“We have to know that both sides are sincerely negotiating towards a partial, then permanent, peace,” he said.
A source familiar with the situation, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Trump administration had halted “everything,” including targeting data that Ukraine has used to strike Russian targets.
Volodymyr Zelensky, US President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance during their explosive meeting in the Oval Office.Credit: Bloomberg
A second source said intelligence sharing had only “partially” been cut, but was unable to provide more detail.
Washington halted military aid to Kyiv on Monday after a disastrous Oval Office meeting on Friday in which Trump and Zelensky engaged in a shouting match before the world’s media. The clash delayed the signing of a Ukraine-US minerals deal.
Comments from top Trump administration officials suggest the decision is part of the broader negotiations between Trump and Zelensky to negotiate a peace deal with Russia, and that intelligence could begin flowing to Ukraine again soon.
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European countries are scrambling to boost defence spending and maintain support for Ukraine after the military aid freeze fuelled doubts about Washington’s commitment to its European NATO allies.
In his address to Congress, Trump said Kyiv was ready to sign a deal on exploiting Ukraine’s critical mineral deposits, which the US leader has demanded to repay the costs of US military aid. He provided no further information.
Trump also said he had been in “serious discussions with Russia” and had received strong signals that they were ready for peace.
“It’s time to end this senseless war. If you want to end wars you have to talk to both sides,” he said.
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The US has provided critical intelligence to Ukraine for its fight against Moscow’s forces, including information that helped thwart Russian President Vladimir Putin’s drive to seize Kyiv at the start of his full-scale invasion in February 2022.
It’s unclear whether the American suspension affects the intelligence sharing ties between Ukraine and other Western powers, including the Five Eyes alliance between the US, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesman, Dave Pares, would not confirm whether the UK is still supplying Ukraine with intelligence from the United States.
He said Britain was “will do everything to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position across all aspects of our support, particularly around defence and security, and our position hasn’t changed.”
In less than two months in office, Trump has upended US policy, stunning and alienating European allies and raising concerns about the future of the NATO alliance.
He has also ended Putin’s isolation through phone calls with the Russian leader and talks between Russian and US aides in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, from which Ukraine and its European allies were excluded.
Some experts said the US intelligence-sharing suspension would hurt Ukraine’s ability to strike Russian forces, which occupy about 20 per cent of the country’s territory.
“Unfortunately, our dependence in this regard is quite serious, starting with missile threats, missile attacks and ending with what is happening in Russia, in the temporarily occupied territories in terms of launching strikes,” Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies research fellow Mykola Bielieskov said.
Some of the loss could be offset through purchases of commercial satellite imagery, but only military satellites could pinpoint missile launches, he said.
The intelligence suspension also will complicate Ukraine’s defences against Russian air and missile strikes, Bielieskov said, which regularly have hit civilian buildings like schools and hospitals, killing hundreds of non-combatants.
“We will have less time to react, more destruction, potentially more casualties, it will all weaken us very, very much,” he said.
Waltz said overnight (AEDT) that the US “had taken a step back” and that the administration was reviewing all aspects of its intelligence relationship with Ukraine.
“I think we’re going to see movement in very short order,” he said.
