CNN
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The Trump administration appears to have ordered at least a partial halt to the crucial intelligence that the United States shares with Ukraine to defend against the Russian invasion, according to a US military official and public remarks made by top Trump administration officials.
Statements from national security adviser Mike Waltz and CIA Director John Ratcliffe on Wednesday morning indicated that a pause in intelligence sharing is in place but the extent of the limitations was not clear. Both officials also suggested that the pause may be short-lived if the president can be satisfied that Ukraine has taken steps towards negotiations to end the war – a controversial effort that appeared to be derailed after Friday’s fiery Oval Office meeting between President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“We are pausing, assessing, looking at everything across our security relationship,” national security adviser Mike Waltz told CBS News, asked directly about intelligence-sharing with Kyiv. The Trump administration had already announced a freeze in weapons deliveries to Ukraine, part of the White House effort to attempt to pressure Kyiv into a swift end to a war it didn’t start.
Still, Waltz told reporters after the interview that he spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart over the phone this morning, and he projected optimism on the state of talks since Zelensky issued a statement yesterday saying that he is ready to negotiate peace.
“We are having good talks on location for the next round of negotiations, on delegations, on substance. So, just in the last 24 hours since the public statement from Zelensky, and then the subsequent conversations, which I’m going to walk inside and continue, I think we’re going to see movement in very short order,” Waltz said.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe in an interview on Fox Business on Wednesday also suggested that the pause on intelligence sharing may soon be ended.
“You saw the response that President Zelensky put out,” Ratcliffe said, referring to recent statements from the Ukrainian president that the country was ready to negotiate. “So I think on the military front and the intelligence front, the pause that allowed that to happen, I think will go away.”
If the freeze is total and sustained, multiple sources familiar with the information shared with Ukraine over the past three years of war said, it could deal a devastating blow to Kyiv’s ability to fight on.
“It’s pretty bad,” one source familiar with the arrangement said. “Combined with the stopping of military assistance and foreign aid, it pretty much guarantees a Russian victory without there needing to be a peace deal.”
A top Russian lawmaker, Andrei Kartapolov, in recent days called for the US to stop providing Ukraine with intelligence, underscoring the boon Trump may have already offered Moscow on the battlefield.
“It would be much more important if the Americans stopped giving them with intelligence information, then this would allow us to achieve results more quickly,” Kartapolov said.
Since the early days of the conflict, the US has provided extensive information on Russian force movements and locations, as well as intercepted communications about their military plans and the movement of their spies – intelligence that officials say has been as important as any American weapon system to both Ukraine’s ability to protect its cities and push back on Moscow on the battlefield.
When Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2022, the source familiar with the sharing said, Russia was planning an airborne operation to seize key facilities in Kyiv that could have allowed them to sack the Ukrainian capital. Ukraine was able to successfully derail the operation because of intelligence that the US shared.
In the lead up to Trump’s inauguration, Ratcliffe and the transition team were told of the value of intelligence sharing with Ukraine by US officials who stressed that it was a hallmark of their achievements on the battlefield, according to another source familiar with those discussions.
One US military official said that the US is now offering fewer surveillance flights to the Ukrainians, as well as less satellite coverage – both of which are essential to Ukraine’s ability to defend its cities against Russian missile attacks.
But underscoring the fluid nature of the situation, as recently as Tuesday, another US military official in the region said that American military contact with the Ukrainians, including some intelligence sharing, was continuing.
A key concern for Ukraine is whether the administration — or Trump’s ally, Elon Musk — will allow the satellite internet system Starlink to continue operating. That system has been a critical component to the Ukrainian military response that has allowed its forces to communicate on the battlefield.
For some US officials, the decision to limit intelligence sharing with Ukraine not only helps Russia — it is tantamount to a betrayal of Ukraine. The CIA has worked closely with Ukrainian special operations forces since 2014, when Russia first took action to seize control of Ukraine, supporting a separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine and annexing Crimea.
In the early days of the 2022 conflict, prominent Republicans — including now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio — complained that the Biden administration wasn’t sharing intelligence with the Ukrainian military quickly enough.
Now, many US military and intelligence officers “feel we are abandoning our allies on the battlefield,” said one former intelligence official who remains in contact with old colleagues.
CNN’s Matthew Chance contributed reporting.
This story and its headline have been updated with additional reporting.