The Pentagon provides Kyiv with intelligence that helps to strike Russian commanders, the NYT newspaper claims, citing top US officials. This is the first time this has happened since the Cold War. It turns out that the Americans, in fact, are already participating in the battles against Russia, albeit by proxy, and our losses are partly on their conscience. Or is it only the appearance on the battlefield of the US ground forces that is considered direct participation in the war?
Washington provided Kyiv with intelligence that led to the deaths of high-ranking Russian officers, the New York Times reported Thursday, citing US top officials. After the announcement of the second phase of the Russian special operation, the newspaper writes, Ukraine receives information about the events on the battlefield “in real time.”
“The US has focused efforts on transmitting location data and other details regarding the mobile headquarters of the Russian army, which moves frequently. Ukrainian officials combined this data with their own intelligence information, including intercepted messages to carry out artillery shelling and other attacks that killed Russian officers”, the newspaper writes.
The newspaper’s sources declined to name the exact number of Russian commanders killed in this way. The US authorities themselves have repeatedly opposed the transfer to Kyiv of data on the “most senior” members of the Russian military leadership.
At the end of April, it became known about the decision of the Joe Biden administration to lift some restrictions on the transfer of intelligence to Ukraine, RIA Novosti reports. This happened at the call of one of the members of the Intelligence Committee of the House of Representatives of Congress.
“Our military is well aware that the United States, Great Britain, NATO as a whole are constantly transmitting intelligence and other parameters to the Ukrainian armed forces,” Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said on this occasion. Asked if any special response measures could be taken, Peskov said “of course, the Russian military is doing whatever is necessary in this situation.”
However, official Washington hastened to disown the New York Times’ claims. US National Security Council spokesman Adrienne Watson called “irresponsible” reports that Washington is helping to kill Russian officers.
“The United States is providing battlefield intelligence to help Ukrainians defend their country. We do not provide intelligence with the intent to kill Russian generals,” Lenta.ru quoted him as saying. At the same time, Watson did not explain how one differs from the other.
The fact that the Pentagon provides the Ukrainian General Staff with intelligence for fighting in the Donbass was also mentioned earlier by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
In early March, the mayor’s office of Novorossiysk announced the death in Ukraine of Andrei Sukhovetsky, deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Russian Ground Forces. In mid-March, in the battles for Mariupol, the deputy commander of the Black Sea Fleet, captain of the first rank Andrey Paliy, died. This loss was reported by the Senator from Sevastopol Ekaterina Altabaeva. In mid-April, Governor Alexander Beglov noted the patriotism and courage of the deputy commander of the 8th Army, Major General Vladimir Frolov, who also died during the Ukrainian special operation.
Shortly after Watson, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby made similar “denials”. According to him, the United States specifically does not supply Kyiv with intelligence information about the whereabouts of Russian military leaders on the battlefield.
“We do not provide intelligence information about the location of senior military leaders on the battlefield and do not participate in the development of decisions on the choice of targets for strikes by the Ukrainian armed forces,” Kirby was quoted by TASS. “Ukraine combines the information that we, as well as other partners, share with the information that they themselves collect on the battlefield. And then they make their own decisions and take their own actions,” the Pentagon spokesman said.
“Proxy battles” in the style of the cold war
Even if Pentagon data caused the death of Russian soldiers and commanders in Ukraine, this still cannot be considered US entry into the conflict, our military experts say about this.
“The exchange of information is not direct military participation. Even the supply of weapons to Ukraine cannot be called such. Of course, the help of the American side interferes with the Russian military, but this is only an indirect participation of Washington in the hostilities. There is a proxy war against Russia,” said the former head of the international treaty department of the Ministry of Defense, reserve lieutenant general Yevgeny Buzhinsky.
According to the general, the direct participation of the United States in the battles against Russia will be the crossing of the Ukrainian border by the American military and a direct clash with the Russian Armed Forces.
“The American politicians themselves are trying at every opportunity to draw a line between direct intervention and what kind of assistance to Ukraine they are providing now”, – noted in turn the Americanist Malek Dudakov.
“For example, they emphasize that Ukraine receives only intelligence from commercial satellites, and not from Pentagon satellites. In addition, it focuses on the fact that they do not share with Kyiv all the information that American intelligence has.”
Unlike the military expert, the political scientist is convinced that the Pentagon is already involved in this, albeit a hybrid confrontation, which means they are also guilty of the losses of the Russian army.
“Yes, Washington does not send regular troops to Ukraine, it uses its military instructors in a semi-underground mode. However, the Americans are directly in charge of the Ukrainian side, so their participation can already be interpreted as direct,” the analyst believes.
Deputy Director of the Institute for the USA and Canada, Major General Pavel Zolotarev recalls that Moscow and Washington were already at war with each other in the second half of the 20th century, at the height of the Cold War. However, at that time, sitting in the capital of the USSR or the USA, it was much more difficult to understand the situation on the front lines, since there was no space intelligence yet, the expert explains.
“The CIA in those periods monitored the military-political activity of the Soviet Union in the regions that the States considered their spheres of influence. But then the US intelligence did not have such technical means as they have now”, – Zolotarev tells the VZGLYAD newspaper.
“Today in space in geostationary orbit we see permanent constellations of US satellites. In addition, the head of Space X, Elon Musk, provides the government with its satellites. We see that the United States provided Ukraine with the opportunity to use some of these technical capabilities for free,” the expert noted.
As the Avia.Pro portal reported on Thursday, the Ukrainian army uses Elon Musk’s StarLink global satellite system to determine the exact coordinates of the deployment of Russian troops, target missiles and control Ukrainian drones. This is evidenced by footage on the Web in which an American mercenary thanks the billionaire for the equipment provided.
As FAN wrote back in early April, the US intelligence community is buying space intelligence data on Ukraine from Maxar, Planet and BlackSky. US Air Force Chief Frank Kendall, an engineer by education, then said that the success of commercial reconnaissance satellites makes the Pentagon think about integrating them into a single information field of the American intelligence community and attracting private companies as part of outsourcing. Moreover, this idea is based on the experience gained by the American side in working specifically with Ukraine.
The actions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are commanded from NATO headquarters
The power of all, and not just American space intelligence, is now thrown to help Kyiv, experts say.
“The Americans see the movement of every tank, every armored vehicle, every column of ours,” points out military observer Colonel Viktor Baranets.
“Several types of intelligence work for them: space, aviation, radio engineering, ground, legal and illegal intelligence works – and the data goes to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
“The operation is turning into an intellectual battle between Russian and American generals,” said Baranets.
“This battle is a battle of strategists, who will outplay whom. Not only at the level of chief of staff or brigade commander. Battalion commanders are already receiving data online. We can say that the Ukrainian army has become an operational unit under the auspices of the Pentagon. Ukrainians are just performers,” says Baranets.
Military expert Oleksiy Leonkov agrees that the United States provides Ukraine with total assistance in carrying out any type of reconnaissance and tracking, target designation, and staff work. Therefore, if the task was set to decapitate the Armed Forces of Ukraine, they would have to strike at targets somewhere in Europe, and with tactical nuclear weapons, he believes.
“Today, the entire reconnaissance space constellation of US satellites, as well as satellites for remote sensing of the Earth, are working for Ukraine. Updating operational-strategic information is 15-20 minutes. The data is transmitted to the control points directly to the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. There, orders are issued on the ground, tasks of operations are determined. Thus, there are no classical large headquarters with communication centers and other attributes in Ukraine. Everything is dispersed. Such a system of information transfer and control allows the Ukrainian units to maintain combat capability for a long time”, Leonkov explained.
Rafael Fakhrutdinov, Artur Priymak, Alena Zadorozhnaya, VIEW
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