US Cuts Intel and Aid to Ukraine: Beginning of the End, or Just More Flimflam?
It’s now been confirmed that Trump has cut off both Ukrainian military aid and intelligence-sharing, which has twisted the European elite into knots.
However, as with everything when it comes to Trump’s recent diktats, there are nuances and caveats. There are various claims as to the true ‘extent’ of the cut-offs. Some sources even claim Ukraine continues to receive intelligence:
Ukraine continues to receive intelligence from the United States, a Kyiv official who asked to remain anonymous told Bloomberg News on Wednesday.
Another:
The United States has suspended the transfer of intelligence data to Ukraine that could be used to strike deep into Russian territory, Sky News reported, citing a Ukrainian source.
According to him, the process of exchanging intelligence between Washington and Kiev has not completely stopped.
Other sources claimed the suspension of intel-sharing was ‘selective’, corroborating the above:
❗️The suspension of the transfer of US intelligence to Kyiv is "selective" in nature, but will deprive the Ukrainian Armed Forces of data that would allow them to strike deep into Russia, Sky News reports
One source says US has stopped lethal targeting data, but continues passing “defensive” data, as in information about incoming Russian strikes, etc.
CBS reports that the US continues to pass on defensive data to Ukraine
According to three anonymous sources in the US administration, Washington has suspended the exchange of so-called "lethal" data, including information for HIMARS targeting.
However, the defensive information needed for protection is still being received.
And other sources still—like FT in this case—report that Five Eyes members will continue “passing on” the US intelligence to Ukraine anyway:
The Financial Times adds some details about the intelligence cutoff: "While the US has also formally blocked its allies from sharing US intelligence with Ukraine, two officials said that recipients with assets inside the country were likely to continue passing on relevant intelligence to Kyiv. But that would not apply to time-sensitive and high-value intelligence, such as that needed for Ukraine to conduct precision strikes on moveable Russian targets."
Most people aren’t aware of just how “leaky” the Five Eyes networks are—the information will easily be passed on to whomever wants or needs it. Just recall Jack Teixeira, a lowly national guard IT tech who had full access to the CIA networks and databases with all up-to-date “highly classified” intelligence. One could argue that Trump’s ban on the intel-sharing is only performative in nature, with the full understanding that the information will easily continue to find its way to Ukraine.
Another source claims NATO is already picking up the slack:
NATO specialists from France, Norway, Britain and Romania have been deployed to the battle to save the Ukrainian Armed Forces from "blindness" on the LBS.
SIGINT stations at NATO air bases in Lithuania, Romania, Germany and Turkey are operating at full capacity. The activity of French and British AWACS reconnaissance aircraft along the borders of Ukraine has been increased.
With a different uncorroborated report noting:
At Ukrainian command posts of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the battle tracking and satellite online feeds on tablets and TV screens have indeed been disconnected . The French Armée de l'air et de l'espace have been trying for three days to connect the command bunkers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to the communication channels of their operational commands CDAOA and CFAS.
The same thing is happening along the lines of the British RAF and RNS.
As such, expectations should be tempered as to how drastic the effects of Trump’s various aid revocations will actually be—at least in the near term.
One Russian analyst writes:
The situation with the alleged stop in the transfer of intelligence data is twofold.
On the one hand, the Ukrainian Armed Forces may no longer receive any sensitive information from the Americans. But this does not affect the activity of NATO reconnaissance aircraft in the Black Sea. Right now, three aircraft are operating over Romania: a Boeing P-8A Poseidon of the US Navy, a Bombardier Challenger 650 Artemis, and a Gulfstream G550 of the Italian Air Force electronic intelligence, which is relatively rare in this area.
The legal conflict in this matter is quite complicated. On the one hand, the US does not transfer anything collected by its own forces to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. On the other hand, not a word is said about NATO aviation, and they are quite capable of transferring this sensitive information.
If the latter statement is true, then by and large – at least in terms of the use of Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles in Crimea and UAVs in the Black Sea – there is no reason to expect any deterioration for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Secondly, it should be noted that even if these pauses in aid and intelligence are certifiably real, it doesn’t mean they’re going to last. Trump’s team appears to now be carrot-on-sticking Ukraine to negotiate, and the White House has insisted that the pauses will be lifted if Ukraine comes to the table:
As an aside, let us take a moment to admire the logic of this conditional exchange. We will lift the weapons ban and give you more weapons once you come to the table to sign a peace deal. Does that make sense to everyone? It usually works the other way around. Why would Russia possibly agree to a ceasefire or peace talks with a Ukraine it now knows will continue receiving huge sums of weaponry upon sitting down to negotiate?
What’s looking likely is that Russia has demanded for the US to stop participating in long range strikes on critical Russian industries as part of the ongoing Russia-US negotiations. How can Russia trust the US when it is actively helping Ukraine carry out painful strikes on strategic Russian sites?
Now the conversation has turned entirely to how long Ukraine can last with these cuts to aid and intelligence. Everyone seems to be settling around the 2-4 month mark. From CNN:
One expert said that the move would be felt within two to four months as aid from European countries helps Kyiv remain in the fight for now. “The impact is going to be big. I would call it crippling,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies who has closely followed the war.
“When your supplies get cut in half, eventually that shows up on the front lines,” Cancian said. “Their front lines would continue to buckle and eventually they would break and Ukraine would have to accept an adverse — even catastrophic — peace settlement.”
New York Times takes its turn:
The article quotes Ukrainian Lt. General Romanenko:
“Europe can’t possibly replace American aid,” the former deputy of Ukraine’s military general staff, Lt. Gen. Ihor Romanenko, said last month.
Ukraine itself has been churning out drones and building up domestically made artillery systems, and it plans to spend 26 percent of its budget on defense this year. But some top Ukrainian officials say the military will be in dire straits if American support is not restarted.
“Ukraine definitely has a safety margin of about six months even without systematic assistance from the United States, but it will be much more difficult, of course,” one lawmaker, Fedir Venislavskyi, told the news agency RBC-Ukraine on Tuesday.
The article goes on to say that though US’ portion of the aid to Ukraine has dipped in comparison to Europe’s, the American portion is the far more lethal and ‘critical’ of the aid; primarily they’re likely referring to HIMARS, ATACMS, and Patriot missiles.
Where US intelligence may have been the most crucial has been in allowing precision strikes on Russian-held territory. “Static targets like factories or oil plants” were “something we can do ourselves”, Narozhny said. “But we’ve been able to hit command centres, kill generals, and this was probably done with the help of US intelligence.”
As I said before: I believe it’s too early to celebrate. All the above conjecture depends entirely on what kind of ‘pause’ in aid this really is. Trump may just be bringing Zelensky into line, and intends to resume the aid shortly, even if partially. Of course, either way it does not bode particularly well for Ukraine—I am simply cautioning against celebrating an immediate collapse of the AFU.
The other biggest question now being floated is how much of the aid can Europe realistically replace? For one, the German Defense Ministry spokesman Michael Stempfle stated that Germany has ‘reached its limit’ of supplies:
Germany has reached the limit of its ability to transfer weapons from its arsenals to Ukraine — German Defense Ministry
"Similar transfers (of weapons) have already taken place from the Bundeswehr to Ukraine. However, a natural limit has been reached here, since in the new conditions it is necessary to strengthen Europe's own defense capabilities and, in coordination with other countries, ensure that each of them is well supplied," said Stempfle, a representative of the German Defense Ministry, at a briefing, answering a question about the possibility of transferring Patriot air defense systems and similar weapons.
Deputy Head of Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Vadim Skibitsky made some fascinating statements in a new interview (longer version). In particular, that in January of 2025, Russia reached its recruitment goals by 107%; and that despite there being a ‘slow down’ of activity on the front, Skibitsky chalks this up to weather and Russia regrouping and preparing for the next elevated phase of assaults:
The Deputy Head of GUR Major General Vadym Skibitsky did another interview with some useful figures. He noted that the intensity of Russian combat operations and number of assaults has decreased recently, but said "a reduction in combat activity does not mean that the enemy's plans have changed. This time is being used for planning further offensives, training personnel, replenishing ammunition, and preparing for future assaults." He added that Russia is undergoing regrouping and replenishing combat losses, and that weather conditions also directly impact the pace of hostilities.
He says the Russian ground component in Ukraine and Kursk region is 620,000 of which more than 200,000 are soldiers in assault units and 35,000 from Rosgvardia. He says Russia plans on recruiting 343,000 contract soldiers in 2025 but noted that Russia recruited more soldiers in previous years than was initially planned.
He says Russia planned to recruit 375,000-380,000 soldiers in 2024 but ultimately recruited 440,000.
He says Russia fulfilled 107% of its recruitment plan for January, and that the share of contract soldiers recruited from prison or under investigation will increase from 15% in 2024 to 30% in 2025.
He says Russia plans to form new units in the Moscow, Leningrad, Southern, and Central Military Districts, including strengthening brigades into divisions.
Now Europe is again fabulating some fantastical era of re-armament to the tune of a trillion dollars. The echo-chamber the sodden elites have created for themselves must be at peak hermetic strength, because this is now beyond merely bordering on total unhinged mania.
The doggerel duo of the Dung Queen von der Leyen and her craven consort Merz lead the charge:
But it comes amidst a time of deepening crisis in Germany:
Worst day for German 10-year bonds since the 90s. Market is pricing in +6% inflation in stocks. New government is making history before taking office.
The European debt market hasn't seen such a disaster in a long time. German bonds are ending their worst day since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
If Europe wants to replace the US in financing Ukraine, it will be extremely expensive, and politicians will face a collapse in their ratings.
How many Italian workers will want to finance Ukraine when their variable rate mortgages jump by €200 a month from April?
Apparently, that is no major impediment to the warmongering Eurocrats who continue to press ahead at all costs towards war. In concert with his peers, Macron just gave an extraordinary address to his own nation tonight, during which he made several startling statements. First he said Europe will only know peace when Russia is subdued, claiming that France is now under some kind of major threat by Russia. To escalate his pointless saber-rattling, he invoked France’s nuclear weapons as ‘defenders of Europe’:
He went on to fear-monger the growing strength of Russia’s army, claiming that by 2030 Russia will generate an additional 3 million troops and 4,000 tanks:
Can someone please enlighten me as to what possible ‘threat’ Russia poses to France? And how or why Russia would ever attack the irrelevant country?
At least put some effort in the fear-mongering propaganda to make even a tiny amount of sense.
By the way, in typical politician fashion here’s Merz’s pre-campaign promises vis-a-vis Germany’s debt:
He was such an opponent of debt, except when it comes to €900 billion euros to fight Russia.
But as usual, so far the globalist puppets’ plans are getting off to a rocky start. Hungary already nixed von der Leyen’s €20 billion euros-for-Ukraine plan, while France is reportedly in splits with the UK over stealing Russia’s ‘confiscated funds’.
Tensions have surfaced between France and the UK over whether $350bn of frozen Russian assets can be seized and then offered to the US to buy defence equipment, binding America closer to the defence of Europe.
Macron fears approach would breach principle of immunity of sovereign assets and undermine efforts to strengthen European defence.
As expected, the captured media-military-industrial-complex has coordinated the signaling Europe-wide. Just look at that stupendous headline:
They don’t even bother dressing it up anymore: forget welfare, social services, and prosperity—only war can save us! Have you ever witnessed such artless abandonment of common sense?
The only way to save this stricken continent now is for Trump to pull out of NATO entirely—de facto if not de jure would be just as fine—and allow the diseased compradors to take themselves down with the ship, so that a new generation can sweep through and field a return of some semblance of common sense, humanity, and civic-political responsibility.
Just consider how bad it’s gotten: the German government hates its citizens so much it is fighting to keep its own sabotaged energy systems from being restarted:
What level of upside-down, Black Mirror-esque dystopia is that? It is simply inconceivable that a political union grounded in such overt bad faith leadership, and in such ideological contradiction to its own populace, can possibly survive for much longer; we are simply reaching peak levels of cruelly inhuman rule by ‘leaders’ who hate their own citizens, and view them merely as inconvenient obstacles toward monomaniacal geopolitical obsessions.
Well, this is a fitting cap:
Last items:
Several days ago Russian Iskanders slammed into a Ukrainian training session in an open field in Cherkasy, Dnipropetrovsk region. The results were so bad that it’s become a scandal in Ukraine, with even top officials and publications openly revealing the casualties, which included 150 dead AFU, and 30 dead NATO instructors:
Video of the strike:
The training area was hit with cluster-warhead Iskanders. Now all sorts of internal ‘investigations’ have been launched in the AFU.
The truth is, these are more common than most know, and simply get swept under the rug. Here’s another one from a couple weeks back, if you can stomach it.
As of this writing just tonight, another strike flattened a Krivoy Rog hotel where foreign troops were suspected of staying:
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The EU is dying of moral depravity and neurosyphilis. Nothing but insane actions should be expected from the last acts of such inbred dynasties. Once the vile Brussels Empire has collapsed, the peoples of those lands can emerge from the wreckage and face reality.
The videos are beyond horrendous. And it is beyond my understanding as to why ordinary Ukrainians continue to fight, when it is surely obvious to them that the war is lost and there is absolutely nothing to be gained by continuing to die.
Perhaps someone can enlighten me, I cannot understand such behaviour. In that situation I would simply run away, nothing else makes any sense.