The Pentagon provides Kiev 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 with someone else's hands, and our losses are partly on their conscience. Or is direct participation in the war considered only the appearance of US ground forces on the battlefield?
Washington provided Kiev with intelligence that led to the deaths of high-ranking Russian officers, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing American top officials. After the announcement of the second phase of the Russian special operation, the newspaper writes, Ukraine receives information about events on the battlefield "in real time."
"The United States has focused efforts on transmitting location data and other details concerning the mobile headquarters of the Russian army, which is often moved. Ukrainian officials combined this data with their own intelligence information, including intercepted messages... to carry out artillery attacks and other attacks, as a result of which Russian officers were killed," the newspaper writes. The newspaper's sources refused to give the exact number of Russian commanders killed in this way. The US authorities themselves have repeatedly opposed the transfer to Kiev 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, the United Kingdom, and NATO as a whole constantly transmit intelligence and other parameters to the Ukrainian armed forces," presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on this occasion. Answering the question whether any special response measures could be taken, Peskov said that "of course, the Russian military is doing everything that is necessary in this situation."
However, official Washington hastened to disown the allegations of the New York Times. The representative of the US National Security Council 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 intention to kill Russian generals," Lenta quotes him as saying.ru". 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, Defense Minister Lloyd Austin said earlier.
In early March, the Novorossiysk City Hall announced the death in Ukraine of the deputy commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army of the Russian Ground Forces, Andrei Sukhovetsky. In mid-March, in the battles for Mariupol, the deputy commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Captain of the first rank Andrei Paly, was killed. This loss was reported by Senator from Sevastopol Ekaterina Altabaeva. In mid-April, Governor Alexander Beglov noted the patriotism and bravery of the deputy commander of the 8th Army, Major General Vladimir Frolov, who also died during the Ukrainian special operation.
Shortly after Watson, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby made similar "denials". According to him, the United States does not specifically supply Kiev with intelligence information about the location 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 making decisions on the choice of targets for strikes by the Ukrainian armed forces," Kirby quotes TASS. "Ukraine combines the information that we, as well as other partners, transmit 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 claimed.
Cold War-style Proxy battles
Even if the Pentagon data caused the deaths of Russian soldiers and commanders in Ukraine, this cannot yet be considered the entry of the United States into the conflict, our military experts say about this. "The exchange of information is not a direct military involvement. Even the supply of weapons to Ukraine cannot be called such. Of course, the American side's assistance hinders the Russian military, but this is only Washington's indirect participation in the fighting. There is a proxy war going on 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 Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.
"American politicians themselves are trying at every opportunity to draw a line between direct intervention and what kind of assistance they are providing to Ukraine now," American scholar Malek Dudakov noted in turn. – For example, they emphasize that Ukraine receives only intelligence from commercial satellites, and not from Pentagon satellites. In addition, he focuses on the fact that they are not sharing with Kiev 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 semi-underground mode. However, the Americans directly lead the Ukrainian side, so their participation can already be interpreted as direct," the analyst believes.
Deputy Director of the Institute of the USA and Canada, Reserve Major General Pavel Zolotarev recalls that Moscow and Washington already waged "proxy wars" between themselves in the second half of the XX 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.
"During those periods, the CIA monitored the military and 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 newspaper VZGLYAD. – Today, in space in geostationary orbit, we see permanent groupings of US satellites. In addition, the head of Space X, Elon Musk, provides the government with his satellites. We see that the United States has given Ukraine the opportunity to use some of these technical capabilities for free," the expert noted.
As the portal reported on Thursday Avia.Pro, the Ukrainian army uses Elon Musk's global StarLink satellite system to determine the exact coordinates of the deployment of Russian troops, missile guidance and control of Ukrainian drones. This is evidenced by the footage that got into the Network, in which an American mercenary thanks the billionaire for the equipment provided.
As FAN wrote back in early April, the US intelligence community buys space intelligence data on Ukraine from Maxar, Planet and BlackSky companies. Chief of the US Air Force Frank Kendall, an engineer by training, then said that the success of commercial reconnaissance satellites makes the Pentagon think about their integration into the unified information field of the American intelligence community and attract private companies as part of outsourcing. Moreover, this idea is based on the experience gained by the American side in working with Ukraine.
The actions of the AFU are commanded from NATO headquarters
Experts say that the power of all, and not only space American intelligence, is now thrown to the aid of Kiev. "The Americans see the movement of every tank, every armored vehicle, every column of ours," says military observer, Colonel Viktor Baranets. – They have several types of intelligence: space, aviation, radio engineering, ground, legal and illegal intelligence works – and the data is received by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine."
"The operation is turning into an intellectual battle between Russian and American generals," Baranets noted. "This battle is a battle of strategists, who will outplay whom. Not only at the level of the chief of the General Staff or the brigade commander. Battalion commanders are already receiving data online. We can say that the Ukrainian army has become an operational association under the auspices of the Pentagon. Ukrainians are just performers," Baranets believes.
Military expert Alexey Leonkov agrees that the United States provides Ukraine with total assistance in conducting any kind of intelligence and tracking, targeting, and staff work. Therefore, if the task was to decapitate the APU, it would have to strike targets somewhere in Europe, and with tactical nuclear weapons, he believes.
"Today, the entire reconnaissance space group of US satellites, as well as Earth remote sensing satellites, are working for Ukraine. Updating operational and strategic information takes 15-20 minutes. The data is transmitted to the control points directly to the AFU units. There, orders are issued on the ground, the tasks of operations are determined. Thus, there are no classic large headquarters with communication nodes and other attributes in Ukraine. Everything is dispersed. Such a system of information transmission and management allows Ukrainian units to maintain combat capability for a long time," Leonkov explained.
Rafael Fakhrutdinov, Artur Priymak, Alyona Zadorozhnaya