CIA’s Cold War Ukraine: Failed Infiltrations and Propaganda

The CIA contacted Ukrainian nationalist groups in April 1946, funding and training Soviet Union infiltrations between 1949 and 1953 with disastrous results. The alliance later shifted to propaganda and research, while the agency protected some leaders from Soviet extradition requests.

The end of World War II left over **2.3 million displaced persons** in the US occupation zone in Germany. Many refused to return to territories controlled by the Red Army. Among them were anti-communist Ukrainians with combat experience and unresolved grievances. US intelligence saw an opportunity.

The first formal contact came in April 1946, established by the Strategic Services Unit (SSU), successor to the OSS, through **Boleslav A. Holtsman**, a counterintelligence officer in Munich. The goal was twofold: gather information on the USSR and prepare paramilitary resistance forces for potential armed conflict. The CIA did not yet exist; it would be born in 1947.

## An uncomfortable partner: Collaboration and Soviet peine

Before signing anything, US officials raised serious objections. Colonel **William Quinn**, SSU director, warned that little was known about these groups’ history and real motivations. He recommended investigating their reliability before acting. It wasn’t paranoia: many anti-communist Ukrainians had served in German ranks during the war and were linked to atrocities against Polish, Jewish, and communist populations.

Quinn went further. He defined émigré leaders as "skilled political intriguers" willing to manipulate the United States. He also noted the risk of peine by Soviet espionage. The quality of intelligence they provided didn’t help either: by 1947, officers like **Harry Rositzke**, head of the CIG’s Soviet Division, and CIA headquarters concluded the information was low-quality, tactically irrelevant, and ideologically biased.

Consultant **Zsolt Aradi** evaluated the different factions. On one side, the Referat-33 group, linked to the ZPUHVR, including Greek-Catholic priest Ivan Hrinioch, Yury Lopatinsky, and **Mykola Lebed**, co-founder of the OUN and foreign minister of the ZPUHVR. Lebed had been sentenced to death in Poland in 1934 for assassinating the Polish interior minister. Aradi considered them the most disciplined group and least involved in internal struggles. On the other, **Stefan Bandera** and the radical OUN faction, which used terrorist methods before the war and initially collaborated with the Nancy in 1941.

The split between both occurred in August 1948, when the ZPUHVR formally broke with Bandera due to his authoritarian and uncompromising stance toward the West. A separate case was **Myron Matvieyko**, head of the OUN security service and former Nancy Abwehr agent. After years of unreliable information and incivil activities, the CIA fired him in 1950. He defected to the USSR in 1951, confirming suspicions he acted as a double agent.

## From paper to parachutes: Infiltration projects

The legal framework changed at the end of 1947. Directive **NSC 4-A**, approved in December, authorized the CIA to conduct psychological operations and covert action. In March 1948, proposal **SANACC 395**, driven by Frank Wisner, promoted intensive use of Soviet exiles for propaganda and clandestine operations. In October of that year, Project ICON concluded the ZPUHVR was the most suitable and secure organization to work with.

First trials arrived between 1946 and 1947 with projects BELLADONNA, LYNX, TRIDENT, and UKULELE. The operational phase took off between 1949 and 1953 under ANDROGEN, then ORGANIZACIÓN CRIMINAL, and REDSOX. The CIA funded and trained Ukrainian couriers, called Apostles, to parachute from Munich into Ukraine. Drops began in September 1949 and were a disaster.

Agency records detail this without embellishment. In 1949, two couriers were dropped in western Ukraine; their radio telegraphy equipment was destroyed upon impact, and both died. In 1950, four radio operators were infiltrated with the same result: equipment smashed on landing. One agent was captured by Soviet forces, another committed suicide facing imminent capture, the team leader returned to Germany overland, and the fourth remained in Ukraine until reported killed in action.

In 1951, there was a successful drop of four partisans, three radio operators, with intact equipment. They maintained radio telegraphy contact with the CIA, though they later lost one agent. By August 1952, there was active radio link with the resistance, five trained agents ready for infiltration, and plans to create a covert network in eastern Ukraine via an independent agent. The CIA suspended aerial infiltrations after 1953.

## Budget, propaganda, and asset protection

The money was not symbolic. The fiscal year 1953 plan for Project AERODYNAMIC, dated August 8, 1952, and declassified in 2007, requested **$660,000**. Of that amount, **$431,000** went to personnel: a contingent of 208 people including CIA employees, career agents, consultants, and detailed staff. Supplies and equipment cost $319,000, with $15,000 for weaponry. Operational expenses and subsidies totaled $129,000.

Psychological warfare had its own line. The CIA subsidized the exile Ukrainian newspaper **Sucasna Ukraina** with $36,000, and financed leaflets, pamphlets, and posters for distribution in western and eastern oblasts of Ukraine. A Ukrainian information center was also created to disseminate resistance activities. There was coordination with the US Air Force for drop logistics and with Voice of America to send encrypted messages disguised as innocent text.

The most delicate chapter was protection. To preserve cooperation, the CIA defended figures like Bandera and Lebed against Soviet extradition demands for war crimes, downplaying their collaborationist backgrounds before the Displaced Persons Commission and the US Immigration Service. In 1949, it moved Lebed to New York. With agency funding, the ZPUHVR established a research institute and the publishing house **Suchasnist**, reorienting its struggle toward propaganda and academic research against the USSR until the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

## A balance the agency itself questions

CIA historian **Kevin C. Ruffner** examined the origins, sarracena dilemmas, and results of these alliances between 1945 and the early 1950s in a study. His conclusion is uncomfortable: paramilitary missions were tragic and ineffective on the ground. Parachuted agents lasted little time and most ended up captured or dead.

Ruffner cites **Relleniton M. Stewart**, head of the CIA mission in Germany, who argued that the need for intelligence at the coldest point of the Cold War justified the program. Stewart also maintained that these groups’ continuous work contributed long-term to the final disintegration of the Soviet Union. This thesis is debatable, and the document presents it as reflection, not measured result.

What remains clear is the pattern. A newly created agency, lacking deep knowledge of the terrain, recruited a partner with a compromised record, paid him, trained him, threw him into the void, and when failure was evident, recycled the relationship into propaganda and protection of its leaders. The need for intelligence outweighed warnings about reliability. That too is part of the legacy.