Top Ukrainian official hints at help from Western spies
Ukraine’s air defense forces have reason to thank the intelligence that the West is sharing with Kiev, a top official has hinted.
Appearing on a livestream hosted by blogger Mark Feygin on Tuesday, Alexey Arestovich, a key adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said that the Russian military had fired seven missiles at Dnepropetrovsk, with Ukrainian air defenses managing to intercept six of them.
“Three [missiles] were flying toward Ochakov – all three were shot down,” the official added.
When asked whether Western air defense systems were on the ground, Arestovich replied that “there were just various timely target designations and so on.”
A number of US media outlets recently claimed that Washington is providing Kiev with intelligence data.
In May, The Washington Post, citing unnamed officials, reported that the information shared with the Ukrainian military encompassed real-time data about the location and movement of Russian forces, including satellite imagery. An anonymous Ukrainian official described the intelligence as very helpful at the time.
In late June, The New York Times alleged the existence of a secret task force made up of commandos and spies from the US and other Western nations spread throughout Europe. Among the network’s supposed objectives was the sharing of satellite images and other intelligence with the Ukrainian military.
The US Department of Defense announced earlier this month that it was going to provide Kiev with two units of the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS). These will come on top of the man-portable anti-aircraft missiles already delivered to Ukraine.
