The most prominent Ukrainian “hero” of Adam Entous and Matthew Schwirtz’ long NYT article (link) on the massive CIA involvement in Ukraine since the Maidan coup in February 2014 was Valery Kondratiuk (mentioned 27 times), a former head of the Ukrainian SBU.
According to the NYT narrative, Kondratyuk and his predecessor Vitaliy Nalyvaichenko, had eagerly invited the demure CIA into the SBU parlor, following which the CIA, almost reluctantly, built (at least) 12 CIA bases along the Russian border and commissioned and trained an entire division of Ukrainian special ops to carry out terrorist operations within Russia.
Three years ago, Kondratyuk, together with Nalyviachenko, had been the subject of a very different profile by Ukrainian journalist Volodymyr Boyko entitled “Biden’s Personal Driver”: link, in which, Boyko (who is firmly opposed to Russia) had sneered at both Kondratyuk and Nalyvaichenko as long-time U.S. agents.
The respective pictures of Kondratiuk shown by Entous and Boyko respectively (see below) neatly summarize the difference in perspective. The NYT shows Kondratiuk standing heroically in a lot of destroyed military vehicles, while Boyko showed the corpulent Kondratiuk in side view shaking hands with Biden’s buddy, former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.
According to the Entous and Schwirtz article, Kondratiuk, as head of military intelligence, had arrived at a meeting with CIA deputy station chief and “without warning” handed over a “stack of top-secret files” and “before long”, CIA officers were “leaving his office with backpacks full of documents”:
Yet a tight circle of Ukrainian intelligence officials assiduously courted the C.I.A. and gradually made themselves vital to the Americans. In 2015, Gen. Valeriy Kondratiuk, then Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, arrived at a meeting with the C.I.A.’s deputy station chief and without warning handed over a stack of top-secret files.
That initial tranche contained secrets about the Russian Navy’s Northern Fleet, including detailed information about the latest Russian nuclear submarine designs. Before long, teams of C.I.A. officers were regularly leaving his office with backpacks full of documents.
“We understood that we needed to create the conditions of trust,” General Kondratiuk said.
Boyko, in a December 2020 article entitled Biden’s Personal Driver, stated that Kondratyuk had been recruited by the U.S. in the 1990s and had, in turn, recruited Nalyvaichenko as a US agent in 2001:
it was Kondratyuk, recruited in the 1990s by the United States' special services, who, in 2001, enlisted the consul of Ukraine in Washington, Valenty Nalyvaichenko, to cooperate with American intelligence.
Boyko reported that Kondratyuk’s activities under the pro-US Yushchenko regime from 2006-2009 had been investigated by the SBU during the Yanukovych regime (2010-Feb 2014). Boyko narrated an interesting story that, during the Maidan coup, the SBU documents on Kondratyuk and Nalyvaichenko investigations had been removed to Crimea by fleeing SBU leaders (Yakymenko), but Nalyvaichenko had retrieved the documents from Crimea and burned them. Following which, Nalyvaichenko appointed Kondratiuk as head of SBU Counterintelligence.
When during the time of President Yanukovych, the SBU launched an investigation into Kondratyuk's activities, according to the plot of the criminal proceedings…
But it is not easy to verify this version now: before Yanukovych's escape, the then head of the SBU, Oleksandr Yakymenko, and his deputy, Volodymyr Totskyi, took the materials of many interesting criminal proceedings to Simferopol - in particular, the treason of Nalyvaichenko and Kondratyuk.
A few days later, Nalyvaichenko, who was appointed head of the SBU, flew to Simferopol and managed to save several cases from being taken to Russia, in particular, the proceedings against Kondratyuk. There are rumors in the SBU that Valentin Oleksandrovych brought these materials to Kyiv and burned them in a solemn atmosphere, after which Kondratyuk was appointed head of the Counterintelligence Department of the SBU.
So when Entous reports Nalyvaichenko’s yarn that he inherited a building full of burned documents, one has to consider that some of the documents so burned would have been documents on counter-intelligence investigations of relations of Nalyvaichenko and Kondratyuk with US intelligence agencies.
Biden’s Driver
In 2014-2016, Joe Biden was US vice-regent/capo over Ukraine. An interesting detail - needless to say, unmentioned by Entous, was that Biden apparently insisted that Kondratyuk be his personal driver to and from the airport. Boyko reported that, within the SBU, Kondratiuk had the derogatory nickname “Biden’s driver”:
Valery Kondratyuk was called "Biden's driver" by his subordinates in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, due to the fact that, when US Vice President Joe Biden visited Ukraine in 2014-2015, he asked that Valery Vitaliyovych be driven to Boryspil airport on his way home - they had something to talk about in the cabin of the car, protected from eavesdropping. And this is not surprising, since Kondratiuk is one of the few established agents of foreign intelligence (in this case, American) who is in the public service.