A US military base in Wiesbaden, Germany, has been conducting research for the New York Times, which has found that the US military has been providing the Ukrainian military with information on Russian troop positions and has “coordinated almost all” HIMARS rocket attacks.
According to the New York Times report, a secret cooperation center was located in the US Army garrison in Wiesbaden, Germany. Every morning, American and Ukrainian military officers would set priorities for targets: Russian units, equipment, or infrastructure. The Ukrainians were extremely dependent on the Americans for intelligence information and the Task Force Dragon would check and monitor almost every HIMARS strike.
To conceal the direct involvement of the US military in Ukraine’s war, the term “target” was replaced with the codename “Points of Interest” for the locations and objects intended for attacks, according to the New York Times, citing its sources.
The US Navy was already authorized in 2022 to coordinate Ukrainian operations in the waters of the Crimean Peninsula and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in planning and coordinating Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian ships in the port of Sevastopol. In 2024, the Americans began supporting the Ukrainian military in attacks deep in internationally recognized Russian territory.
A European intelligence chief, who was not named, told the publication that he was “stunned” when he learned how deeply the Americans were involved in operations in Ukraine, saying they were already “part of the kill chain”.
Moscow has long accused Western countries of direct involvement in Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory. Russian President Vladimir Putin, for example, pointed out in October 2024 that Kiev was not capable of launching long-range weapons on its own and that only military experts from NATO countries could do so. He explained that this required space reconnaissance, which Ukraine does not have, as well as specialists who would input flight orders and perform other manipulations necessary for the launch of the rocket.
The fact that US involvement is taking place from German soil could have consequences for German-Russian relations. The US Army’s European headquarters and the US military’s Wiesbaden-Erbenheim airbase are located in Wiesbaden.
The New York Times report also contains further revelations about US military activities in the Ukraine war, including that American and Ukrainian officers planned larger counter-offensives and massive attacks with western precision weapons on the Russian Crimean Peninsula. The attacks, carried out with rockets supplied from the West, also resulted in civilian casualties. For example, a HIMARS attack on a beach in Sevastopol in June 2024 killed four people and injured more than 150.