The US has cut intelligence sharing with Ukraine, severely impacting the flow of vital information that Kyiv uses to defend itself from Russian attacks.
The latest blow comes after Donald Trump suspended military aid to Kyiv and despite the US leader boasting during an address to Congress on Tuesday about receiving a letter from the Ukrainian president expressing willingness to come to the negotiating table to end the three-year war.
“We have taken a step back and are pausing and reviewing all aspects of this relationship,” Mr Trump's national security adviser Mike Waltz said.
On Thursday, European leaders will hold crisis talks in Brussels in support for Ukraine.
French president Emmanuel Macron said he would open talks with European allies over extending his country’s nuclear deterrent to protect the continent. Europe is in a “new era”, he said in a televised statement.
The US has provided critical intelligence to Ukraine for its fight against Moscow's forces, including information that helped thwart Vladimir Putin's drive to seize Kyiv at the start of his full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Volodymyr Zelensky had on Tuesday night bowed to the intense pressure from Mr Trump, calling the White House spat “regrettable” in a statement while pledging to enter peace talks.
"There’s been positive movement. We are expecting first results next week," Mr Zelensky said in his Wednesday evening video address posted on social media.
Sources have told The Independent that should supplies of US Patriot missiles to Ukraine stop, it would be unable to defend itself in a matter of days.
CIA director John Ratcliffe called the intelligence suspension a “pause” and said it came after the disastrous meeting in the Oval Office on Friday. Mr Ratcliffe said Mr Trump wanted to know that Mr Zelensky was serious about peace.
“On the military front and the intelligence front, the pause that allowed that to happen will go away, and I think we'll work shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine as we have,” Mr Ratcliffe said.
Ukraine could soon be receiving intelligence – and military support – from the US once Mr Zelensky shows to Mr Trump he is serious about participating in talks on Mr Trump's terms, Mr Waltz said on Fox News.
“I think if we can nail down these negotiations and move towards these negotiations and, in fact, put some confidence building measures on the table, then the president will take a hard look at lifting this pause,” he said. “We have to know that both sides are sincerely negotiating towards a partial, then permanent peace.”
Andriy Yermak, the head of Mr Zelensky’s office, said he had spoken to Mr Waltz on the phone on Wednesday to “discuss the next steps towards a just and lasting peace”.
“We also exchanged views on security issues and the alignment of positions within the framework of bilateral relations between Ukraine and the United States,” he wrote on X.
“We have scheduled a meeting for our teams in the near future to continue this important work.”
After the announcement, Sir Keir Starmer told the Commons that it was vital to ensure the US did not disengage from Ukraine.
“I’ve always been clear that we need to ensure that the US, the UK, Europe and Ukraine are working together, but we must not choose between the US and Europe – we never have historically, and we’re not going to do so now,” he said.
Later, Mr Macron said in the televised statement that he would discuss the possibility of using his country’s nuclear deterrent in the face of threats from Russia. He added: "I want to believe that the United States will stand by us. But we have to be ready if that is not the case."
Meanwhile, UK defence secretary John Healy will join his US counterpart Pete Jegseth for a bilateral meeting on Thursday. Mr Healey’s trip was agreed last week after Sir Keir announced a rise in the UK’s defence spending to 2.5per cent of GDP.
The suspension of intelligence is the latest in a long series of issues that are testing US-Ukraine relations.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Mr Zelensky, told The Independent that they were focusing on staying “pragmatic” despite what he described as an “emotional discussion” in the White House last week.
Speaking just moments before the US suspension of intelligence but after the temporary end of military support, he said Mr Zelensky’s team believed the latter aid would be reinstated because it was a vital “instrument for keeping Russia down and putting pressure” on them.
Mr Trump’s administration, he insisted, was focused on ending the war in Ukraine and Kyiv needs some form of US support to achieve this. He added that they would be asking for more military aid soon.
On the spat in the White House, he insisted that “sometimes emotional conversation is needed, even if it’s out of protocol”, to ensure that the US and Ukraine are aligned.
“There were some ambiguities regarding the interpretation of the war both from the United States and Ukraine sides that didn’t allow us to achieve synchronised constructive negotiation positions on the war, Russia, Russian motives and so on,” he said.
“That emotional conversation allowed us to come to more constructive approaches towards each other.”
In the weeks running up to yesterday’s announcement, US-Ukraine relations had taken a monumental hit. They were already strained after Mr Trump announced he had held talks with Mr Putin and begun US-Russia talks on reestablishing ties, a move that left Kyiv and Europe worried an unfavourable deal could be done over their head.
An initial US request for Kyiv to give Washington access to $500bn of Ukraine’s untapped critical mineral resources, without the compensation of American security guarantees to prevent future Russian aggression, was then decried by Mr Zelensky as “not a serious” proposal.
The US president then accused the Ukrainian leader of being a “dictator” with approval rates as low as 4 per cent. Mr Zelensky’s ratings are closer to 60 per cent.
In response, Mr Zelensky said Mr Trump was living in a “disinformation bubble” of Russian making. Then came the White House spat. The only beneficiary of that, said Ukraine’s allies, was Mr Putin.
"Of course, Trump wants fast actions and activities. Having observed his strategies, we can see that his style of doing politics is to dominate the information and diplomatic fields," Mr Podolyak adds.
"But again, it’s not about Trump. It’s not about Ukraine’s willingness to sit down at the negotiating table. It’s about Russia."
Meanwhile, China warned the US it was ready to fight “any type” of war as it retaliated against Mr Trump's mounting trade tariffs.
The trade war between the two superpowers escalated on Tuesday as Mr Trump hiked his levies on Chinese goods to a total of 20 per cent, and China retaliated by imposing 15 per cent tariffs on American agricultural goods.
The Chinese embassy in Washington, in a post on X, said: “If war is what the US wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we're ready to fight till the end.”
