Follow us on social

Just how many US troops and spies do we have in Ukraine?

Just how many US troops and spies do we have in Ukraine?

In the wake of the leaks and a drip-drip of info over the last year, one lawmaker is demanding clarity from the White House.

Analysis | Europe

Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who has flooded the docket in recent months with resolutions designed to get U.S. troops out of overseas missions he believes have not been approved by Congress, is now demanding that President Joe Biden tell the American people just how many American military personnel are operating in Ukraine today.

His new Privileged Resolution of Inquiry, which forces Biden to notify the House of  the exact number of U.S. military inside Ukraine and to hand over “copies of any and all documents outlining plans for military assistance to Ukraine,” comes a week after leaked Pentagon documents showing previously unreported U.S. Special Forces inside the war zone.

According to the document there were 97 special forces from NATO countries operating in Ukraine as of March, including 14 U.S. special forces. When asked by the Guardian newspaper for confirmation/clarification, the Department of Defense said,  "We are not going to discuss or confirm classified information due to the potential impact on national security as well as the safety and security of our personnel and those of our allies and our partners." The Pentagon has not denied the authenticity of the documents, however.

While “14 special forces” sounds like a drop in the bucket, these revelations are a drip-drip of other pieces of information over the last year that, when added up, leave more questions than answers, and the bottom line is that the American people have a right to know, says (Ret.) Lt. Col. Daniel Davis.

“It is entirely appropriate that the American people know, authoritatively, whether any U.S. troops are engaged in military operations within Ukraine — and to demand a change if we don’t like the answer,” Davis told me yesterday when I asked him about the Gaetz resolution.

"American history is rife with too many examples of presidents secretly employing U.S. troops without the consent or knowledge of our people. It almost always goes sideways when presidents go covert with our troops."

We know from reporting last year, beginning in June 2022, that the CIA had a strong presence in Ukraine, engaging a network of commandos and spies among European partners set up to provide critical weapons and military intelligence to Ukraine. According to the New York Times, “even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the massive amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces.”

Ken Klippenstein and Jim Risen reported in October 2022 that “there is a much larger presence of both CIA and U.S. special operations personnel and resources in Ukraine” than publicly known. They reported for the Intercept that several former and current intelligence officers told them that the covert operations were being conducted “under a presidential covert action finding,” for which only a handful of Congressional lawmakers have been notified.

In November, the administration announced it was sending a team of military “weapons inspectors” into Ukraine to keep track of weapons shipments, but that they would be away from the fighting. Also that month, the DoD confirmed that it would be setting up a new joint forces command called the Security Assistance Group Ukraine, or SAGU, based out of U.S. Army Europe and Africa headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany and led by a 3-star general to “handle weapons shipments and personnel training.”

In February of this year, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon wanted to revive pre-Ukraine war orders that would allow them to insert commandos in the form of “control teams” to direct Ukrainian operatives to counter Russian disinformation and monitor troops movements on the ground. This would require the U.S. personnel to be in Ukraine or in a neighboring country. Washington had been operating such teams in Ukraine under Section 1202 of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act until the invasion last year.

Nick Turse, who has written extensively about U.S. covert operations in other parts of the globe, said the recent leak showing special ops forces in Ukraine “is hardly a surprise. ” 

“U.S. Special Operations forces deploy throughout the world, often with next to no transparency or real oversight,” he said when asked about the Gaetz resolution. “Under little-known authorities, special operators conduct shadowy missions — sometimes indistinguishable from combat — unbeknownst to the American people and most members of Congress.”

What we don’t know much about is how many trainers and intelligence personnel might be working under contract for the U.S. government on the ground in Ukraine. There have been hints that they are there. Of course, some American experts, like Alexander Vindman, who are frustrated that the U.S. military is not more directly involved, have been calling on Biden to send contractors into the fight from the beginning.

Others have said “operational contractors” should be inserted into Ukraine, not to fight, but to help the Ukrainians train and operate the sophisticated weaponry Washington is sending over there. Are they there now? It is hard to tell. We know there are plenty of private military contractors in Ukraine today from all over the West working in extraction, training, and humanitarian aid, but they are, as far as we know, freelancing, not on the U.S. dole. 

The use of contractors, whether they be Americans or third party, has been widespread since the U.S. launched a Global War on Terror after 9/11. According to the Congressional Research Service, as of the end of 2022, there were approximately 22,000 contractor personnel working for the DoD throughout the US Central Command’s area of responsibility.

“It is highly probable that contractors are a significant part of the U.S. personnel presence in Ukraine,” speculated Ted Carpenter, who wrote about the topic recently for RS.

 “My expectation is that they would be used for the operation and maintenance of the more advanced (and twitchy?) weapons systems that NATO has given to Kyiv,” he shared on Monday.  “Another interesting question is how many DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) and Pentagon personnel, as well as contractors, might be helping Ukraine with targeting information for attacks on Russian forces. Some of the operations have seemed far too sophisticated for the known capabilities that Ukraine possessed when the invasion began.”

RS has put in a request to the DoD press office to ask just how many contractors might be in Ukraine today. In the meantime, Gaetz said in a statement he will press on with his own quest for a clear number of U.S. troops there. “There must be total transparency from this administration to the American people when they are gambling war with a nuclear adversary by having special forces operating in Ukraine.”


U.S. Army Special Forces operators prepare to conduct rapid infiltration and exfiltration of a U.S. Air Force CV-22 Osprey during exercise Fiction Urchin near Vinnytsia, Ukraine, Sept. 21, 2020. (U.S. Air Force photo)|
Analysis | Europe
Mark Levin
Top photo credit: Erick Stakelbeck on TBN/Screengrab

The great fade out: Neocon influencers rage as they diminish

Media

Mark Levin appears to be having a meltdown.

The veteran neoconservative talk host is repulsed by reports that President Donald Trump might be inching closer to an Iranian nuclear deal, reducing the likelihood of war. In addition to his rants on how this would hurt Israel, Levin has been howling to anyone who will listen that any deal with Iran needs approval from Congress (funny he doesn’t have the same attitude for waging war, only for making peace).

keep readingShow less
american military missiles
Top photo credit: Fogcatcher/Shutterstock

5 ways the military industrial complex is a killer

Latest

Congress is on track to finish work on the fiscal year 2025 Pentagon budget this week, and odds are that it will add $150 billion to its funding for the next few years beyond what the department even asked for. Meanwhile, President Trump has announced a goal of over $1 trillion for the Pentagon for fiscal year 2026.

With these immense sums flying out the door, it’s a good time to take a critical look at the Pentagon budget, from the rationales given to justify near record levels of spending to the impact of that spending in the real world. Here are five things you should know about the Pentagon budget and the military-industrial complex that keeps the churn going.

keep readingShow less
Sudan
Top image credit: A Sudanese army soldier stands next to a destroyed combat vehicle as Sudan's army retakes ground and some displaced residents return to ravaged capital in the state of Khartoum Sudan March 26, 2025. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig

Will Sudan attack the UAE?

Africa

Recent weeks events have dramatically cast the Sudanese civil war back into the international spotlight, drawing renewed scrutiny to the role of external actors, particularly the United Arab Emirates.

This shift has been driven by Sudan's accusations at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the UAE concerning violations of the Genocide Convention, alongside drone strikes on Port Sudan that Khartoum vociferously attributes to direct Emirati participation. Concurrently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly reaffirmed the UAE's deep entanglement in the conflict at a Senate hearing last week.

From Washington, another significant and sudden development also surfaced last week: the imposition of U.S. sanctions on the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for alleged chemical weapons use. This dramatic accusation was met by an immediate denial from Sudan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which vehemently dismissed the claims as "unfounded" and criticized the U.S. for bypassing the proper international mechanisms, specifically the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, despite Sudan's active membership on its Executive Council.

Despite the gravity of such an accusation, corroboration for the use of chemical agents in Sudan’s war remains conspicuously absent from public debate or reporting, save for a January 2025 New York Times article citing unnamed U.S. officials. That report itself contained a curious disclaimer: "Officials briefed on the intelligence said the information did not come from the United Arab Emirates, an American ally that is also a staunch supporter of the R.S.F."

keep readingShow less

LATEST

QIOSK

Newsletter

Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.