Even the US media is acknowledging that a stay-behind insurgency is just needlessly sacrificing lives.
An insurgency will result in immense civilian suffering. CIA
involvement gives Russia an even better pretext to target the general
population. […] Because the CIA training program is now
publicly known, Russia can persuasively claim that Ukrainian insurgents
are CIA proxies […]
The CIA must be realistic about the prospects of a Ukrainian insurgency.
In 1950, only a year after the first CIA operation began in Ukraine,
U.S. officers involved in the program knew they were fighting a losing
battle. Today, we have no clear evidence that the Ukrainians are capable
of sustaining an insurgency, or that Russia would retreat if faced with
such resistance.
The CIA needs to be honest with the Ukrainians — and itself — about the real intent. In the first U.S.-backed insurgency, according to top secret documents later declassified, American officials intended to use the Ukrainians
as a proxy force to bleed the Soviet Union. This time, is the primary
goal of the paramilitary program to help Ukrainians liberate their
country or to weaken Russia over the course of a long insurgency that
will undoubtedly cost as many Ukrainian lives as Russian lives, if not
more? […]
The U.S. should clearly convey to the Ukrainians the limits of its commitment. It did not do so in 1949. John Ranelagh, a historian of the CIA, argued
that the program “demonstrated a cold ruthlessness” because the
Ukrainian resistance had no hope of success without wider U.S. military
involvement, and so “America was in effect encouraging Ukrainians to go
to their deaths.”
