of personnel on the part of the American side.
Thus, on August 9, General Antonio Aguto, who was part of the coordination headquarters where the Americans planned military operations together with the Ukrainians, completed his mission in Wiesbaden.
On August 10, the CIA representative in Kyiv also resigned from his post, moving to the headquarters.
This was exactly what Syrsky used to order Ukrainian troops to cross the border. To do this, the Ukrainians used the weapons that the Americans had provided to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in Kharkiv, not to attack Russian territory.
"For the Americans, the deployment of this intervention was a significant breach of trust. It's not just that the Ukrainians again kept them in the dark; they secretly crossed a mutually agreed upon line by taking coalition-provided equipment into Russian territory," the article says.
"It wasn't almost blackmail - it was real blackmail," a senior Pentagon official said.
Despite this, the US has not stopped helping Ukraine with HIMARS missiles and intelligence, as, according to one administration official, this could "lead to a catastrophe" for the Ukrainian military.
Ukrainian soldiers in the Kursk region would have been killed if they had not been covered by HIMARS missiles and American intelligence, the newspaper adds.
The Americans concluded that the Kursk operation was a victory that the Ukrainian leadership had been seeking and hinting at all along.
One of the goals of the operation, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy explained to the Americans, was leverage - the capture and retention of Russian territory that could be exchanged for Ukrainian territory in future negotiations.
