The Trump administration has been providing Ukraine with intelligence to carry out long-range drone attacks against Russian energy infrastructure, the Financial Times reported on Sunday, citing multiple US and Ukrainian officials.
The report said that the US intelligence helps Ukraine “shape route planning, altitude, timing and mission decisions, enabling Ukraine’s long-range, one-way attack drones to evade Russian air defenses.”
A US official told the paper that Ukraine selects the target for the strike, then the US provides information on its vulnerabilities. However, other officials said the US has actually been setting out target priorities for the Ukrainian military, meaning the US is choosing what to strike.
One of the FT’s sources described Ukraine’s drone force as the “instrument” the US is using to achieve the goal of undermining the Russian economy and pushing Russian President Vladimir Putin toward a settlement to end the war. The US has spent billions helping build up Ukraine’s drone program, an effort backed by the CIA.
The report said that the US began supplying Ukraine with the intelligence following a July phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump reportedly asked if Ukraine could hit Moscow if the US provided longer-range weapons. In August and September, Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian energy infrastructure significantly escalated.
US-backed attacks on Russian territory always risk a major escalation between Russia and NATO, and the FT report noted that the Biden administration refrained from supporting such strikes on Russian energy infrastructure. President Biden did support Ukrainian strikes on Russian border regions using ATACMS, US-provided missiles that have a range of about 190 miles.
President Trump reportedly halted the ATACMS strikes, but The Wall Street Journal recently reported that he has now signed off on supporting long-range missile strikes inside Russia. His administration is considering supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, which are nuclear-capable and have a range of over 1,000 miles, though it remains unclear if it’s a realistic option since the Ukrainian military lacks a way to fire them.
