The United States has now suspended the provision of military intelligence with Ukraine as part of the freeze on assistance until Ukraine chooses President Trump’s path to peace and comes to the negotiating table, a report states.
Intelligence sharing between Washington and Kyiv has been stopped, London’s Financial Times reports, citing “officials”. Access to the products of the highly developed Western intelligence establishment has lent a serious edge to Kyiv over the numerically superior Russian forces, allowing it to direct strikes with precision, including in the increasingly prominent realm of drone warfare.
Strikes including the destruction of major Russian warships using uncrewed bomb boats and cruise missiles far from observation by land have previously been said to have been coordinated with American intelligence, which is collected by assets including satellites and drones over the Black Sea.
The United States is the senior partner in the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network, an association of anglophone nations the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, which co-circulate the product of their spy networks without redaction or control. It is perhaps the closest intelligence agreement between sovereign states in history and has been invaluable through the Cold War, the War on Terror, and in neatly circumventing laws against spying on the citizens of member states.
Per a report in The Daily Mail, the United States, as part of turning off the intelligence tap to Ukraine, has already moved to prevent its close allies from either deliberately or inadvertently continuing to send reports to Kyiv. This has, the paper states, come in the form of an explicit order to London to stop sending Washington-derived intelligence to Kyiv, and the suspension of what it describes as the ‘Rel UKR’ classification, apparently standing for ‘releasable to Ukraine’.
The suspension follows by days the United States announcing it was ending military support to Ukraine over President Volodymyr Zelensky’s apparent bid to turn a treaty-signing event into a renegotiation, in full sight of the global media. He was subsequently kicked out of the White House early by the President for want of respect, and told to only come back when serious about talking peace.
Ukraine itself has moved to play down the importance of losing U.S. aid, as Zelensky immediately flew to European capitals to drum up alternative support. Nevertheless, the Mail report cites a “senior Ukrainian official” saying that the country would not last long without America. He is reported to have said: “We have two to three months. After that, the position will be very difficult for us. It will not be a total collapse, but we will be forced to withdraw from some areas more quickly.”
Nevertheless, President Zelensky appears to have thought better of his position of last week, and is now claimed to have written to President Trump to assure future cooperation. President Trump quoted the letter to Congress on Tuesday night, stating it said: “We do really value how much America has done to help Ukraine maintain its sovereignty and independence. Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it at any time that is convenient for you.”
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