The U.S. pause on sharing intelligence with Kyiv affects warnings against Russian drones and missiles striking Ukrainian military and civilian targets, the New York Times reported on March 5, citing undisclosed U.S. and Ukrainian officials.
The U.S. stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine on March 5, shortly after it froze all military assistance as part of an effort to pressure Kyiv into quick negotiations with Russia.
Russian forces regularly launch drones and missiles against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, inflicting heavy civilian casualties. A Russian missile strike against a hotel in Kryvyi Rih late on March 5, carried out shortly after the intelligence sharing pause, killed four people and injured at least 30.
According to figures released by Kyiv, U.N. statistics, and open-source data published by BBC Russia, the total death toll of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers, as well as Ukrainian civilians, stood at over 148,000 as of mid-February.
A senior Ukrainian official told the NYT that the pause in intelligence sharing would make it more difficult for Ukrainian forces to strike Russian targets. Kyiv still has access to other satellite imagery, they added.
Valerii Kondratiuk, the former Ukraine's spy chief, said that intelligence sharing is concerned primarily with the exchange of satellite images. While European companies have their own satellites, they are not focused on military movements, he added.
Some unnamed U.S. officials voiced hope that any pause in intelligence sharing would be short and have little practical impact. A senior Trump administration official told the NYT the original plan was to suspend military and intelligence sharing for a week or two as part of a campaign to put pressure on President Volodymyr Zelensky.
According to the NYT, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has a "sizable presence" in Ukraine, with some of its officers deployed in the country to help Ukraine with targeting.
The CIA has also helped set up at least three secret signals intelligence collection bases that Ukraine uses to intercept Russian communications to reduce their reliance on U.S. intelligence, the newspaper reported.
The conflict between Kyiv and Washington has been simmering for weeks as U.S. President Donald Trump adopted increasingly hostile rhetoric toward Zelensky while intensifying diplomatic outreach to Moscow. The most explosive episode came on Feb. 28, when Trump and U.S. Vice President JD Vance publicly berated Zelensky in the Oval Office, derailing plans for the signing of a minerals agreement.
The Kyiv Independent news desk
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