Ukraine received no warning from its Western partners before a Russian missile barrage, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday, days after the Trump administration appeared to threaten to cut off intelligence sharing that includes alerts of such attacks.<\/p>\n
But Mr. Trump later said that the United \u2060States was continuing to share intelligence with Ukraine. \u201cWe are helping them, and we are sharing intel,\u201d he told reporters<\/a>. \u201cWe want the war to end, so we\u2019re \u2060working with them and \u200bRussia on \u2060getting the war \u2060to end.\u201d<\/p>\n And at a security conference in Warsaw on Tuesday morning, Ukraine\u2019s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said that intelligence sharing continued<\/a>, but that the attack went undetected \u201cbecause of a special type of weaponry which was used by the Russian side.\u201d<\/p>\n In a social media post, Mr. Zelensky said<\/a> that five Russian ballistic missiles had hit civilian infrastructure in the strike on Monday night, without specifying whether they had caused any casualties.<\/p>\n Russia has previously fired missiles that Western satellites have struggled to track, including S-400 missiles, which Ukraine has at times described as ballistic weapons. Serhiy Beskrestnov, a military expert who advises Mr. Zelensky, said after the attack<\/a> on Monday that it was not the first time Western partners had failed to detect a launch of S-400 missiles.<\/p>\n Fears that Washington might cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine emerged after Mr. Trump struck a deal<\/a> with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to buy millions of tons of Russian fuel. The agreement is part of an effort to bring down sky-high diesel prices, caused mostly by the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, before the U.S. midterm elections.<\/p>\n As they presented the deal to the Ukrainians<\/a> at a meeting last week in Miami, Trump administration officials asked Kyiv to stop striking Russian oil refineries so that Russian diesel could flow back onto the market. They said Kyiv owed Washington for critical U.S. intelligence assistance, which some in the room took as a veiled threat. A U.S. official later denied any suggestion that intelligence support would be withheld.<\/p>\n Mr. Zelensky said Ukraine had refrained from attacking Russian oil refineries over the past two days, framing it as a gesture of good will toward Mr. Trump, who on Friday declared an energy cease-fire that neither Kyiv nor Moscow has confirmed<\/a>. Ukraine has warned that such a cease-fire would work only if Russia stopped its attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has shown before that it is willing to withhold intelligence as a lever against Ukraine. After a White House meeting in which Mr. Trump berated Mr. Zelensky in front of journalists in early 2025, Washington paused intelligence sharing with Ukraine<\/a> for a few days.<\/p>\n On Monday, Russian missiles struck Kyiv around 10 p.m. local time. Air-raid alerts sounded too late, after the missiles had been launched, leaving residents with no warning. The lapse immediately prompted speculation online that Washington had halted intelligence sharing.<\/p>\n Ukraine lacks the extensive satellite-based intelligence capabilities of the United States and relies on information from Western partners to monitor Russian military preparations signaling an attack. That includes activity at air bases, movements of ships and the deployment of ballistic missile launchers.<\/p>\n \u201cOur NATO partners inform us when there is activity involving strategic aviation. Flights from one airfield to another. Where missiles are being delivered,\u201d Col. Yurii Ihnat, a Ukrainian Air Force spokesman, said in an interview this summer. Sometimes, he added, Western satellites detected a flash indicating a missile launch, and partners immediately informed Ukraine.<\/p>\n Commenting on the overnight attack, Colonel Ihnat told<\/a> Ukrainian national television that Western intelligence sometimes \u201cfails to arrive.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not the first case,\u201d he said. \u201cIf there were certain technical issues this time, I believe the experts can sort it out. And we will resolve this problem together with our partners.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Zelensky said Western intelligence was critical. \u201cThis is what helps prevent killings when there is a warning about ballistic missiles,\u201d he said in a social media post<\/a> on Tuesday.<\/p>\n The cost of missing early warnings is perhaps felt most keenly in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv<\/a>, which lies only about 20 miles from the Russian border. Air-raid alerts sometimes cannot be sounded fast enough when Russia attacks the city.<\/p>\n