The United States is preparing to share real-time battlefield intelligence with Ukraine to enable precision long-range strikes inside Russian territory, according to a June 19 report by The Washington Post, citing three senior U.S. officials. The move still under final review by the White House would mark a significant shift in U.S. policy, which has previously restricted intelligence sharing to defensive operations within Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders. The new framework reportedly focuses on targeting military logistics hubs, ammunition depots, and command centers in Russia’s western regions, particularly those used to launch attacks on Kharkiv and Sumy.
While the Biden administration continues to prohibit Ukraine from using U.S.-supplied weapons for strikes inside Russia, this intelligence-sharing arrangement would allow Kyiv to use its own domestically produced drones and missiles such as the Neptune and ATACMS-compatible systems with greater accuracy. The decision follows months of Ukrainian appeals and growing concern in Washington that Russia’s intensified cross-border offensive near Kharkiv threatens to destabilize Ukraine’s entire northeastern front.
In Kyiv, defense analysts describe the potential move as “tactical necessity, not strategic provocation.” “We’re not bombing Moscow,” says Colonel Ihor Smeshko (ret.), a former head of Ukraine’s military intelligence. “We’re hitting the rail yards in Belgorod where missiles are loaded for Kharkiv schools.” Yet in Moscow, the Kremlin has already condemned the reported plan as “a direct act of involvement in terrorism,” vowing “asymmetric responses.” The risk of unintended escalation remains acute especially as both NATO and Russia conduct large-scale military drills this summer.
Support for the policy shift is growing among European allies. Germany and France, once cautious, now acknowledge that denying Ukraine the ability to disrupt rear-area logistics prolongs the conflict. Meanwhile, a youth initiative of Ukrainian engineers in Lviv has developed AI-assisted targeting software to minimize civilian risk technology they hope will be paired with reliable intelligence to ensure surgical strikes.
The White House insists any intelligence shared will be tightly controlled and limited to military objectives. Still, the symbolic threshold is clear: for the first time, the U.S. would be knowingly enabling strikes on Russian soil. Officials argue this is no different than Russia’s daily bombardment of Ukrainian cities but the precedent is new, and the world is watching. As one Pentagon advisor put it off-record: “We’re not handing them a key. We’re just telling them which lock is broken.”
In the end, the decision hinges on a painful truth: wars are not won by restraint alone. And if stopping the next missile launch means seeing beyond the border, then the line between defense and offense may already have blurred beyond return. Because when your child’s school is rubble, the map no longer ends at the frontier it ends where the next bomb falls.
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