Three Key Takeaways:
- A New York Times report revealed that the Biden administration secretly escalated U.S. involvement in the Ukraine-Russia war, with American generals and CIA officers directly coordinating Ukrainian attacks on Russian targets, including operations deep within Russia itself.
- The operation, known as “Task Force Dragon,” involved U.S. military personnel providing targeting intelligence for Ukrainian strikes, and even American officials helping plan large-scale attacks, including a drone strike on a Russian ammunition depot in 2023.
- Despite public statements of limited support for Ukraine, the Biden administration’s secret operations raised concerns about the U.S. being drawn deeper into the conflict, with some fearing it could lead to direct confrontation with Russia and further escalation of a nuclear threat.
Joe Biden painted a careful picture of America providing weapons to Ukraine while staying at arm’s length from the actual fighting.
That was a lie.
And an explosive report just exposed how Biden intertwined America more deeply into the Ukraine-Russia war than anyone knew.
Biden’s shadow war headquarters revealed
The New York Times dropped a shocking exposé that pulled back the curtain on a secret American command center in Germany that directly coordinated and enabled Ukrainian attacks on Russian forces.
Far from just providing weapons, the Biden administration created what amounted to America’s shadow war against Russia from a converted basketball court in Wiesbaden, Germany, where American generals personally directed Ukraine’s war effort.
The secret arrangement started just months after Russia invaded in 2022 when American and Ukrainian officers met at “Clay Kaserne,” the headquarters of U.S. Army Europe and Africa. There, they forged what would become “one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war in Ukraine.”
Task Force Dragon and the American kill chain
An operation code-named “Task Force Dragon” was established, putting American military officers in charge of selecting Russian targets and providing precise coordinates for Ukrainian strikes, often with U.S.-supplied weapons.
“One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback to learn how deeply enmeshed his N.A.T.O. counterparts had become in Ukrainian operations. ‘They are part of the kill chain now,’ he said,” according to the Times.
The report reveals that Biden’s Pentagon created what the Times described as “the entire back office of the war” – with American officers providing targeting information for HIMARS rocket launchers that required special electronic key cards controlled by the United States.
This targeting system resulted in lethal strikes that killed and wounded an estimated 700,000 Russian soldiers by U.S. counts. Every morning, the Times reported, American and Ukrainian officers would gather to “survey Russian weapons systems and ground forces and determine the ripest, highest-value targets.”
Far beyond defensive support
The operation went far beyond defensive support. In one instance, Americans detected a Russian radar vehicle on their surveillance systems, set up a trap using Ukrainian artillery, pinpointed its location, and guided Ukrainian forces to destroy it.
The partnership evolved to include American and CIA officers providing intelligence for Ukrainian maritime drone strikes on Russian warships in the port of Sevastopol in Crimea. These operations gradually expanded to what became known as “Operation Lunar Hail” – involving American-supplied ATACMS missiles that could strike targets up to 190 miles away.
Red lines repeatedly crossed
As the war dragged on, Biden secretly authorized operations that had previously been forbidden. American military advisers were dispatched to Kyiv and eventually allowed to travel closer to combat zones. The military and CIA received authorization to enable Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia itself.
Despite public statements that America was merely supporting Ukraine’s defense, the report reveals the Biden administration repeatedly crossed its own “red lines” in a desperate effort to help Ukraine avoid defeat.
The biggest escalation came when Biden authorized what officials called an “ops box” – a zone inside Russian territory where Ukrainians could fire American weapons with U.S. intelligence support. This shocking decision made the United States “woven into the killing of Russian soldiers on sovereign Russian soil.”
Deep strikes into Russia
In September 2023, CIA officers helped plan and execute a massive drone strike on a Russian ammunition depot in Toropets, about 290 miles north of the Ukrainian border. The operation created an explosion “as powerful as a small earthquake” that “opened a crater the width of a football field.”
The Biden administration only revealed the public-facing side of its support for Ukraine – weapons shipments that totaled $66.5 billion. But The New York Times investigation shows that America’s involvement was “far more intimately and broadly than previously understood.”
U.S.-Ukraine tensions behind the scenes
The report also shows that tensions often flared between the two allies. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his military commanders frequently ignored American advice, misallocated resources, and kept operations secret from their American partners.
When the Americans pressed Ukraine to draft more soldiers to fill their depleted ranks, Zelensky responded: “Why would I draft more people? We don’t have any equipment to give them.”
An American official fired back: “And your generals are reporting that your units are undermanned. They don’t have enough soldiers for the equipment they have.”
The Pentagon’s frustration reached a breaking point when Ukrainian forces failed to follow American advice during a critical 2023 counteroffensive. One U.S. official said it’s “not an existential war if they won’t make their people fight.”
America dragged deeper into conflict
The Biden administration’s deliberate misleading of the American public about U.S. involvement in Ukraine shows how Washington, D.C.’s establishment dragged the country deeper into a foreign conflict with little oversight or public debate.
“The whole goal,” Lt. Gen. Antonio A. Aguto Jr. told the Ukrainians when he took over the operation, was “to have you operate on your own at some point in time.” But the direct American involvement only expanded as the war dragged on.
Throughout his term, Biden insisted that American support for Ukraine was about defending democracy. But the report suggests a different motivation – testing U.S. warfare capabilities against Russia.
“In some ways, Ukraine was, on a wider canvas, a rematch in a long history of U.S.-Russia proxy wars — Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria three decades later,” the Times wrote. “It was also a grand experiment in war fighting, one that would not only help the Ukrainians but reward the Americans with lessons for any future war.”
The covert “partnership” established in Wiesbaden operated “in the shadow of deepest geopolitical fear” that Vladimir Putin might see it as crossing a red line of military engagement and make good on his nuclear threats.
The timing of this report, just months into Donald Trump’s Presidency, raises questions about whether the Biden administration’s secret escalations put America on a dangerous path toward direct conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia and why The New York Times sat on this report until Trump was in office.
New York Times finally tells its readers, on March 30, 2025, what was beyond obvious to the American people for years now — and a factor in their election of Donald Trump — the military industrial complex is in a proxy war with Russia, still without even a hint of strategy. pic.twitter.com/ajw5YCOFTk
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) March 30, 2025
Thankfully, President Trump has already begun “to wind down elements of the partnership” as he seeks to negotiate an end to the conflict as Americans hope cooler heads will prevail.
