EXPLAINED: Trump’s Threat to Halt Intelligence, Arms to Ukraine – 5 Things to Know

Over the weekend reports surfaced that the US was considering cutting off American intelligence feeds and arms sales to Ukraine. Kyiv Post broke that down into five things to know.

1. Did the Americans really threaten to cut Ukraine off from all US weaponry and military intelligence?

It looks that way. During Saturday talks in Miami between US and Ukrainian delegations on a possible halt to the Russo-Ukrainian War, members of the US delegation said Washington wants Ukraine to stop attacking Russian oil refineries, and if Kyiv refuses, then the US could suspend arms shipments to Ukraine and intelligence sharing with Ukraine’s military.

The threats reportedly were also made in calls on Saturday and Sunday from the State Department, Pentagon, and other US officials to Ukrainian leaders and European capitals. The Financial Times first reported the threats, citing European officials involved in the calls. Reuters and other outlets confirmed the FT account. Axios reported New York real estate mogul Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner as heads of the US delegation in Miami made the threats directly to Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s Office of the President and former head of Ukraine’s military intelligence. The Ukrainian delegation quit the planned talks one day early.

According to Western media reports Witkoff and Kushner warned the Budanov team that if Ukraine did not stop attacking Russian oil refineries then the US would consider halting all arms deliveries to Ukraine under the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), a mechanism by which Ukraine’s allies purchase US weapons for Ukraine at a 10 percent markup ordered by Trump. At the same time, reportedly, the US might cut off intelligence collected by the US on Russian military targets and activities, including real-time intelligence feeds.

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The United States shut down practically all US arms donations and direct financial support to Ukraine in February 2025 and since then has not reinstated it. Since then, the Trump administration, according to Ukrainian sources, has cut off US military intelligence feeds at least once, for approximately a week in March 2025.

On Sunday, Budanov and the rest of the Ukrainian delegation walked out of the talks, cutting the negotiations short by a day.

2. What would a cut off of US intelligence feeds mean for Ukraine?

The key capacity Ukraine would lose is the earliest warning possible of Russian ballistic missile launches.

President Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials have said that, without that intelligence, Ukraine’s ability to respond to Russian missile strikes would be seriously weakened because alternate means of detecting Russian aircraft and missiles – primarily by Ukrainian and NATO-operated systems – are far less extensive and networked than the Americans’.

Most analysts say a Russian ballistic missile launch in western Russia is detected almost instantaneously by the US, giving residents of Kyiv three to five minutes to take cover before the missile impacts, thanks to US intelligence sharing. Without that warning targeted Ukrainians would have less than half that time, and possibly no time at all, to take cover.

Beyond missile early-warning for Ukraine, the US world-wide satellite and intelligence collection network is a possible gold mine of intelligence on Russia thanks to unique US capacities like super-computing power enabling interception and decoding of adversary communications and electronic emissions. In addition, hundreds of state-of-the-art imagery satellites give the US and its friends, at least theoretically, the ability to inspect every square centimeter of the planet thanks to satellites passing overhead.

For Ukraine, US collection of Russian radar data is especially important because US air war weapons like fighter jets and anti-aircraft missiles are regularly updated with changes in those radars detected by worldwide US electronic eavesdropping, and Ukraine uses both those weapons to defend itself against Russian air attacks.

Another unique US advantage Ukraine might lose is the giant analytical manpower and computer capacity of the CIA and NSA, which covertly suck in data through a worldwide collection effort and turn it into hard intelligence. For Ukraine this might mean not knowing Russian military plans, movements of units or key officers, or the precise location of major Russian weapons systems like warships, combat aircraft and ballistic missile launchers.

A key qualification is, of course, that no intelligence collection effort is perfect. Sometimes the US intelligence community gets it wrong, and like any big state bureaucracy the American intelligence community is fallible. So loss of US analytical capacity is not the same as loss of 100 percent accurate analysis.

3. What would a cut off of US arms and weapons assistance mean for Ukraine?

One of the most damaging effects of a cut off would be the loss of access to US military GPS networks which, in turn, would render “partially-dumb” US weapons operated by Ukraine that use GPS for precision guidance. The most important GPS-dependent weapons used by Ukraine are ATACMS missiles and GMLRS guided rockets fired by the HIMARS/M270 launch system.

Ukraine uses the system most often to hit high-value, fleeting targets, such as meetings at Russian military headquarters or heavy mobile anti-aircraft systems. Almost as important and similarly effective have been guided bomb kits called JDAMS, which, if the GPS works, allow a pilot to select a single point with five meter accuracy on a bridge or bunker line or a bomb strike.

The last time the Americans cut off GPS feeds to Ukraine, in March 2025, these systems effectively became “dumb” and only as accurate as unguided munitions. It is worth noting that Ukraine’s last confirmed ATACMS launch was in February 2026, so it’s possible a US cut off of ATACMS-specific guidance data to Ukraine is irrelevant, because Ukraine has shot off all its ATACMS and the US isn’t sending any more.

In terms of actual weaponry, by far the most important US weapon operated by Ukraine right now is the Patriot air defense system firing an interceptor missile called the PAC-3 MSE, which is the only weapon in Ukraine’s military that can, in practical terms, intercept a Russian ballistic missile. A July statement by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said that 95 percent of Ukraine’s purchase from the US under PURL, are Patriot-system associated.

Besides Patriot-associated purchases needed to protect Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure from otherwise unstoppable Russian ballistic missiles, a US cut-off of arms sales could gradually make Ukraine’s 1990s-era F-16 fighter jet fleet unflyable because the jet and its spare parts and systems upgrades ultimately are from the American manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Ukrainian air defenses would suffer because the guided missiles fired by Ukraine’s aging F-16s – the long-range AIM-120 AMRAAM and the short-range AIM-9 Sidewinder – are both manufactured by the US company Raytheon.

Major US ground weapons operated by Ukraine, most visibly the M1A1 Abrams tank, the M3 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, and the M109 Paladin artillery system, similar to the F-16 would over time become more and more difficult for Ukraine to operate were the US to embargo arms sales, because parts needed for maintenance would be cut off.

4. If the Americans cut off intelligence feeds does Ukraine have other ways of getting information about Russia?

With the critical exception of ballistic missile early warning sufficient to let Ukrainians take shelter when the Russians launch a weapon at a city, the answer to that question is “yes.”

Most obviously, Ukraine has been at war with Russia since 2014 and Ukraine’s own spy and electronic eavesdropping networks have years of experience collecting war-critical information about Russia. Ukraine has the additional advantages of a population with millions of native Russian-speakers with millions more relatives in Russia, and a national security apparatus intimately familiar with Russian intelligence practices.

Lost US intelligence on Russia collected by satellites, to some extent, is compensated by Ukrainian agents on the ground. Most analysts say Ukrainian spy networks are probably best-developed in territory recently invaded by Russia, where the population is mostly hostile to the Kremlin.

European states with robust national intelligence efforts or just focusing largely on Russia – predominantly France but firmly including Britain, Finland, Poland, Sweden and the Baltic states – actively assist Ukraine with data collection. France’s CSO (Composante Spatiale Optique) military reconnaissance satellites provide high-resolution images of Russian bases, troop deployments and military infrastructure with resolution reportedly similar to the US’s, with the qualification that CSO passes a camera over a possible target once or twice a day, while a US satellite overpass can take place several times an hour.

The explosion of commercial satellite imagery, purchased by Ukraine or its allies, also helps fill in gaps left by US collection which, although capable, can be distracted away from Russia to other White House priorities like Iran, China, potential illegal migrants in Mexico or drug runners in the Caribbean or east Pacific. Among the commercial networks regularly feeding imagery into Ukrainian intelligence production are Finland’s ICEYE synthetic-aperture radar network, the US’s Maxar, Planet Labs, and BlackSky networks, and Canada’s RADARSAT-2 network.

A final intelligence collection effort that the Americans seem to have little ability to undermine is the NATO-led air defense operation along the Baltics, Poland, Romania and the Black and Baltic Seas that focuses on spotting Russian aircraft, drone and missile launches as early as possible, using ground- and air-based radars operating 24/7. NATO also regularly flies reconnaissance missions sometimes as close as a 100 km from Russian-occupied Crimea and Russia’s Black Sea coast, using electronic emission-sniffing spy planes, most often based in Crete, Romania, Turkey or Great Britain.

By doctrine the flights would search for precise locations of Russian air defense systems and military units so NATO could be prepared in case of war.

Russian officials and milbloggers have long accused NATO of sharing the intelligence with the Ukrainians, a charge NATO has steadfastly denied. In January 2026 President Emmanuel Macron told reporters France was providing about two-thirds of Ukraine’s intelligence needs. The Ukrainians say they have their own means of finding Russian targets.

5. If the Americans cut off arms supplies, does Ukraine have alternatives?

With exception of Patriot and Patriot-related equipment, the answer to that is not just “yes, in the future” but “yes, already.”

The most visible shift in Ukrainian arms needs has been tied to the revolution in ground warfare making drones the dominant weapons system on the ground battlefield and, parallel with that, legacy systems like tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and artillery less critical for fighting a war. Almost all members of the Ukrainian military, from private to general, will say that what Ukraine needs is more short-range tactical drones. However, compared to Ukrainian-made drones, American tactical drones are primitive and manufactured in scant quantities.

The situation is similar for Ukrainian air defense where, besides Patriot missiles to take on the Russian ballistic missiles, the Ukrainians need means of stopping recently developed Russian jet-powered drones. American anti-aircraft missiles are capable of engaging drones like that, but they cost more than the Russian drone. Meanwhile, Ukraine is fielding its own interceptor drones which have the benefit of having been tested not in laboratories and firing ranges, but in actual war against actual Russian weapons.

Germany has also already contributed in a big way to bulk up Ukrainian air defenses with donations of Cold War-era Gepard anti-aircraft cannon that have turned out to be ideal for blowing up Russian drones, an upgraded version of the Gepard, called the Skynex, and 11 IRIS-T SLM air defense systems whose advanced missiles have proved the most effective ground-based air defense system the Ukrainians have. A 12th system is reportedly en route to Ukraine by the end of the year.

Longer-term, France and Sweden have promised and begun pilot training for deliveries respectively of the fully modern Rafale and Gripen fighter jets for Ukraine’s air force, with the first aircraft planned to arrive in Ukraine in 2027.

In late September representatives from Lockheed Martin, the manufacturer of the competing US fighter jet, the F-16, were in Kyiv discussing with the Defense Ministry possible upgrades to Ukraine’s aging F-16 fleet, which without upgrades, compared to the incoming French and Swedish aircraft, would be obsolete. The Ukrainians said they would think about it.