Ukraine almost killed Russia's most important military figure in 2022

In October 2023, reports began to circulate that the Ukrainian Security Service tried to take out the most important military figure in Russia while he was visiting a frontline city in 2022, and they almost succeded.

The United States allegedly knew about the plan and even tried to put a stop to the attempt to kill General Valery Gerasimov. How Ukrainian intelligence almost took out Gerasimov and why American officials tried to stop them is a very interesting story. 

General Valery Gerasimov is Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and he was almost killed by Ukraine’s intelligence service in April 2022 while he was visiting the then Russian-occupied city of Izium. 

The New York Times reported in October 2022 that Gerasmiov made secret plans to visit Russia’s front lines near Izium but the trip was discovered by U.S. intelligence and withheld from Kyiv, fearing they would try to kill the general. 

Killing Gerasimov could have escalated the ongoing conflict according to one American official who spoke with the New York Times. The United States wanted to help Ukraine but was unwilling to set off a larger war. 

Ukrainian officials learned about Gerasimov’s planned visit to Izium on their own and took it upon themselves to develop plans to eliminate Russia’s Chief of the General Staff. However, the U.S. attempted to stop the assassination plot. 

“We told them not to do it,” a senior American official said. “We were like, ‘Hey, that’s too much.’” But the message didn’t arrive to the Ukrainians in time and they launched their attack on Gerasimov's position. 

Several Russians were killed in the attack but Gerasimov wasn’t one of them according to the U.S. official. It was after that attack that Russia began scaling back the number of top-level leaders sent to the frontlines. 

Ukraine has a surprisingly effective intelligence service despite the challenges it’s faced since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Much of the service’s success is due to the help it's received from its American allies.

On October 23rd, The Washington Post reported on what it called the shadow war being waged against Russia that was only made possible with the help of U.S. assistance that has rebuilt Ukraine's intelligence service and even formed a new unit called the Fifth Directorate.

The CIA has allegedly spent millions of dollars since 2015 to assist Kyiv in transforming its Soviet-formed intelligence services into an operation that could be used by the U.S. against Russia according to unnamed U.S. and Ukrainian officials that spoke with The Washington Post. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons: By President.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64887882

One U.S. official explained that Fifth Directorate training sites were located outside of Kyiv and recruits were hand-selected by CIA personnel with the goal of developing units that were able to work behind enemy lines in covert groups.

The CIA provided Kyiv’s new intel unit with secure communications gear, eavesdropping equipment, and separatist uniforms with early missions focused on recruiting informants as well as cyber and eavesdropping measures. 

Sabotage missions and operations aimed at capturing separatist leaders in breakaway territories quickly followed and soon Ukraine's intel unit began escalating its operations and targeting Russians it decided needed to be killed.  

“Because of this hybrid war we faced an absolutely new reality,” explained Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, a Ukrainian member of parliament and the director of Ukraine's Security Service in 2015 when the Fith Directorate was established.

“We were forced to train our people in a different way,” Nalyvaichenko added according to The Washington Post.

One former CIA official likened the transformation of Ukraine's intelligence services to that of Israel’s Mossad in the 1970s, and it was the growing competency of the service that allowed it to make some bold moves. 

It was these new capabilities that likely allowed Ukrainian intelligence to discover target Gerasimov while he was visiting the frontlines in 2022, as well as a host of other attacks that have rocked Russia since it invaded.