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The United States has cut the sharing of information with kyiv in a decision that could seriously hamper the Ukrainian army’s ability to target Russian forces.
The stage followed the decision on Monday by the Trump administration to suspend military aid deliveries to Ukraine And comes after a spectacular rupture of relations between the American president and the Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine.
American intelligence cooperation has been essential to Ukraine’s ability to identify and strike Russian military targets.
Four familiar officials with the decision confirmed that Washington had frozen intelligence channels with Kyiv. John Ratcliffe, director of the CIA, later told Fox Business: “Trump had a real question on the question of whether President Zelenskyy was engaged in the peace process, and he said to take a break.”
But he added that there was hope that support will be restored. “I want to give a chance to think about it, and you saw the answer that President Zelenskyy has published,” added Ratcliffe. “So I think that on the military front and the intelligence front, the break that made it happen, I think it will disappear.”
While the United States has also officially prevented its allies from sharing American information with Ukraine, two officials said that beneficiaries with the country’s interior were likely to continue to transmit relevant information to kyiv. But that would not apply to temporal and high value information, such as that necessary for Ukraine to make precision strikes on mobile Russian targets.
“If they do not reverse it soon, it will become really difficult for Ukrainians, as it removes their advantage on the battlefield,” said a senior Western official.
The American decision to ban its allies from spending information in Ukraine was the first reported by the Daily Mail.
After a heated oval office confrontation Between Zelenskyy and Trump, relations between Washington and Kyiv deteriorated before recent signs of repair.
Zelenskyy made a contrition on Tuesday, saying that the meeting in front of television cameras was “unfortunate” and that Ukraine was “ready to come to the negotiation table as soon as possible”.
He also declared in a letter that he was ready to sign an agreement with Trump “at any time” which would give the United States the profit rights for the exploitation of natural resources in Ukraine.
In his speech at the Congress on Tuesday evening, Trump – who previously described the “dictator” democratically elected a “dictator” – declared that he appreciated the words of the Ukrainian chief.
On Wednesday, Mike Waltz, American national security advisor, also suggested that military aid to Ukraine could be restarted.
“I think that if we can nail these negotiations and evolve towards these negotiations, and in fact, put measures to strengthen confidence on the table, then the president will examine this break carefully,” Waltz told Fox News.
A spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence refused to comment on how an American information cut would affect his work. “We have a plan B,” said the spokesman earlier this week.
The extent of the United States’s information support is classified, but analysts said it allowed Kyiv to receive live information on enemy’s movements.
At an “operational level, to examine the movement of forces, for example, satellites are of great help and American capacities are really important,” said Mykhailo Samus, a Ukrainian military expert.
American intelligence also plays a role in the early alert system against Russian missiles and drone raids in Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure.
“Ukraine’s military information has never said exactly what type of information they get from the United States,” said Pavlo Narozhny, Ukrainian military analyst. “But you can make an enlightened assumption, you can note that the Reaper drones and the American planes stealing regularly near the border, you can see that each time a Russian mig-31 takes off, it triggers an alarm of aerial raid across Ukraine.”
Where American intelligence may have been the most crucial, it was to allow precision strikes on the territory held by Russia. “Static targets such as factories or oil plants” were “something we can do ourselves,” said Narozhny. “But we were able to hit the command centers, kill generals, and it was probably done with the help of us.”
