British Commandos helped generals leave Ukraine at start of war, investigation finds
Heavily armed British Commandos escorted senior Ukrainian generals out of the country at the start of the war, according to a new investigation.
It also claims US military commanders were angry at Kyiv's decision to launch an attack into Russia's Kursk region.
While we largely know what aid the UK and US have shipped to Kyiv, the level of clandestine cooperation has largely remained secret.
Now an investigation by the New York Times has shown how far it went.
British commandos, it claims, dressed in plain clothes, helped transfer senior Ukrainian officers out of the country and into Poland at the start of the war.
Those generals joined US and British officers at a hastily set-up command centre in Germany.
British officers also worked with the US military and the CIA to devise a blueprint to attack the Kerch Bridge, the major link between Russia and Crimea.
This had previously been a red line for the Americans, with concern it would be seen as a direct attack on Russian soil by Vladimir Putin following the annexation of the peninsula in 2014.
And the UK, unlike the US, left small teams of military officers inside Ukraine at the start of the war.
The investigation outlines how key US intelligence has been to Ukraine.
Kyiv attacked and sank the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet, the Moskva, within hours of being told where it was by the Americans.
The investigation shows that the US did not intend to help Ukrainian forces attack the ship so severely and were angry at not being informed of the plans.
It also reveals tensions between senior US and Ukrainian commanders.
Kyiv routinely kept the Americans in the dark about its plans, it says, often changing them at the last minute.
And there was fury in Washington about the incursion into Kursk, which broke a deal about not taking coalition-supplied equipment into Russia itself.
Join Our Newsletter
