Trump’s pausing of intelligence sharing will harm Ukraine

The United States’s decision to suspend all intelligence sharing with Kyiv is a less visible but almost as serious and more immediate blow to Ukraine as the pause to arms deliveries. It also raises worrying questions about the future of intelligence sharing amongst Western allies.

Ukraine is used to supplies of military materiel coming in fits and starts, and can and does stockpile ammunition, spare parts and the like to cover the dry seasons. It will probably be a couple of months before the pause really begins to have an appreciable impact on their operations. Besides, while some items such as Patriot missiles cannot be duplicated, domestic production and European and other systems can fill some of the wider shortfall, especially in drones and artillery ammunition. The intelligence-sharing suspension, by contrast, has an immediate effect.

Intelligence covers a gamut of purposes, from assessments of Vladimir Putin’s ultimate objectives to forecasts of defense industrial production. However, much of what has been most useful in the war has been by definition often a “use it or lose it” asset, especially the kind of real-time satellite and signals data used to target long-range strikes accurately or provide early warning of incoming attacks. Satellite imaging, Global Hawk surveillance drones, Poseidon and Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft, as well as a plethora of human, signals and cyber intelligence platforms and assets give the US — and until now Ukraine — an unprecedentedly accurate and detailed picture of the battlefield.

Ukraine has its own extensive intelligence community, including the SBU internal security service (which also operates behind the lines in Russia), HUR military intelligence and the SZRU foreign intelligence service. Their capabilities ought not to be under-estimated. Indeed, their deep understanding of Russian procedures mean that they have often been able to provide useful intelligence for their Western allies.

However, although they have certain capabilities when it comes to cyber and signals intelligence in particular, there is no way they can replace or replicate the scale of detailed collection the US is able to conduct with its network of satellites and ground- and air-based platforms. Likewise, there is a limit to what the other Western allies can do to remedy the situation, even though there are European and commercial imaging and communications satellites that, up to a point, fill the gap left by the Americans.

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz suggested in a TV interview on Fox & Friends that this suspension of support might quickly be lifted, if Volodymyr Zelensky’s government shows that it can “nail down these negotiations” and demonstrate a clear willingness to accede to Donald Trump’s desire for a ceasefire followed by further negotiations. In short, this is another unsubtle turn of the screw.

Whether or not this happens, it will have had an especially insidious in its effect on intelligence-sharing and the American services’ relationships with their closest partners, especially the Anglophone “Five Eyes” nations (the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). Britain, given the disproportionate capacity of its services and the long history of cooperation, is the closest of all. Obviously, the US is by far the greatest net provider (its combined intelligence budget is just over $100 billion, compared with less than $6 billion for the UK). But many intelligence products combine domestic and shared intelligence to produce the most timely and accurate picture possible.

Now, though, British agencies have been forbidden by the Americans to share any products which use or depend on their intelligence that was once coded as “Rel UKR” or Releasable to Ukraine. There will be pressure to try and disentangle close and previously highly-productive cooperation and be able to provide intelligence products which are entirely “home-grown,” or at least without any US component. Even the closest intelligence relationships are careful and compartmentalized — no one gives away their best assets or insights — but this will mean throwing up yet more barriers.

Even if and when the suspension is lifted, there will be understandable caution in British and European intelligence circles about the full resumption of cooperation, a hesitation about again relying on US information and analysis lest it be pulled again.

This is exacerbated by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s reported instruction that US Cyber Command halt planning and conducting offensive operations against Russia as a confidence-building gesture. Although the US still conducts defensive cyber operations, the close relationship between the US Cyber Command and Britain’s National Cyber Force, which brings together GCHQ, the ministry of defense and a range of other agencies, has meant that this move has raised probably exaggerated fears that, in the future, the UK’s online defenses might also be undermined.

This all needs to be kept in context. It is as premature to declare “Five Eyes” dead as it is to write NATO’s epitaph. On a personal, as well as institutional level, UK-US intelligence sharing is still strong and ongoing. Nonetheless, it has been a shocking reminder that, under Trump, many old certainties about America’s reliability as an ally are being questioned.