However, secure US communications with Ukrainian officials are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain as the war rages, CNN sources said. Officials also acknowledged that the United States is now more limited in its ability to gather real-time intelligence without anyone on the ground and the apparent lack of military drones flying over it. The CIA has not acknowledged whether it operates its own drones to monitor the conflict.
Senate Republicans Ben Sasse and Marco Rubio, the Republican’s chief member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have said publicly in recent days that they fear intelligence will not reach the Ukrainian army fast enough. Republicans in the House of Representatives began raising those fears this week, fueling criticism of the Biden administration for allegedly “hiding” intelligence from Ukrainians. However, Ukrainians have not complained publicly about the lack of US intelligence sharing.
A Senate source familiar with the Republican Party’s concerns said lawmakers were concerned both that intelligence had been downgraded or less specific, and that it had not been passed on to Ukrainians quickly enough.
Sources familiar with intelligence said it was indeed declining, but above all to eliminate sensitive sources and methods – a particular concern given the logistical challenges of establishing completely secure lines with Ukrainian officials amid the Russian attack. .
In most cases, two sources familiar with the sharing system said the intelligence being shared included information on the movements and location of Russian forces, as well as intercepted communications about their military plans. And it is usually provided to Ukrainian officials as quickly as within 30 minutes to an hour after receiving it from the United States, said one source.
Sharing has been facilitated by secure communications equipment, although all communication with forces on the ground in Kyiv is becoming increasingly difficult given ongoing power outages and communications in the besieged capital, another source said.
A key solution is the portal set up in recent weeks, where US officials can upload intelligence that Ukrainians can access in near real time, the first source said.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Thursday that the United States has shared “a significant amount of detailed timely intelligence on Russia’s plans and activities with the Ukrainian government to help Ukrainians defend themselves.”
“We’ve been doing this for months,” Psaki said. “This includes information that should help them inform and develop their military response to the Russian invasion, it is happening – or it has happened.”
Another source of concern among critics of the US system seems to be that the administration does not provide the kind of detailed “targeting intelligence” that has long been used in deadly “find, fix and finish” operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
There may be practical reasons why the United States may not provide some of the more detailed “targeting intelligence” that some lawmakers require. Much of the intelligence community’s “image” – a term of the intelligence community that means “image intelligence” – comes from satellites. Two intelligence sources said some of the intelligence on Russia’s position that changed the game came from commercial images. But these satellites are often limited in time by what they can see, and in any case they can’t provide the kind of live video that low-flying drones are capable of.
Current and former officials also told CNN that the United States does not support 24/7 drone coverage in Ukraine, which has become typical of the US conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. Although the Pentagon has not commented on surveillance efforts in Eastern Europe, flight tracking websites have repeatedly shown Global Hawk reconnaissance drones flying near but not over Ukrainian airspace.
“We do not provide the kind of real-time targeting you see that our military has entered into conflicts like in Iraq, where instantly, we have UAVs (drones or drones), the blinking eye, as they say, monitors the situation and provides of these targeting data, “said Representative Adam Smith, Democratic Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Thursday. “We are not doing this because it goes beyond the border to make us take part in the war.
US says it shares “situational awareness” information
In recent weeks, the Biden administration has deliberately made a political decision to describe any information shared with Ukraine as an effort to help them gain “situational awareness” in the war, rather than explicitly directing and killing Russian soldiers, one source said. The distinction is intended to avoid Russia’s possibility of claiming that the United States is directly involved in the war, which could risk a direct conflict between Moscow and Washington.
Sasse also claims that “lawyers” and non-specific “technicians” are holding back the flow of information, a charge a senior defense official told reporters on Thursday was inaccurate. There are some indications that the Biden administration’s guidelines for sharing intelligence with Ukraine have been changed this week.
“In general, I share the fear that some of this may not be fast enough. And even today, there was work to be done to assess this and ensure that all unnecessary barriers were removed, “Rubio told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday.
The senior defense official told reporters on Thursday that the United States continues to “provide information and intelligence to Ukraine, as we believe it would be most useful.”
Asked if any decisions have been made that the United States will not share certain intelligence with Ukraine, as this risks turning the United States into a party to the conflict, the official declined to discuss the specifics of what is being shared.
“What I can tell you is that we continue to provide intelligence and information to Ukrainians, and that continues,” the official said. “We share with them what we believe can be useful to them. I will not talk about vehicles, I will not talk about their parameters.”
The official noted that the United States no longer has boots on the ground in Ukraine or planes flying over the country’s airspace, saying the US ability to gather intelligence “is not as stable as it was before.”
“Ukrainians are on the ground, Ukrainians are in the fight,” the official said. “And in many cases, in many ways, they just have more contextual information than we can give them.”
This story has been updated with additional details and context.