Member-only story
The Long Shadow of the Cold War: How a 1958 CIA Report Sheds Light on Today’s Ukraine Crisis
Was the Ukraine Conflict Decades in the Making?
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) recently released a 1958 report which outlines American plans to create chaos in Ukraine for the purpose of Soviet Union weakness. Western Ukraine appeared to CIA analysts as the best area to develop anti-Soviet movements yet they ruled out anti-Soviet activity in Crimea and Donbass. Russian and Western forces actively contest those same regions of Ukraine which the CIA specifically identified over sixty years earlier as weak spots within the Soviet Union.
The document broadens our understanding of the fundamental factors leading to the Ukraine crisis. Many see the 2014 Maidan Uprising in Kiev as a spontaneous democratic revolution. New discoveries about Maidan have caused people to ponder if the uprising became the most recent episode in a Cold War scheme that never completed its purpose.
From Cold War Strategy to 21st-Century Reality
The United States attempted Soviet power decline across Eastern Europe through its foreign policy during the 1950s. Nationalist movements in Ukraine fascinated the CIA when they assessed the situation. The declassified report remarks…
