The Biden administration is moving to significantly expand intelligence sharing with Ukraine to aid in its fight against Russian forces, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
The report said the Biden administration made a decision late last week to expand intelligence sharing to help Ukraine better identify how Russia plans to attack and enable the Ukrainian forces to respond with artillery, drones, and other weaponry. The change was made by updating the intelligence-sharing guidance for US spy agencies.
“As the conflict evolves, we continue to adjust to ensure that operators have the flexibility to share detailed, timely intelligence with the Ukrainians,” an unnamed intelligent official told the Journal. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby confirmed on Wednesday that the intelligence-sharing guidance was updated but wouldn’t elaborate.
US officials said that Washington will still refrain from sharing intelligence with Ukraine that could be used for attacks inside Russian territory. The updated guidance came as Russia is focusing its offensive on Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the US was providing Ukraine with intelligence to help them fight Russia in the Donbas. But according to the Journal, under the previous guidance, the US shared intelligence with Kyiv on Russia’s capabilities in Donbas and Crimea but wouldn’t provide targeting data that would help Ukraine go on the offensive to retake the territories.
Since 2014, Russia has controlled Crimea, and separatists have controlled a sizeable portion of territory in the Donbas. The Journal report suggests that the US had only been providing targeting intelligence in territories that were controlled by the Ukrainian government before the Russian invasion on February 24.
On top of the expanded intelligence sharing, the Biden administration pledged on Wednesday another $800 million military aid package for Ukraine that includes howitzers, marking the first time the US is providing Kyiv with artillery systems. The increased intelligence sharing and arms supply raises questions about at what point Russia would consider Washington a co-belligerent in the war.
That is a very fine line. US can be percieved by Russia as leading it’s UkroNazi proxies in war.
If that is the case all h*ll may break loose and Russia will act according to it’s doctrine and strike. Directly or indirectly by blinding certain US satellites f.ex.
Yes, this war is US vs Russia. The US has made it so. It’s only that Washington prefers remote control tactical approach, stand-off weaponry (Ukra-NAZIS). They are dancing on a semantical razor’s edge. And, despite their well publicized sympathy for Ukrainian civilians, none of our lives figure in their computations at all.
Nicely stated Robert….Time for me to freshen up the old bomb shelter… This time, the war-time cocktail will be?………… Black Russians~
Who knows what it will take. My guess is a false flag. Anything. Problem is, Biden may not be able to remember the sequence to carry it out.
Exactly.
China proved that by taking out one of its satellites. Swish, boom!
“US not sharing intelligence for strikes inside Russia, blah, blah, blah…”
Does anyone really believe that? (!)
Why, yes. I do. I also believe that we did not share intel for strikes against Yemen, or refueling aircraft. /s
In fact, as I mentioned in the helicopter thread, I think the CIA is running these helicopter ops into Russia, not Ukraine itself (not that there’s a difference between the CIA and Ukraine anyway.) So the fact that they even mentioned strikes inside Russia pretty much confirms that.
Few countries are helping Ukraine defend itself, the other is leveling cities to steal land for profit and more control of the region over paranoia.
Time to target and takeout the criminal Butcher of Bucha Zelesnky!
Maybe this will help you understand the Russian sensitivity to it’s border areas.
Total Deaths by Country
Soviet Union 26 million
United Kingdom 450 thousand
United States 418 thousand
Perhaps the arming of a hyperbolic maniac like Zelensky and the Lithuanian Polish Fascist SS squads killing ethnic Russian Ukrainians can be seen as a big deal to Russia when you consider the deaths within Russia in World War 2.
If the US had a role in the sinking of the Moskva, we ought to expect retaliation in kind, against American warships at sea or military aircraft.
Regardless of what caused the Moskva’s sinking, they just lost a $750 million ship. Do you really think they want to lose more of them?
That depends on how many carriers they can take with them.
They were always meant to be lost when taking out their original targets, carriers.
Our hawks have for some time now wanted a war with Russia. They made little secret of that. They seem to believe their own jive that Russia is just a gas station, not a superpower.
They got their war. Now I won’t pretend that is anything other than total insanity, nor pretend the dangers are not there. There are reasons we never did this, and reasons these hawks are suicidal and insane.
Is that a threat? Investigation has merely started. If US is in any way involved in this you might wish you were some place else.
“Is that a threat?”
What, do you think I’m a fire control technician on a US Navy vessel or something?
The US is clearly “in any way involved” in the war. That’s not been a secret. Whether it was “in any way involved” in the particular strike is a different, but not particularly interesting, question. If the Russians were going to treat US involvement per se as a casus belli they’d have had grounds for doing so well before the sinking of the Moskva.
But Putin is not an idiot so far as I can tell. He’s probably not going to escalate from not even being able to beat Ukraine to having his ass directly handed to him by the US.