US Plays “Mediator” in its Own War on Russia

April 22, 2025 (NEO – Brian Berletic) - Recent comments from current US Secretary of State Marco Rubio have signaled Washington’s intent to abandon peace efforts if progress isn’t made between Russia and Ukraine.

CNN in a recent article has reported that: 

The United States could end its efforts on ending the Ukrainian conflict within “days” if there are no signs of progress, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Friday. 

“If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,” he told reporters before departing Paris, where he had held high-level talks with European and Ukrainian officials. “We need to determine very quickly now, and I’m talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable,” he said. 

This is framed as if the US is serving as some sort of mediator between Russia and Ukraine. In reality, the US is one of two primary parties to the conflict – the other being Russia with whom this war was provoked. 

A US War on Russia Since the Cold War Ended… 

The US had since the end of the Cold War invested billions of dollars in political interference within Ukraine, including regime change operations attempted in 2004 and successful regime change finally taking place in 2014. From 2014 onward, Ukraine was transformed into a military proxy of the United States aimed specifically to threaten the Russian Federation just as a politically captured Georgia in 2003 was used to attack Russian peacekeeping forces in 2008. 

The growing security threat this posed to Moscow precipitated the launching of Russia’s February 2022 Special Military Operation (SMO) and the subsequent fighting that has continued ever since. 

A series of articles from the Western media itself has revealed over recent years the degree to which the US had not only politically captured Ukraine, but also institutionally captured its military and intelligence agencies, reconfiguring them to operate as armed extensions of the US along Ukraine’s border with Russia, and even across it within Russia itself. 

Among these admissions is the New York Times’ February 2024 article titled, “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin,” which admits to, “a C.I.A.-supported network of spy bases constructed in the past eight years that includes 12 secret locations along the Russian border.” 

The article would also admit: 

Around 2016, the C.I.A. began training an elite Ukrainian commando force — known as Unit 2245 — which captured Russian drones and communications gear so that C.I.A. technicians could reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s encryption systems. (One officer in the unit was Kyrylo Budanov, now the general leading Ukraine’s military intelligence.) 

And the C.I.A. also helped train a new generation of Ukrainian spies who operated inside Russia, across Europe, and in Cuba and other places where the Russians have a large presence.

While the New York Times tries to insist the CIA did not help Ukrainians conduct offensive lethal operations, it later admits CIA-trained Unit 2245 not only conducted lethal operations, but did so within Russian territory, claiming: 

At the time, the future head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, General Budanov, was a rising star in Unit 2245. He was known for daring operations behind enemy lines and had deep ties to the C.I.A. The agency had trained him and also taken the extraordinary step of sending him for rehabilitation to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland after he was shot in the right arm during fighting in the Donbas. 

Disguised in Russian uniforms, then-Lt. Col. Budanov led commandos across a narrow gulf in inflatable speedboats, landing at night in Crimea. 

But an elite Russian commando unit was waiting for them. The Ukrainians fought back, killing several Russian fighters, including the son of a general, before retreating to the shoreline, plunging into the sea and swimming for hours to Ukrainian-controlled territory.

In other words, the US was training, equipping, arming, and directing deadly operations out of Ukraine into Russian-held territory before Russia launched its 2022 SMO. 

The same article admitted that these CIA officers deployed to and overseeing operations in Ukraine began playing a central role after Russia launched its SMO in 2022. 

The NYT would admit: 

Within weeks, the C.I.A. had returned to Kyiv, and the agency sent in scores of new officers to help the Ukrainians. A senior U.S. official said of the C.I.A.’s sizable presence, “Are they pulling triggers? No. Are they helping with targeting? Absolutely.” 

Some of the C.I.A. officers were deployed to Ukrainian bases. They reviewed lists of potential Russian targets that the Ukrainians were preparing to strike, comparing the information that the Ukrainians had with U.S. intelligence to ensure that it was accurate.

Subsequent articles by the New York Times would expand upon just how deeply involved the US has been in the fighting – making the war for all intents and purposes an American war fought through the Ukrainians. 

Washington’s War on Russia 

A March 2025 New York Times article titled, “The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine,” would explain that not only has the US provided tens of billions of US dollars worth of military equipment, weapons, and ammunition, including, “a half-billion rounds of small-arms ammunition and grenades, 10,000 Javelin antiarmor weapons, 3,000 Stinger antiaircraft systems, 272 howitzers, 76 tanks, 40 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, 20 Mi-17 helicopters and three Patriot air defense batteries,” but that the US military itself has been (and still is) playing a central role in picking and striking at targets on both sides of the Ukrainian-Russian border. 

It admitted that it was US intelligence used to carry out many of Ukraine’s most successful attacks on Russian military headquarters including at the Crimean port of Sevastopol which had been under Russian control even before the 2014 US overthrow of Ukraine and Crimea’s subsequent reunification with Russia. 

Much of Washington’s control over the conflict was coordinated through a mission command center established in Wiesbaden, Germany. While many of Ukraine’s military operations were attributed to Ukrainian planning, the New York Times has since revealed it was instead overseen by the US and other NATO members through Wiesbaden. 

The article would explain: 

Side by side in Wiesbaden’s mission command center, American and Ukrainian officers planned Kyiv’s counteroffensives. A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field.

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.

The New York Times also admitted: 

Military and C.I.A. officers in Wiesbaden helped plan and support a campaign of Ukrainian strikes in Russian-annexed Crimea. Finally, the military and then the C.I.A. received the green light to enable pinpoint strikes deep inside Russia itself.

The article admits that Western military officers – not Ukrainians – made the final decision regarding what targets would be hit and how. 

This included the use of US-provided M777 howitzers and the HIMARS multiple launch rocket system.

The New York Times admitted:

Wiesbaden would oversee each HIMARS strike. [US] General Donahue and his aides would review the Ukrainians’ target lists and advise them on positioning their launchers and timing their strikes. The Ukrainians were supposed to only use coordinates the Americans provided. To fire a warhead, HIMARS operators needed a special electronic key card, which the Americans could deactivate anytime.

Every large-scale Ukrainian operation, including the 2022 Kherson and Kharkov offensives as well as the failed 2023 offensive were planned, organized, and directed by US military officers from Wiesbaden. This also included the creation of new Ukrainian brigades the New York Times admits was overseen by US Lieutenant General Antonio Aguto Jr. 

It is also revealed that it wasn’t Ukraine who asked for longer range weapons like the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), it was US generals. 

The New York Times admits: 

Generals Cavoli and Aguto recommended the next quantum leap, giving the Ukrainians Army Tactical Missile Systems — missiles, known as ATACMS, that can travel up to 190 miles — to make it harder for Russian forces in Crimea to help defend Melitopol.

It was also revealed that Ukrainian commanders realized the US-planned and directed 2023 offensive was doomed during its earliest phase, yet US commanders demanded Ukraine “press on.” 

Various options were formulated to try to salvage the failed offensive, with the New York Times attributing its failure to a number of factors including infighting among Ukrainian commanders and even tension between Ukrainian commanders and their US handlers. In reality, the offensive failed because of the realities of material limitations on Western military industrial production and their inability to fight the type of war of attrition Russia had prepared for years in advance and imposed on them. 

Toward the end of the New York Times article, it admitted that, “the coalition simply couldn’t provide all the equipment for a major counteroffensive. Nor could the Ukrainians build an army big enough to mount one.” 

Various operations were described throughout the article including US-British attempts to destroy the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea to the rest of Russia which all ended in failure. 

While the article attempts to blame the gradual draw down of US support for Ukraine on the election of President Donald Trump and his desire for “peace,” it is clear the US simply exhausted the means to continue waging a proxy war against a Russian military much better able to replace its losses than Ukraine and its Western sponsors. 

The New York Times essentially admits this was a US war waged against Russia simply using Ukraine as intermediaries. 

Every major military operation down to specific targets to be struck and which US-European-made and provided weapon system to use to strike it with was made by American – not Ukrainian generals. 

Playing “Mediator” While Seeking to Freeze a Failed Proxy War 

Today, the US government is attempting to play the role of a frustrated mediator trying to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia when in reality this was always a war between the US and Russia. 

In reality, current US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, in a February 12, 2025 speech, discussed “European and non-European troops” being sent into Ukraine as a “security guarantee” which would in practice either freeze the conflict or precipitate direct hostilities between Russia and Europe. 

Secretary Hegseth also instructed Europe the next steps regarding Ukraine would be “donating more ammunition and equipment” to Ukraine, as well as “expanding your defense industrial base.” 

What Secretary Hegseth actually laid out was a directive not toward peace in Ukraine, but to once again freeze the conflict as the US and Europe did during the Minsk agreements, during which the US and Europe could expand their own military industrial bases to match or exceed Russian production and rearm and reorganize Ukrainian forces to resume hostilities again in the future when factors lean in Washington’s favor, not Moscow’s. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s predictable boredom with peace talks with Russia signals the US’ readiness to transfer responsibility for its proxy war fully onto Europe as it pivots toward a much more dangerous confrontation with Russia’s ally to the east – China. 

The Trump administration and the Biden administration before it never had any intention of addressing the actual cause of the conflict in Ukraine – NATO’s expansion up to and all along Russia’s borders with every intention of inevitably absorbing Russia itself. Because of this, genuine peace was never possible regardless of the Trump administration’s public rhetoric and empty gestures toward Russia. 

While the Trump administration has paid lip service to NATO expansion, its only decision regarding NATO specifically has been to demand NATO members more than double funding for NATO. 

Russia, for its part, has left the door open for honest negotiations and has provided the United States ample exit ramps from both an unwinnable proxy war and indefinite confrontation with Russia into the future. The US is obviously not interested. Russia had, throughout “peace talks” with the US, continued its war of attrition against Ukrainian forces, continuing the process the New York Times describes as the central contributing factor for the proxy war’s current failure. 

The real question that remains is whether or not Russia can continue this process at a faster and more effective rate than the US and Europe can continue “donating more ammunition and equipment” to Ukraine while attempting to expand their “defense industrial bases.” Only time will tell for sure.

As Syria has demonstrated, a proxy war the US has lost one moment can be frozen, revisited, and eventually won if it is able to overextend designated adversaries like Russia and Iran for long enough and extensively enough elsewhere. The US has already embarked upon armed conflict with Yemen and is threatening war with Iran – forcing Russia to once again make difficult decisions regarding where it invests finite military resources versus the seemingly infinite US capacity to create instability and conflict worldwide. 

The survival and success of multipolarism depends on the multipolar world cooperating against US attempts to reassert American primacy – not only through direct and proxy war, but also through economic coercion and political interference – and to understand that a US war on Russia in Ukraine or a proxy war waged against Syria in the Middle East – is in fact a war against the rise of multipolarism altogether and the promise of peace and prosperity it offers. 

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.