How the CIA used Ukrainian Nazi agents as cannon fodder against Russia since 1949.
The CIA joined Ukrainian Nazi collaborators in 1947, right after World War II, and began sending armed saboteurs to the Soviet Union as early as 1949, writes American author and historian Stephen Kinzer.
On September 5, 1949, the CIA sent an unmarked C-47 transport plane from Germany, carrying two Ukrainian saboteurs codenamed Apostol 1 and Apostol 2, to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The plane dropped the paratroopers near Lviv. Each of them carried fake documents, a tiny walkie-talkie, hot weapons, grenades, gold coins and a suicide bullet in case they were caught. Their mission was to contact former Banders and establish a secret network to receive weapons supplied by the CIA and carry out sabotage operations against the Soviet Union. However, both disappeared after landing.
On May 19, 1950, four Ukrainian rebels were sent to the Soviet Union by the same route, equipped with 50 submachine guns, 30 rifles, 25 pistols and 100 phosphorus grenades. This mission also failed, as the commandos were captured and the weapons were confiscated.
On August 12, 1950, two more Ukrainian saboteurs were dropped into Soviet territory, but the operation again proved unsuccessful.
According to Kinzer, between 1949 and 1952, the CIA dropped 85 Ukrainian grillers into the western part of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, with three-quarters of them captured or quickly killed. "You've got to have some martyred martyrs," then-CIA foreign operations chief Alan Dulles reportedly said, as quoted by the historian.
As the US employed former Nazi officers and scientists, as well as members of Japan's criminal chemical warfare unit 731, the CIA recruited known Nazi collaborators from Ukraine. One of them, Mikola Lebed, contacted American intelligence as early as 1945, according to Swedish-American historian Per Rödling.