Republicans want the U.S. intelligence community to increase its information-sharing with Ukraine significantly, including helping the country’s military if it moves to retake the Russian-occupied territories of Crimea and the Donbas.
The Russian military has abandoned its efforts surrounding the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv after a disjointed invasion launched in February and is regrouping in eastern Ukraine, with plans to carry out significant operations there. Russian leader Vladimir Putin seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 while Russian-backed separatists began seizing portions of the eastern Donbas region the same year.
“We write with regard to the brutal Russian invasion and crimes in Ukraine and the need for the U.S. Intelligence Community to ensure that Ukrainian forces have the resources to counter Putin’s military,” Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans said in a letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines. “We remain deeply concerned that not enough is being done to share critical intelligence that would assist the Ukrainians as Russian forces move to secure territory in the southern and eastern parts of the country.”
The letter was led by Vice-Chairman Marco Rubio, and the signatories included fellow committee members Sens. Roy Blunt, Richard Burr, Susan Collins, John Cornyn, Tom Cotton, Jim Risch, and Ben Sasse.
They wrote: “We urge you to ensure that our intelligence agencies proactively share intelligence with the Ukrainians to help them protect, defend, and retake every inch of Ukraine’s sovereign territory, which includes Crimea and the Donbas.”
CIA Director William Burns said Thursday at Georgia Tech that the United States has been “committed to rapid and effective intelligence sharing with our Ukrainian partners throughout the fighting.”
One U.S. intelligence official told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday: “As the conflict evolves, we continue to adjust to ensure that operators have the flexibility to share detailed timely intelligence with the Ukrainians.”
The invasion of Ukraine came after weeks of warnings by the Biden administration that Putin was likely to invade. President Joe Biden said in January he believed a Russian victory in Ukraine would essentially be certain.
Although the Biden administration was praised for its intelligence-sharing as it sounded the alarm ahead of Putin’s invasion, Republicans believe the U.S. is now not doing enough to help capitalize on unexpected momentum from the Ukrainians.
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An intelligence official told the Associated Press on Thursday: “We are intensely sharing timely intelligence with the Ukrainians to help them defend themselves throughout their country, including in areas held by Russia before the 2022 invasion.”
But the report indicated that “some people familiar with the directive say there is ambiguity about the new limits,” including “whether the U.S. would delay or limit information about a possible Russian target in areas internationally recognized as Ukrainian territory but that Moscow or its proxies controlled before the war.”
U.S. officials first told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that the Biden administration was greatly broadening its intelligence-sharing with the Ukrainian military.
Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, pressed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on intelligence sharing during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, asking the Pentagon leader if the U.S. is providing intelligence for attacks in parts of the Donbas or Crimea, and Austin replied: “We are providing them intelligence to conduct operations in the Donbas, that’s correct.”
Cotton asked if that included “offensive operations to reclaim their own territory” in those areas, and Austin seemed to indicate that was not the case at that time.
“We want to make sure that’s clear to our force, and so the updated guidance that goes out today, we’ll make sure that that’s clear,” Austin said, adding, “Certainly the current guidance was not clear in that regard, so we’ll make sure that’s clear.”
Cotton replied: “I think this is part of what you’ve heard from both parties in this committee, is that, as much as we have done, we’re still engaged in too many half measures, there’s still too much hesitancy and tentativeness in our posture towards this war.”
Rep. Mike Turner, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, raised this same topic with Gen. Tod Wolters, the U.S. military’s top commander in Europe, during a House hearing last month, asking if he is comfortable with the speed of intelligence sharing with the Ukrainians.
“I’m comfortable, but I want it to speed up. And I always will say that even if it occurs in one second, I want it tomorrow to be in a half a second,” he said. “It needs to continue to get faster.”
Despite the insistence from Wolters that intelligence-sharing can always get better, that didn’t stop Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from telling the House last week that “this war has arguably been the most successful intelligence operation in military history, and it’s really tremendous, and someday that story will be told.”
He had reportedly told Congress behind closed doors in early February that Kyiv could be conquered by Russia within 72 hours of a full-scale invasion.
Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier also admitted last month that he had underestimated Ukraine’s will to fight.
Democratic House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith had complained to MSNBC in early March that the U.S. was not providing “real-time targeting” to the Ukrainians, saying, “We’re not doing that because that steps over the line to making us participating in the war.”
But Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, told NBC that “we are sharing intelligence with Ukrainians as quickly as possible.”
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Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Wednesday that “as the geographic concentration has changed for Russia, and they’re focusing more on the Donbas … we felt it was important that we needed to update the guidance on intelligence sharing with the Ukrainians, based on developments on the ground, and we’re doing that.”
