White House walks fine line with intelligence sharing in Ukraine

Administration officials insist there are clear limits on the intelligence it shares with Ukraine, including a ban against providing precision targeting intelligence for senior Russian leaders by name, part of a White House effort to avoid crossing a line that Moscow may view as too escalatory.

Yet some current and former officials have suggested that the limits the Biden administration have drawn are arbitrary, in part because the end result is the same — Ukrainian strikes that kill senior Russian leaders. On top of that, any US assessment of what actions might provoke Moscow depends on the thinking of just one man, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“You’re trying to put on your Vladimir Putin hat and try to see, what does he see as crossing a red line?” said retired Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. “That red line is one that probably exists only in Putin’s head — and it may not be something that he’s even thought his way through or conveyed.”