In February 2022, Will Selber, a current contributor to Bulwark, was a Squadron Commander leading 240 Airmen and civilians conducting intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations in support of five separate combatant commands, one of which was in Ukraine.
In an essay published today in Bulwark’s Morning Shots, Selber outlines how his unit had front-row seats to Russia’s unprovoked invasion and provided crucial intelligence to Ukraine that enabled it to “parry blows from Putin’s forces.” Selber writes:
While I cannot comment on the nature of this support, I can say it was incredibly helpful to our Ukrainian allies. America’s intelligence community has played a pivotal role in finding and fixing Russian forces and helping our Ukrainian allies launch devastating attacks. Without America’s intelligence community, which correctly predicted the invasion, Kyiv may have fallen.
I think it can be argued forcefully that there are three primary reasons why Russia failed to take Kyiv in those early days: Russian military incompetence, Ukraine’s military effectiveness and resourcefulness, and American intelligence.
Yesterday, in the administration’s continuing shakedown of Ukraine, President Trump ordered a stop to all intelligence sharing. This halt, resembling a classic Mafia protection scheme, deprives Kyiv of a key tool in fighting Russian forces and was announced by Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe on, where else, the Fox Network. This latest move follows the administration stopping all “military aid” last week, as the Wall Street Journal reported.
Losing military and intelligence aid will cripple Ukraine and lead to many deaths, both civilian and military.
For example, last night, a Russian missile slammed into a hotel in Kryvyi Rih, in central Ukraine, the hometown of President Zelensky, killing at least four people and injuring more than 30 others, Ukrainian authorities said. One of the dead was an infant.
“Just before the attack, volunteers from a humanitarian organization — citizens of Ukraine, the United States, and the United Kingdom — had checked into the hotel,” President Zelensky said in a statement. “They survived because they managed to get down from their rooms in time.”
Officials in Kyiv have warned that Ukraine’s air defense capabilities would be among the first elements of its security to be compromised without American assistance.
And that is precisely what happened here.
Jon Gundersen is a retired senior foreign service officer who, following Ukraine’s independence in December 1991, had the distinction of opening the American Embassy there on 22 January 1992. He has taught national security affairs at the National Defense University, the Joint Special Operations Command, and the Foreign Service Institute. I asked him his thoughts about the Trump Administration cutting off all military and intelligence aid to Ukraine. He wrote back to me:
“On February 24, 2022, Putin’s Russia attacked Ukraine; the attack was illegal, unprovoked, and brutal. For over three years, Ukrainian forces have fought valiantly against a numerically superior foe. Yet, Ukrainian President Zelensky did not ask for American or NATO boots on the ground, merely the means to fight the aggressor. For the past three years, Washington and its NATO allies have provided military equipment, humanitarian aid, and intelligence to Ukraine. It is the least we can do. Ukraine is fighting our fight on their soil to defend democracy. Now, the Trump Administration is cutting off military aid and needed intelligence. This will cost Ukraine dearly; lives will be lost. Cui Bono? Only Putin will benefit. This is a dark day for Ukraine and our democracy.”
Meanwhile, earlier today, in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, the Trump administration’s special envoy to Russia and Ukraine, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, in addition to affirming the U. S. did not want Ukraine to win the war, but merely to agree to some form of peace, said that cutting off intelligence sharing with Kyiv was meant to get the attention of President Zelensky, akin to “hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the nose.”
He didn’t stop there. With national security experts in the audience, Kellogg dove into the issue of the U.S. stopping all intelligence sharing by saying the Ukrainians “brought it on themselves.” According to the New York Times, this drew a loud hiss from the, in other circumstances, dignified audience.
We do not yet know if curtailing intelligence sharing includes turning off Ukraine’s access to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites, as well as other American satellites used by Ukraine’s defense forces to watch in real-time as missiles are launched from deep in Russia. If it does, our one-time ally will truly be fighting blind.
Donald Trump, one hubristic bead at a time, is threading a necklace of shame for the world to see and Americans to wear.
