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.”