A U.S. Army general who ran America’s Ukraine aid mission left classified documents on a train and drank himself into a concussion, a Pentagon watchdog report has found.
Major General Antonio A. Aguto Jr., 59, a retired Army two-star, headed up the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine (SAG-U)—based out of Wiesbaden, Germany—from December 2022 until August 2024, which coordinated and oversaw U.S. military assistance to Ukrainian forces fighting Russia’s invasion.
In June 2024, the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General opened an investigation after three anonymous complaints alleged that Aguto had violated multiple military regulations.
Among the most damaging findings was that he directed his staff to carry SECRET-classified maps in an unsecured, black, cylindrical plastic tube across international borders without proper courier authorization.
The party traveled from Wiesbaden to Kyiv on March 24, 2024, for a security assistance mission, then boarded a U.S. Department of State-chartered train for the return trip on April 3. When the group arrived back in Germany, the tube was nowhere to be found.
Ukrainian train security staff located it and returned it to the U.S. Embassy within 45 minutes—but by then, the documents had been outside American control for more than 24 hours. Investigators found the documents had not been compromised.
When the Embassy’s Regional Security Officer sought confirmation that Aguto would accept responsibility, he told staff, “Absolutely. I take full responsibility.”
The alcohol findings were no less serious. On May 13, 2024, Aguto attended a dinner at a restaurant in Kyiv that ran for nearly six hours. He and his dining companions “drank from two bottles of Chacha”—a Georgian spirit with an alcohol content of 40 to 50 percent.
This was violation of U.S. European Command’s General Order No. 1, which limits personnel on temporary duty in Ukraine to two alcoholic beverages in any 24-hour period.
Witnesses told investigators he was visibly intoxicated on leaving the restaurant. Aguto himself acknowledged he had been at “some level of intoxicated.”
Back at his Kyiv hotel—the Hilton—Aguto lost his footing and fell backward, striking the back of his head against the wall. He fell at least twice more—once again overnight in his room and a third time the following morning outside the U.S. Embassy, where he hit the concrete sidewalk, tore his jacket at the elbow, and struck his jaw on the ground.
Despite repeated pleas from his staff to stand down, he pushed through both a high-level meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and an afternoon session with Ukrainian military commanders.
Ambassador Brink, who was present at the Blinken meeting, told investigators that Aguto arrived late, his jacket ripped, with a large red mark on his forehead, and the smell of alcohol on him. The ambassador passed the Defense Attaché a note asking what was wrong with Aguto, who replied in writing that Aguto appeared to have suffered a serious fall and possibly a concussion.
By mid-afternoon, a Kyiv hospital confirmed it. He was later assessed at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and placed on light duty for one week.
Investigators found that Aguto’s incapacitation on May 14 was caused by the concussion but determined by a preponderance of the evidence that the concussion itself had been triggered by his drinking the previous evening.
Aguto pushed back, telling investigators he had received verbal authorization from a senior officer to drink during official visits to Kyiv and disputing that the first fall in his hotel was caused by intoxication.
He cited documented medical conditions that sometimes made him unsteady on his feet and noted that he takes a prescribed medication that can cause dizziness.
Investigators rejected the authorization defense, finding it fell short of the formal waiver required under military regulations and had never been logged with the U.S. European Command Joint Operations Center.
The report also flagged two further potential security violations: an allegation that Aguto discussed top-secret material at an open-air event in July 2024 and a separate claim from his first Kyiv trip in December 2023 that he accessed classified materials while sheltering from an air raid. Both were referred to the EUCOM Special Security Office for further investigation.
A claim that Aguto slapped a staff member across the face at a birthday party—remarking, per a witness, that he did not need to be playing a drinking game to do it—was referred to the Army Criminal Investigation Division. An allegation of counterproductive leadership was not substantiated.
The DoD OIG recommended that the Secretary of the Army take appropriate action against Aguto in light of the substantiated misconduct.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General and the Department of the Army for comment. A representative for Major General Aguto could not be immediately reached.
