The United States has provided intelligence that has helped Ukrainian forces kill many of the Russian generals who have died in the Ukraine war, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing senior U.S. officials.
Washington has provided to Ukraine details on Russia's expected troop movements and the location and other details about Russia's mobile military headquarters, and Ukraine has combined that help with its own intelligence to conduct artillery strikes and other attacks that have killed Russian officers, the newspaper said.
The targeting help is part of a classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine, the newspaper said.
Washington has reportedly provided to Ukraine details on Russia’s expected troop movements and the location and other details about Russia’s mobile military headquarters, and Ukraine has combined that help with its own intelligence to conduct artillery strikes and other attacks that have killed Russian officers.
Intelligence also includes anticipated Russian troop movements gleaned from recent American assessments of Moscow’s secret battle plan for the fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, the officials said.
Ukrainian officials said they have killed about 12 Russian generals on the battlefield, according to the New York Times. Officials declined to specify how many generals had been killed as a result of US assistance, the newspaper added.
U.S. intelligence agencies are known to have used classified and commercial satellites to trace Russian troop movements in Ukraine.
American intelligence was reportedly not used in a strike over the weekend on a location in eastern Ukraine visited by Russia's highest ranking officer, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Gen. Valery Gerasimov.
U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson later said the intelligence was not shared with Ukraine "with the intent to kill Russian generals."
The Kremlin has regularly claimed that Russia is in a proxy war with the U.S.-led west.
Washington has publicly and privately shared intelligence with Ukraine before and during Russia's invasion, walking a fine line to avoid escalation.
The Biden administration had changed a classified directive in early April, lifting some geographic limits on actionable information to be shared on potential targets in eastern Ukraine as Russia shifted its military objectives, the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press reported at the time.
"We have opened up the pipes," Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a U.S. Senate panel Tuesday.
Publicly available data analyzed by independent Russian media said at least 317 Russian officers including two major generals have been killed in Ukraine.
