KYIV, Ukraine — U.S. intelligence sharing with Ukraine has rebounded to full strength as Kyiv’s mid- and deep-range strikes continue to hammer Russia’s oil industry.
The CIA has worked closely with Ukraine’s intelligence services since Russia’s 2014 invasion, growing a partnership built on assistance and training into a two-way exchange of intelligence, according to Forbes. However, the relationship nearly collapsed in February 2025, when a contentious Oval Office meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ended with Washington temporarily cutting off the flow of intelligence and weapons to Kyiv.
But Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking member, said this month that the two countries have moved past previous hurdles and returned to a strong intelligence partnership.
“I don’t want to get into any specifics, but it has improved,” Warner told Politico.
The CIA has spent more than a decade and millions of dollars training and equipping Ukrainian intelligence officers, building around a dozen secret forward-operating bases along the Russian border, ABC News reported in January 2025, citing former U.S. officials.
The senator said the current arrangement has helped Kyiv gain an edge, with long-range drones and missiles now hitting targets far inside Russia.
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While American weapons deliveries have taken the spotlight in what Washington gives Ukraine, intelligence is the one U.S. asset Kyiv cannot replace, especially for the long-range strikes now making headlines.
That intelligence reaches directly into the strike campaign, including “the targeting packages for strikes on Russian-troop positions in Ukraine and on energy infrastructure inside Russia,” The Atlantic reported, citing American and Ukrainian sources.
Those sources called intelligence “the one thing the United States still provides free of charge,” crediting CIA Director John Ratcliffe with keeping it that way.
Zelenskyy seems to have risen in Trump’s estimation as Ukraine increasingly fights on its own terms, redefining modern warfare by crafting new tech and strategies, clawing back territory and taking the war deep into Russia — leaving Kyiv looking less dependent and more like an ally with something to trade.
“Trump doesn’t like losers,” one Western intelligence official told the outlet.
Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, another intelligence committee member, and Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Politico they see a direct connection between the White House’s view of Ukraine’s battlefield successes and Kyiv’s access to intelligence.
“It sure seems like that,” Cornyn said. “Everybody loves a winner and looks like Ukraine has turned the tide.”
The strengthening relationship between Washington and Kyiv is apparent on multiple fronts.
Trump’s negotiators to end the war, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, plan to head to Ukraine for the first time later this month, a trip that coincides with the country’s independence celebrations, according to Radio Free Europe.
The intel trade is going both ways, with Zelenskyy stating publicly as early as March that Kyiv had proof of Moscow passing intelligence to Iran that he later promised to put in front of Trump.
“We have irrefutable evidence that the Russians continue to provide intelligence to the Iranian regime,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. “Russia is using its own signals intelligence and electronic intelligence capabilities, as well as part of the data obtained through cooperation with partners in the Middle East.”
Katie Livingstone is the Ukraine correspondent for Defense News and Military Times. Based in Kyiv, she has covered Russia’s full-scale invasion since its first days. She is a former Fulbright fellow whose award-winning work has appeared in outlets across Europe and the U.S.
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