US pauses sharing intelligence Ukraine uses for strikes on Russia

The United States has paused major portions of its intelligence-sharing with Ukraine, squeezing the flow of vital information that Kyiv has used to repel invading Russian forces and strike back at select targets inside Russia, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.

The rupture in intelligence-sharing includes a halt in targeting data that U.S. spy agencies supply to Kyiv so it can launch American-provided weapons and Ukrainian-made long-range drones at Russian targets, Ukrainian officials said. Some Ukrainian missile operators say they are no longer receiving information needed to hit targets inside Russia.

The pause comes amid a decision early this week by President Donald Trump to freeze future deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into peace negotiations with Russia.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe confirmed the latest move Wednesday, telling Fox Business that the United States has paused both intelligence-sharing and weapons systems in the aftermath of a contentious Oval Office meeting last week between Trump and Zelenskyy. Ratcliffe said the pauses would “go away” once it was clear Zelenskyy was committed to peace.

The move is another major reversal from the approach of the Biden administration, which set up special systems to share copious amounts of intelligence on Russian military forces with Ukraine, officials said — virtually unprecedented for a non-NATO country.

Trump administration officials did not offer specifics on when the United States began restricting intelligence-sharing with Ukraine or what the new limitations are.

National security adviser Michael Waltz indicated Wednesday that the pause came in the context of a deeper reassessment of U.S.-Ukraine ties.

“We have taken a step back and are pausing and reviewing all aspects of this relationship,” Waltz told reporters outside the White House. He said he had just spoken with his counterpart in Ukraine and thought there would be movement “in very short order.”

Speaking to Fox News, he said if Ukraine and Russia can “move towards” peace talks, “then the president will take a hard look at lifting this pause.” He hinted that Ukraine would have to make some concessions, or “confidence-building measures.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, has not budged from a set of sweeping demands made to Europe, NATO, the United States and Ukraine, to address what he terms the “root causes” of the conflict as his condition for ending it. They include Ukraine dropping its bid to join NATO, that the military alliance withdraw forces deployed to former Warsaw Pact countries since 1997, and that Ukraine withdraw troops from four regions that Russia illegally annexed in 2022 but does not fully control.

“If there’s one thing the Russians understand, it is leverage,” said Andrew Weiss, a Russia specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. These demands “represent nothing less than a total overhaul of the European security landscape.”

A U.S. defense official confirmed on Wednesday that most intelligence-sharing via military channels with Ukraine has been suspended. It was not immediately clear what the exceptions to that decision were, but they may include information related to self-defense.

Another person familiar with the pause said the Trump administration had halted all intelligence-sharing with Ukraine, other than information needed for “force protection” — protecting Ukrainian troops under attack. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

A Ukrainian military officer familiar with operations of the long-range multiple rocket launching system known as HIMARS, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about classified intelligence, said that for roughly the past month, at least one of the Ukrainian groups responsible for launching rockets from the U.S. systems has not received coordinates to strike more than about 40 miles beyond the line of contact between Russian and Ukrainian forces.

Such intelligence had allowed Ukraine to use the U.S.-provided HIMARS systems to launch ATACMS, a longer-range U.S. guided missile system, and strike targets deep inside occupied Ukrainian territory or inside of Russia. The strikes have disabled some Russian air defense systems and forced Moscow to move its logistic hubs hundreds of miles from the front lines, which has slowed down Russian resupply operations.

But in recent weeks, these coordinates have stopped being delivered, the Ukrainian military officer said, apparently signaling that such intelligence-sharing had halted.

The officer said that suddenly limiting this intelligence to Ukraine will clearly aid Moscow and allow Russian troops to regroup. “What we were doing with HIMARS — it’s painful for them, it’s problematic. They experience casualties or lose their weaponry,” the officer said of Russia. This pause “will speed up the assault operations because the logistics can be much, much closer to the contact line.”

A second Ukrainian military officer, who is working in Russia’s Kursk region where Ukraine seized territory in August and where Russia has since deployed North Korean troops, confirmed that the last time he received a U.S. coordinate for a long-range drone strike was on March 3. Since then, communication has been frozen.

However, to the extent the pause affects the longer-range ATACM strikes, the impact may be limited, as Ukraine was given a limited supply of such missiles and is likely to husband any remaining stocks, analysts say. But the move may embolden Russia and prompt it to move its own weapons closer to the front, they say.

President Joe Biden last November authorized Ukraine to use long-range ATACM missiles for strikes deeper inside Russia. The move came in response to Russia’s decision to bring thousands of North Korean troops into its fight against Ukraine.

North Korea, which also provides ballistic missiles to Russia for use in Ukraine, is not stopping its support for Moscow, the analysts noted.

Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities have continued unabated. On Wednesday, Ukrainian air defenses reported three ballistic missiles and 181 drones were launched overnight at the country, with capital Kyiv and the cities of Odesa and Kharkiv taking damage, among other regions.

The Ukrainian military official said that Ukraine’s use of HIMARS has been mutually beneficial for the United States, which has gained troves of data on how its weapon systems can be best used in modern combat. “All the experience the U.S. got from this,” he said, “it’s actually priceless.”

While Ukraine’s military is facing serious challenges in its effort to hold onto territory in Russia’s Kursk region, Kyiv’s forces are in a better battlefield situation within Ukraine at the moment, given the recent stabilization of the front lines and their improved stockpiles following a rush of deliveries at the end of Biden administration, said Rob Lee, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who is now conducting battlefield assessments in Ukraine.

Lee, a former Marine infantry officer, said that Russia might gain the upper hand as spring arrives, bringing climate conditions that could allow Moscow to increase use of glide bombs, ramp up its infantry assault and launch more mechanized attacks.

“The expectation is that Russia is regenerating forces right now and when the weather improves they’re going to increase the intensity of attacks,” he said.

A former U.S. official with knowledge of U.S.-Ukrainian intelligence-sharing arrangements said the intelligence sharing, which ranges from strategic information about Russia’s broad intentions to tactical information on targeting packages and Russian countermeasures such as jamming devices and decoys, was interwoven with U.S. support for Kyiv’s battlefield effort since the beginning of the war.

The official said that the goal of U.S. intelligence provision, used in Ukraine’s “close-in” fight and in strikes deep into Russian-held territory, was to help Ukraine boost strike precision and compensate for its smaller military and more limited arsenal. “All of this had an overarching goal of protecting what the Ukrainians had because there was less of it than the Russians had,” the official said. “It’s quality over quantity.”

That cooperation has played out in areas including the maritime theater, where the United States can provide high-level information about what Russia is doing with its Black Sea fleet and more operational intelligence about where a particular surface vessel is headed, helping Ukraine optimize its use of naval drones. On land, the United States has in many cases passed “strike packages” to Ukraine for longer-range missile and drone attacks, while issuing more general daily guidance that Ukrainian forces use in mounting attacks with shorter-range weapons.

U.S. intelligence has also been key in helping Ukraine innovate and adapt to a changing battlefield, for example when Russia develops methods of jamming Ukrainian capabilities, the official said. Without such support Ukraine would be able to continue long-range strikes. “But they would be a little bit firing into the blind,” the official said.

The pause on intelligence sharing could hurt Ukraine’s ability to identify Russian countermeasures including spoofing, decoys and jamming mechanisms. Ukraine could theoretically still be able to operate the sophisticated Patriot and other air defense systems without U.S. intelligence, but they would likely be less effective without American information about where threats were coming from and what kind of Russian systems are involved in a particular attack.

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• O’Grady reported from Kyiv. Aaron Schaffer contributed.