CIA operatives and a US commando network are co-ordinating the flow of weapons inside Ukraine as part of a secret operation, according to an explosive new report. 

The New York Times has blown the lid on covert US activities in Ukraine, where it says that spies and commandos are providing arms, intelligence and training. 

While much of the work is taking place at bases in Britain, Germany and France, the report says that the CIA was operating secretly in Ukraine, mostly in the capital Kiev. 

Commandos from a host of Nato countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, are also at work in the country, according to the report published on Saturday. 

“Few other details have emerged about what the CIA personnel or the commandos are doing, but their presence in the country … hints at the scale of the secretive effort to assist Ukraine that is under way and the risks that Washington and its allies were taking,” the newspaper said. 

The revelations contradict earlier claims by Washington that it has no troops deployed inside Ukraine, with intelligence services previously insisting that they have no knowledge of the latest situation there. 

It is now known that the US army’s 10th Special Forces Group has established a planning cell in Germany to co-ordinate military assistance to Ukrainian commandos and the rest of the country’s armed forces. 

According to the New York Times, that cell has now grown to include some 20 countries and helps maintain the flow of arms and equipment into Ukraine. 

The commandos are not on the front lines but offer advice from headquarters in other parts of the country or remotely by encrypted communications, according to US and other Western officials.

It is not clear how many foreign nationals have joined the Ukrainian war efforts, but Russia claimed last week to have nearly halved the number from 6,600 to some 3,500. 

On Saturday, former British paratrooper Daniel Burke urged volunteers to join his Dark Angels unit which has previously carried out an attack on a Russian tank with an £80,000 Javelin missile. 

“Anyone in Ukraine, regardless of your nationality, if you want immediate operations with full support from all aspects, DM me,” he said in a Facebook post. 

“We have grown in size rapidly on the operation front. We need people with recon and infiltration experience. We can pay expenses to our location,” Mr Burke added. 

He is one of a number of foreign nationals who have previously fought in Syria with the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG) and are now fighting inside Ukraine. 

The Dark Angels appear to be a rag-tag band of misfits and disgraced former soldiers which has badged itself as a humanitarian NGO.

Other members include former Green Jackets soldier Mark Ayres, who received a six-year jail sentence for violent robbery in 1994 and had previously joined the neonazi Azov Battalion.