Project Ukraine and Ukrainian/CIA Intelligence

Orban’s Message to Trump

Pokrovsk and Ukrainian Black Hawk Helicopter Missions

On November 7, President Donald Trump met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Prime Minister Orban is concerned about access to gas and oil pipelines that have been critical to the Hungarian economy.  Orban also believes that Ukraine cannot win the war against Russia, except by some sort of extremely improbable “miracle.” Prolonging the war has almost destroyed Ukraine and is causing serious economic problems in the European Union. Moreover, Hungary, Slovakia, and now the Czech Republic do not support the NATO war against Russia.  Austria is beginning to lean that way. Alexander Mercouris recently termed this growing opposition to the Ukraine War the “Hapsburg Coalition.”  In addition, the new President of Poland, Karol Nowrocki, wants no further involvement. In the first round of recent Romanian elections on December 6, 2024, Calin Georgescu a conservative independent opposing Romanian participation in the Ukraine War was the front runner with 23 percent, but the Romanian Constitutional Court  overturned the election, alleging Russian interference.

 In a new round of final Romanian  elections on May 18, 2025, pro-EU and pro-NATO Nicusor Dan, the popular Mayor of Bucharest, won with 54 percent of the vote against 46 percent for conservative pro-Russian candidate George Simon. Just two weeks before on May 14, Simon had led Dan 41 to 21 percent in the preliminary election.  The unusually large reversal has caused controversy and suspicions. Overall, recent Romanian elections and related controversies reveal growing public skepticism of the electoral process and growing opposition to the Ukraine War.

Some of the meeting between Trump and Orban was on media cameras, but according to LCol Daniel Davis (US Army, ret.), Orban most likely informed Trump more confidentially that Trump’s principal intelligence sources were not presenting the military and economic reality of the war to him.  These intelligence sources were greatly exaggerating Russian military casualties, covering up Ukraine’s disastrously higher casualties, and were either poorly informed, curiously stuck in 1995 history, or deliberately deceptive in presenting Russian economic and logistical strengths. The purpose was to keep the war going on the misguided belief that just a little more military and economic pressure on Russia would bring Putin and Russia down. Meanwhile, Ukrainian soldiers are paying a heavy price in blood based on misguided or delusional intelligence reports.

Immediately after the February 2014 Obama/Biden administration backed revolutionary coup that overturned the legitimately elected  pro-neutrality President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, and replaced his administration with a pro-NATO and pro-EU administration, new Ukrainian intelligence agencies were formed by the CIA and British MI6. Ukrainian intelligence has since then been extremely close in political alignment and cooperation with the CIA and MI6. Propaganda, especially disinformation, has been enormously important in Ukraine’s war effort and essential to financing it with US and NATO funding.

The present Ukraine War is an extension of the civil war in Ukraine beginning soon after the February 2014 coup.  The much proclaimed cry that the February 2022 Russian military intrusion into Ukraine was an “unprovoked invasion” is utterly dishonest propaganda. This is especially egregious considering an April 24, 2019, paper by the Rand Corporation, initiated by the Defense Department.  Entitled,  Extending Russia,  the paper outlined the steps by which Russia could be drawn into a war with Ukraine, and by which Putin and Russia could be brought down by intensive economic and financial sanctions, breaking up the Russian Federation and exploiting its vast natural resources.  Although the Rand Corporation warned of its probable failure and severe damage to American diplomatic credibility, Biden seems to have dusted it off and adapted it almost immediately in January 2021. An easily followed outline of the Rand Corporation strategy to provoke Russia into attacking Ukraine and then destroy Putin and Russia with massive financial and economic sanctions can be  found in former Swiss Chief of Strategic Intelligence Col. Jacques Baud’s 2023 book, Ukraine between War and Peace, on pages 22-25.

NATO expansion threatening Russian existential national security has  been an ongoing and festering issue since the German Reunification Treaty in 1990 and especially since the Bush II proposal at the Bucharest  NATO Summit in 2008 that Ukraine (and Georgia) should be part of NATO. However, an enormous second factor, suppressed in Western media, has been the political, economic, cultural, and religious discrimination against and oppression of Ukraine’s substantial 38 percent Russian ethnic and cultural minority concentrated at 60 to 90 percent levels in southern and eastern Ukraine and Crimea. This threatened genocidal levels by early 2022. This and massing of Ukrainian troops near Russian-speaking concentrations in the Donetsk and Lugansk states of the Donbas region, precipitated Russian intrusion into Ukraine under the Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, based on self-defense and humanitarian protection of the Russian ethnic minority in the Donbas.

It has been fairly obvious to many former military and intelligence experts—I could name dozens from many disparate fields and nations—that President Trump does not seem well informed on the Ukraine War, although its peaceful outcome seems to be his sincere desire. Even in the press conference with Hungarian Prime Minister, Trump stated that Russian casualties were much higher than Ukrainian casualties. This is despite the Russians having far more than a 10-fold advantage in firepower. This advantage includes artillery, missiles, airpower, munitions, and logistics generally. The Russian drone advantage in now at least three to one in numbers and more than that in technology.

To claim that Russian casualties are higher than Ukrainian casualties is an absurdity that defies common sense.  The actual numbers are believed by more credible sources to be better than 10-fold Ukrainian military killed to Russian military killed.  That multiple is rising, and Ukrainian manpower is running out.  Ukrainian lines are now too thin and deficient in arms and ammunition to hold back increasing major Russian advancements.

The city of Pokrovsk in western Donetsk has long been considered the last major Ukrainian  bastion between a massive Russian Army of more than 170,000 and the Dnieper River and Kyiv. As of a few days ago, approximately 95 percent of Pokrovsk was under Russian control, and Russian armored vehicles were arriving to the supplement Russian infantry.  Only a few Ukrainian soldiers remain.  According to Russian-American military, naval, and engineering expert and author, Andre Martyanov, Pokrovsk has essentially fallen and only minor mop up actions remain.  Most of the Ukrainian forces defending Pokrovsk, a remnant of about 5,000, has been encircled by the Russians north and east of Pokrovsk.  Ukrainian troops in Myrnohrad, northeast of Pokrovsk are also effectively isolated and surrounded. The Russians have also surrounded the city of Kupiansk in Kharkiv oblast.

According to Russian sources, on November 3, Ukrainian Military Intelligence, using three American-furnished UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters landed near Pokrovsk to insert Ukrainian Special Forces troops, approximately 11 per helicopter or about 33 men. A Russian drone video showed two of the helicopters off-loading men and most of these men being gunned down by drones within minutes. According to the Russian source, most of these were killed and one captured. Also according to the Russian source, all three helicopters were shot down. Black Hawks usually have a crew of three: two pilots and a crew chief.  According to the same source, the operation was overseen by the Chief of Ukrainian Military Intelligence, Lt. General Krylo Budanov.  The purpose of the mission is not known for sure.  Ukrainian Military Intelligences has an unknown number of Black Hawk helicopters, many of them operated by foreign mercenaries. Were American crews used on this mission?

A Ukrainian release showed alleged film from a single Black Hawk engaging in combat operations and completing a successful mission.

Martyanov warns that almost all Ukrainian intelligence and media releases are disinformation-propaganda.  How much of this disinformation contaminates American Presidential, Cabinet, and Congressional intelligence briefings and results in misguided American policy?  Is this same disinformation-propaganda being disseminated to traditional and online media to manipulate public opinion on the Ukraine War?

On November 8, the Russians hit electrical power, energy, and transportation targets with 25 missiles and 450 drones. This is now occurring several days per week. Kyiv and other cities are likely to be on limited power rationing.

Things are not going well for Ukraine on the battlefield. Ukrainian desertions topped 20,000 for the first time in October, bringing the total for the war to over 300,000. In addition, over 1.0 million Ukrainian men of military age are refugees in surrounding nations.  According to several former American military sources, Ukrainian combat battalions fully manned at 400 are now typically at strengths of about 120 to 130.

Truth is sometimes hard to find and hard to discern. It often requires courage to uncover and proclaim it. But Truth is essential to meaning, life, wisdom, and good government.

“,,,by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience.”

—2  Corinthians 4:2