The United States has provided Ukraine with intelligence on Russian military units that has allowed the country to target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died since Russia invaded the country in late February, senior American officials told The New York Times.
According to the report, Ukrainian officials said they have killed around 12 Russian generals on the front lines, a figure that has “astonished” military analysts.
“The targeting help is part of a classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine,” The New York Times reported. “That 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. Officials declined to specify how many generals had been killed as a result of U.S. assistance.”
“The United States has focused on providing the location and other details about the Russian military’s mobile headquarters, which relocate frequently,” the outlet added. “Ukrainian officials have combined that geographic information with their own intelligence — including intercepted communications that alert the Ukrainian military to the presence of senior Russian officers — to conduct artillery strikes and other attacks that have killed Russian officers.”
According to The New York Times, after they published their report, Adrienne Watson, a National Security Council spokeswoman, said in a statement that the intelligence was not provided to the Ukrainians “with the intent to kill Russian generals.”
However, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said last month that the United States wants “to see Russia weakened to the degree it cannot do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
“Not all the strikes have been carried out with American intelligence. A strike over the weekend at a location in eastern Ukraine where Gen. Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, had visited was not aided by American intelligence, according to multiple U.S. officials. The United States prohibits itself from providing intelligence about the most senior Russian leaders, officials said,” The New York Times reported. “But American intelligence was critical in the deaths of other generals, officials acknowledged.”
