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With Afghanistan and Syria touted as “models” for the “coming Ukraine insurgency” – if the history of CIA-backed insurgencies is any indicator – it heralds significantly more destruction and more suffering for Ukrainian people than the current Russian military campaign. Those in the West cheering on their governments’ support for the Ukrainian side of the conflict would do well to realise this as it will only lead to the escalation of yet another deadly proxy war.

Soon after Russia began military operations in Ukraine, Foreign Affairs – the media arm of the Council on Foreign Relations (“CFR”) – published an article entitled ‘The Coming Ukrainian Insurgency’ authored by Douglas London, a self-described “retired Russian-speaking CIA operations officer.”

Douglas London isn’t alone in promoting past CIA-backed insurgencies as a model for “covert” US aid to Ukraine. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared on MSNBC on February 28th to say essentially the same.

In her interview, Clinton cited the CIA-backed insurgency in Afghanistan as “the model that people [in the US government] are now looking toward” with respect to the situation in Ukraine. She also references the insurgency in Syria in similar fashion in the same interview. It is worth noting that Clinton’s former deputy chief of staff when she was Secretary of State, Jake Sullivan, is now Biden’s National Security Adviser.

The Afghanistan insurgency, initially backed by the US and CIA beginning in the late 1970s under the name Operation Cyclone, subsequently spawned the US empire’s supposedly mortal enemies – the Taliban and Al Qaeda – who would go on to fuel the post-9/11 “War on Terror.” The US’ campaign against the descendants of the insurgency it had once backed resulted in horrific destruction in Afghanistan and a litany of dead and war crimes, as well as the longest (and thus most expensive) war and occupation in American military history. It also resulted in the bombings and destruction of several other countries along with the whittling down of civil liberties domestically.

Yahoo! News reported in January that the CIA has been overseeing a covert training program for Ukrainian intelligence operatives and special ops forces since 2015. While the CIA denied to Yahoo! that it was training an insurgency, a New York Times report also published in January stated that the US is considering support for an insurgency in Ukraine if Russia invades.

Given that the CIA, at that time and prior to this year, has been warning of an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine up until the current escalation of hostilities took place, it is worth asking if the US government and the CIA helped “pull the trigger” by intentionally crossing Russia’s “red lines” with respect to NATO encroachment in Ukraine and post-2014 Ukraine’s acquisition of nuclear weapons when it became clear that the CIA’s repeated predictions about an “imminent” invasion failed to materialise.

Russia’s red lines with Ukraine have been stated clearly – and violated repeatedly by the US – for years. Notably, the US’ efforts to provide lethal aid to Ukraine have coincided with the winding down of its lethal support to Syrian “rebels”, suggesting that the US war and intelligence apparatus has long seen Ukraine as the “next” on its list of proxy wars.

It is worth considering that these red lines and the potential to cross them was discussed by Zelensky and representatives of Ukraine’s intelligence services when they met with the head of the CIA, William Burns, in January. The CIA, at that time, was already claiming a Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent. Could it be possible that the CIA wanted to bring about the insurgency they have been preparing for, potentially since 2015?  With the CIA also training Ukraine’s intelligence operatives for nearly seven years, the possibility is certainly one to consider.

If this theory is more than plausible and close to the truth of how we got here, we are left with more questions, mainly – Why would the CIA look to launch this insurgency in Ukraine and why now?

The apparent answer may surprise you.

The Russian Imperial Movement (“RIM”), it is claimed, now numbers in the “several thousand” worldwide, though little publicly available evidence exists to support this and this statistic notably only emerged roughly a month after the US terror designation and originated from a US-based institute. Per the US government, RIM’s reach is global and extends to the US. However, its US ties are based on dubious allegations and, despite the lack of evidence, think tanks have continued to use RIM as proof of a “large, interconnected, transnational network” of violent white supremacists.

It seems odd that a group that is apparently small and very limited in terms of its presence in the US and that is responsible for no deadly terror attacks would earn the honour of becoming the first US-designed, white supremacist Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity.

But as a result of the current escalation of events in Ukraine, it appears inevitable that the effort to use RIM to paint Russia as a driving force behind “transnational white supremacism” are due to resurface. This effort appears to have as one of its goals the minimisation of the role that neo-Nazi groups like the Azov Battalion, the Neo-Nazi paramilitary unit embedded within Ukraine’s National Guard, are actively playing in the current hostilities.

The coming “global white supremacist” terror threat, if we are to believe our unusually prescient intelligence officials, appears to be the “next thing” to befall the world as the Covid crisis wanes.

It also appears that the CIA has crowned itself the midwife and chosen Ukraine as the birthplace of this new “terror threat,” one which will create not only the next proxy war between US empire and its adversaries, but also the pretext to launch the “War on Domestic Terror” in North America and Europe.

Read more: Ukraine and the New Al Qaeda, Whitney Webb, 1 March 2022