Intelligence provided by the United States to the Ukrainian army led to the killing of several Russian generals near the front, the New York Times said on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources within the American services.
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Washington’s intelligence efforts to assist Ukraine up close in the fighting have included ‘focusing on determining the location and other details of Russian military mobile headquarters, which move regularly “, writes the American daily.
According to senior officials quoted anonymously, this information, combined with that of the Ukrainians – and in particular the interception of communications – enabled the latter to carry out artillery strikes on senior Russian officers. These sources did not wish to give their number, according to the New York Times.
Contacted by AFP, the Pentagon did not respond immediately.
On Monday, however, the Pentagon had officially indicated that the Russian Chief of Staff, Valery Gerasimov, visited for “several days” last week on the front in the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine. , suggesting that Russia’s top military officials were closing in on the fighting.
But the Pentagon had not confirmed the injury rumors concerning Valéri Guerasimov.
An adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister said on Sunday that many Russian officers had been hit in an “explosion” in Izium, eastern Ukraine, adding that the Russian chief of staff was on site. . Another Ukrainian official, however, claimed he was not injured.
The Ukrainians have repeatedly claimed to have killed Russian generals in the field, since the start of the invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
In early March, the municipality of the city of Novorosiisk, in southern Russia, for example, confirmed that General Andrei Sukhovetsky, deputy commander of the 41st army, had died “as a hero” in Ukraine.
American assistance to Ukraine in terms of intelligence, which Washington does not show off, is in addition to billions of dollars of military equipment delivered — in a more transparent way — to the Kyiv army, including weapons antitanks, ammunition and, more recently, heavy artillery pieces, helicopters and drones.
“We want to see Russia weakened to such a degree that it cannot do the same kinds of things as the invasion of Ukraine,” Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said on Monday (April 25).