The United States has been helping Ukraine mount long-range strikes on Russian energy facilities for months in a joint effort to weaken the economy and force president Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
US intelligence has helped Kyiv strike important Russian energy assets, including oil refineries, far beyond the front line, the newspaper said, citing unnamed Ukrainian and US officials familiar with the campaign.
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The White House, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office and Ukraine’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. There was no immediate comment from the Russian foreign ministry.
Moscow said this month that Washington and its Nato alliance were regularly supplying intelligence to Kyiv in the war Putin launched in February 2022.
“The supply and use of the entire infrastructure of Nato and the United States to collect and transfer intelligence to Ukrainians is obvious,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters then.
The FT said US intelligence helps Kyiv shape route planning, altitude, timing and mission decisions, enabling Ukraine’s long-range, one-way attack drones to evade Russian air defences.
The US is closely involved in all stages of planning, it said, citing three people familiar with the operation. A US official was quoted as saying Ukraine selected the targets for long-range strikes and Washington then provided intelligence on the sites’ vulnerabilities.
Early this month two US officials told Reuters that Washington would provide Ukraine with intelligence on long-range energy infrastructure targets in Russia, as it weighs whether to send Kyiv missiles that could be used in such strikes.
The US also asked Nato allies to provide similar support, the US officials said.
Zelenskiy said on Saturday he had discussed Russian attacks on the Ukrainian energy system in a “positive and productive” call with US president Donald Trump.
“We discussed opportunities to bolster our air defence, as well as concrete agreements that we are working on to ensure this. There are good options and solid ideas on how to truly strengthen us,” Zelenskiy posted on X.
Russian troops carried out strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure facilities that are part of its military-industrial complex, the RIA news agency cited the Russian defence ministry as saying on Sunday.
The Interfax news agency said Russian air defences had shot down 72 Ukrainian drones over the past 24 hours, citing the defence ministry.- Reuters