Intelligence-sharing with Ukraine designed to prevent wider war

But a senior defense official said that while the U.S. government is “self-limiting to strategic leadership on paper,” it also has chosen not to provide Ukraine location information for generals.The United States is not “actively helping them kill generals of any kind,” the defense official said.The second category of prohibited intelligence-sharing is any information that would help Ukraine attack Russian targets outside Ukraine’s borders, officials said. The United States will not, officials said, tell Ukrainian forces that a particular Russian general has been spotted at a specific location, and then tell or help Ukraine to strike him.But the United States would share information about the location of, say, command and control facilities — places where Russian senior officers often tend to be found — since it could aid Ukraine in its own defense, officials said. If Ukrainian commanders decided to strike the facility, that would be their call, and if a Russian general were killed in the attack, the United States wouldn’t have targeted him, officials said.Not targeting Russian troops and locations but providing intelligence that Ukraine uses to help kill Russians may seem like a distinction without a difference.