How does American assistance to kyiv translate? In addition to its delivery of military equipment, the United States would have provided the Ukrainian army with information allowing it to target several Russian generals near the front, the New York Times said on Wednesday. Quoting several senior US officials, the newspaper said that of the dozen Russian generals killed by Ukrainian forces, “many” were targeted with the help of US intelligence.
The US National Security Council (NSC) has called “irresponsible” the claim that the United States was helping Ukraine kill Russian generals. “The United States is providing battlefield intelligence to help Ukrainians defend their country,” NSC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in an email. “We do not provide intelligence with the intention of killing Russian generals,” she stressed.
Russian officers present on the front
Washington’s intelligence efforts to assist Ukraine up close in the fighting have included ‘focussed on determining the location and other details of Russian military mobile headquarters, which move regularly “says the New York Times.
On Monday, the Pentagon officially reported that Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov spent “several days” last week on the frontline in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, thus suggesting that Russia’s top military officials were closing in on the fighting.
But the Pentagon had not confirmed the injury rumors concerning Valéri Guerasimov. An adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister said on Sunday that many Russian officers had been hit in an “explosion” in Izium, eastern Ukraine, adding that the Russian chief of staff was on site . Another Ukrainian official, however, claimed he was not injured.
Anti-tank weapons, helicopters, drones…
The Ukrainians have repeatedly claimed to have killed Russian generals in the field, since the start of the invasion of Ukraine on February 24. In early March, the municipality of the city of Novorosiisk, in southern Russia, for example, confirmed that General Andrei Sukhovetsky, deputy commander of the 41st army, had died “as a hero” in Ukraine.
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American assistance to Ukraine in terms of intelligence, which Washington does not flaunt, is in addition to billions of dollars of military equipment delivered – in a more transparent way – to the army in kyiv. This equipment includes anti-tank weapons, ammunition and, more recently, heavy artillery pieces, helicopters and drones.