The United States has been involved in the war in Ukraine much longer and more intensely than previously thought, according to an investigation by The New York Times.
The war is now at a turning point, the publication writes, with Donald Trump demanding an end to hostilities and taking steps to get closer to Vladimir Putin.
For three years before his return to the White House, the United States provided Kiev with intelligence, strategic, planning and technological assistance that was known only to a narrow circle of people.
According to the NYT, the American base in Wiesbaden, Germany, provided the Ukrainian armed forces with the coordinates of Russian troops on Russian territory. The idea of Operation Task Force Dragon, according to the publication, was to compensate for Russia's huge advantage in manpower and armament.
Every day, American and Ukrainian military personnel identified priority targets, and intelligence officers studied satellite images, radio broadcasts and intercepted communications to find Russian positions, the coordinates of which were then transmitted to the Ukrainian armed forces, the publication said.
The Biden administration's "red lines" are constantly shifting, the NYT writes. Although Washington insisted from the very beginning of the conflict that it would not be directly involved in it, at one point about a dozen American military advisers ended up in Kiev, the authors of the article claim.
According to them, the group was later expanded to about 30 people and the military advisers were eventually allowed to go to Ukrainian command posts located closer to the battlefield.
In 2022, the US Navy headquarters authorized the provision of targeting data to the Ukrainian armed forces for strikes by naval drones against Russian warships, the investigation says. According to the publication, the CIA was authorized to support Ukrainian operations in Crimean waters.
The authors also claim that in January 2024 American and Ukrainian military officers in Wiesbaden jointly planned a campaign - using coalition-supplied long-range missiles and Ukrainian drones - to attack about 100 Russian military facilities in Crimea.
In the spring of that year, the United States expanded the geography of intelligence it shared with the Ukrainian armed forces to include Russian territory near Kharkiv.
According to the NYT, the summer counteroffensive of the Ukrainian armed forces in 2023 was also the subject of discussion and planning in Wiesbaden.
In the summer of 2024, Ukraine damaged the Crimean bridge with long-range ATACMS missiles.
The operation was carried out as part of the Lunar Hail campaign, developed jointly by Ukrainians and Americans, this part of the publication is highlighted by the Ukrainian publication Babel.
According to the NYT, the operation included strikes on Russian infrastructure in Crimea. And although the strikes on the Crimean bridge were one of the red lines for the US, this time they agreed, Babel cited the investigation.
The ATACMS missiles were supposed to hit vulnerable parts of the bridge, and the naval drones were supposed to explode near the bridge supports, but Russia strengthened the support's defenses.
On August 16, 2024, the Russian Defense Ministry said: "This evening, air defense systems repelled a group attack of twelve US-made ATACMS operational-tactical missiles on the Crimean bridge. All missiles were destroyed."