Officials: U.S. intel helped Ukrainians strike Russian ship

WASHINGTON — The United States provided intelligence that helped Ukrainian forces locate and strike the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet last month, another sign that the administration is easing its self-imposed limitations on how far it will go in helping Ukraine fight Russia, U.S. officials said.

The targeting help, which contributed to the eventual sinking of the flagship, the Moskva, is part of a continuing classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine. That intelligence also includes sharing anticipated Russian troop movements, gleaned from a recent American assessment of Moscow’s battle plan for the fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, the officials said.

The administration has sought to keep much of the battlefield and maritime intelligence it is sharing with the Ukrainians secret out of fear it will be seen as an escalation and provoke President Vladimir Putin of Russia into a wider war. But in recent weeks, the United States has sped heavier weapons to Ukraine and requested an extraordinary

$33 billion in additional military, economic and humanitarian aid from Congress, demonstrating how quickly American restraints on support for Ukraine are shifting.

Two senior U.S. officials said Ukraine already had obtained the Moskva’s targeting data on its own and that the United States provided only confirmation. But other officials said the U.S. intelligence was crucial to Ukraine’s sinking of the ship.

The officials declined to elaborate on what specific information was passed along, but one official said the information went beyond simply a report on the ship’s location in the Black Sea, 65 nautical miles south of Odesa.

The sinking of the ship was a major blow to Russia and the most significant loss for any navy in 40 years.

MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES VIA NEW YORK TIMES A satellite photo from April 7 shows the Russian guided missile cruiser Moskva docked at a port in Sevastopol, Crimea. The Biden administration has declined to publicly confirm that American intelligence provided the targeting information that allowed Ukraine to hit the warship.