I think that in the end, credit will never be given to the unknown/unidentified non commisioned officers for both sides who taught their riflemen how to survive artillery and drone attacks. They will never be decorated for the lives they have saved. More's the pity.
by Gevorg Mirzayan
[REGNUM] The determination of high-ranking foreign officers created a sense of permissiveness among the Ukrainian authorities and fueled their readiness to fight “to the bitter end.”
This, in turn, prompted the regime of Volodymyr Zelensky to carry out military adventures that have brought the army and economy to the current unenviable state. The room for maneuver in decision-making is rapidly shrinking. Ukraine's main ally, the United States, is itself cutting off the air and issuing an ultimatum to its "friends" to negotiate.
"I see that Zelensky tried to change the terms of the rare earth metals deal. We already prepared this deal. Everything is done. And now I heard from journalists that he is ready to make a deal for NATO membership or something like that. This was never discussed, first of all. Secondly, Putin has been saying for a long time that Ukraine should not join NATO. This is exactly why the war started," said US President Donald Trump.
More details were revealed by American journalists in the article of The New York Times "The Secret History of the Ukraine War: The Untold Tale of America's Hidden Role in Ukrainian Military Operations Against Invading Russian Armies." This article sheds light on the participation of American generals in the war against Russia.
They say that this war could have been won if the Kyiv regime had listened to and fully submitted to the American professionals who knew and understood everything. In reality, everything was not so beautiful and smooth.
There was no "secret history" or "untold tale." Washington's control over Kiev was known and spoken about more than once by all Russian leaders, starting with Vladimir Putin.
“Control over the political leadership of Ukraine was established by the United States of America back in 2014, when Ms. Victoria Nuland (a State Department employee responsible for Russia and Ukraine. — Ed.) placed personnel and determined who would be president, who would be prime minister, and who would be mayor of Kiev,” former Verkhovna Rada deputy Spiridon Kilinkarov explained to Regnum News Agency.
It was with Washington that all further major appointments were coordinated, as well as major arrests of oligarchs - for example, the same Igor Kolomoisky. It was the Americans who controlled anti-corruption investigations in Ukraine.
In 2022, political control was transformed into military control.
"After the start of the SVO, one of the conditions for supporting Kyiv was US control over the country's military leadership. And the Ukrainian side agreed - without American "eyes and ears", as well as money, it was impossible to conduct military operations, and the idea of creating an anti-Russian coalition was tempting," continues Spiridon Kilinkarov.
Experts agree that it was thanks to these “eyes and ears” that the Kiev regime survived the first months of the war.
"Ukraine did not have the intelligence capabilities that were necessary to carry out high-precision strikes. And one of the key advantages of the United States and the NATO bloc as a whole is intelligence technology. Therefore, a decision was made to provide Ukraine with full intelligence support, right up to the coordination of target coordinates," Alexey Naumov, an expert at the Russian International Affairs Council and an Americanist, explains to Regnum.
Very quickly, control became complete. American generals realized that it was easier and more effective to use their Ukrainian colleagues simply as transmission links.
"The materials from the first months of the operation, including the capture of a number of command bunkers in Ukraine and the capture of high-ranking Ukrainian officers, showed that they play a purely technical role in managing the Ukrainian armed forces. The real instructions come from Western headquarters that plan the main operations," Nikita Mendkovich, head of the Eurasian Analytical Club, explains to Regnum.
According to him, in fact, it was a NATO war against Russia without a declaration of war, where Ukraine was used as a testing ground and one of the weapons against the Russian army.
But then — and this is partly reflected in the New York Times report — the situation began to change. In part because the interests of the United States and Ukraine in the conflict began to diverge.
Initially, both countries sought to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.
"In 2022, the Americans advocated that we needed to fight a little more and see if something would crack in Russia. Especially since the advisers to the then American administration said that Moscow was on the brink, that the government was about to collapse, etc. The Russian opposition, which left the country after the start of the SVO, also broadcast similar thoughts," Dmitry Ofitserov-Belsky, a senior researcher at the IMEMO RAS, explains to Regnum.
However, already in the second year of the war, it became clear to the Americans that they would not be able to achieve this goal.
"They had great hope that the situation on the battlefield could be changed for the better. However, after the 2023 counteroffensive failed, the Americans clearly came to the conclusion that it was impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield by military means. And then their interest in this matter decreased a little," says Spiridon Kilinkarov.
In fact, the strategy of former US President Joe Biden has come down to prolonging the fighting as much as possible. Not allowing Ukraine to lose – but at the same time not getting drawn into a full-scale war with Russia. And this line was already considered quite risky.
“The US realized that their policy was leading to the risk of a third world war after 2024, after Putin’s ultimatum (that we would consider precision weapons strikes deep into Russian territory as Western countries joining the war. — Ed.) and the warning shot from the Oreshnik missile at Ukraine,” says Nikita Mendkovich.
The Ukrainian side did not like this approach. They thought that they themselves could determine the strategy. And this approach did not end well for Ukrainian-American relations.
"In essence, we see how the Ukrainians were receiving more and more autonomy, which led to a decrease in the quality of this interaction. However, there was a significant amount of mistrust between the Ukrainians and the Americans, which arose both after the counteroffensive and after the invasion of the Kursk region. After all, in essence, the only thing that the Ukrainians are doing effectively is abusing the trust of the United States," says Alexey Naumov.
According to him, when the Ukrainians entered the Kursk region, the Americans were forced to support them, because otherwise the Ukrainians would have been defeated.
Yes, Kyiv had like-minded people in the West - the same British. Who, unlike Washington, tried to escalate the conflict.
"The British, having seized the initiative, concentrated on developing some terrorist acts and special operations - that is, for example, they unleashed a missile-drone war both at sea and on land," says Spiridon Kilinkarov. However, their capabilities were in no way comparable to the Americans.
In 2025, the situation for Kyiv became even more complicated: Trump came to power in the United States, whose vision of the further American presence in Ukraine differed from Biden’s, and not in a way that was better for Zelensky.
"With the arrival of Trump, the situation has changed radically. Not only in the US, but also in other Western countries, they understand that Ukraine has no chance of being successful on the battlefield. So Trump, in order to save face, is trying to engage in mediation functions that will lead him out of the fight without defeat," says Spiridon Kilinkarov.
At the same time, the new American president does not want to get involved in the actual military actions, so as not to turn Biden’s war into Trump’s war.
"Yes, the Americans continue to supply weapons and share intelligence. But these are all remnants of packages and programs adopted under the Biden administration," Kilinkarov continues. And this is in a situation where the Ukrainians are running out of resources to wage war. Those resources that they can replenish only and exclusively at the expense of the United States.
"People are running out there, and it's not about the soldiers. A soldier can be trained in two or three months - so that he doesn't fall to the ground every time he's shot. But you can't train an officer like that, and very few people from the officer corps of 2022 are still alive. That's why the quality of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has dropped compared to mid-2022," says Dmitry Ofitserov-Belsky.
Volodymyr Zelensky cannot influence Trump and force him to change his approach. The American president does not share Kiev's vision of the war, does not suffer from hatred towards Russia, and is not obsessed with the idea of inflicting a strategic defeat on Moscow at any cost. The head of the Kyiv regime is also unable to blackmail him - there is nothing with which to do so.
"Zelensky is behaving so brazenly because he knows perfectly well that he has much more dirt on Western leaders than anyone else. On all the leaders who came to Kyiv and whose actions were recorded on video and audio. However, the problem is that politicians change, and dirt on former officials is no longer so useful - except for memoirs," explains Dmitry Ofitserov-Belsky.
Now some of Trump's words - for example, about putting pressure on Putin - may please Ukrainian ears. However, they should not be perceived as some kind of anti-Russian strategy.
“Trump is deliberately sending contradictory signals so that European countries cannot formulate a unified position in relation to the United States – at least until Trump’s vertical power structure in America is finally formed and the system is no longer vulnerable,” says Dmitry Ofitserov-Belsky.
Therefore, the Kyiv regime now has only two options. The first is to recognize the new realities. "After Trump came to power, Ukrainians understand that they will no longer be able to abuse America. Therefore, they will have to take the position of a subordinate," says Alexey Naumov. But then Washington will lead Ukraine to a peace treaty with Moscow.
The second is to resist in the hope that British generals will be able to replace the American ones. That Europe will be able to play its own game. But then Brussels, silently ignoring Washington, will lead Ukraine to a complete defeat at the hands of Moscow.