Time reports:

The U.S. decision to suspend the flow of military intelligence to Ukraine this week has aided the Russian advance along a critical part of the front, weakening the negotiating position of President Volodymyr Zelensky and killing many Ukrainian soldiers in recent days, according to five senior Western and Ukrainian officials and military officers familiar with the situation.

“As a result of this pause, there are hundreds of dead Ukrainians,” one of the officers told TIME in an interview on Friday in Kyiv, asking not to be named when discussing sensitive military operations. “The biggest problem is morale,” he added, as the armed forces of Ukraine are being left to fight without some of their best weapons systems, not as a result of Russian attacks but American pull backs. “It’s really causing an advantage for the enemy on the front line.”

The U.S. stopped providing intelligence to Ukraine shortly after the Presidents of both counties, Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump, clashed in the Oval Office on Feb. 28. During the meeting, Zelensky questioned whether the Russians could be trusted to abide by any ceasefire. President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance responded by berating the Ukrainian leader on camera. “You don’t have the cards,” Trump said. “You’re gambling with World War III.”

In the days that followed, the U.S. suspended military aid to Ukraine, including intelligence sharing. Questioned about that decision on Thursday, President Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, General Keith Kellogg, said the Ukrainians had “brought it on themselves.” The U.S. response to Zelensky’s position was “sort of like hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the nose,” Kellogg said. “Got their attention.”

The impact for the Ukrainians has been most acute in the Russian region of Kursk, where the Ukrainian armed forces are struggling to hold a swath of territory that they seized in a shock offensive last August. That assault marked the first foreign invasion of Russian land since World War II, humiliating the Kremlin and drawing thousands of North Korean troops into the war to help Russia regain control of the area.

President Zelensky sees that region as a critical source of leverage in any future peace talks with the Russians. His aim is to trade parts of the Kursk area for Ukrainian land that Russia has occupied. “We will swap one territory for another,” Zelensky told the Guardian last month. [Continue reading…]