By Steve Holland and Gram Slattery, Reuters
Firefighters work to put out flames at Barabashovo city market after a Russian aerial strike in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on 1 October, 2025. Photo: Viacheslav Madiievskyi / NurPhoto via AFP
The United States will provide Ukraine with intelligence on long-range energy infrastructure targets in Russia, two officials told Reuters, as it weighs whether to send Kyiv missiles that could be used in such strikes.
The US is also asking NATO allies to provide similar support, the US officials said, confirming details first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The decision represents the first known policy change that President Donald Trump has signed off on since hardening his rhetoric toward Russia in recent weeks in an attempt to end Moscow's more than three-year-old war on its neighbour.
Trump, who had previously said Ukraine would have to give up territory to end the war, said last week he believed it was possible for Kyiv to win back all land that Moscow has captured.
Trump's new Ukraine strategy targets Russian revenue
Washington has long been sharing intelligence with Kyiv, but the Wall Street Journal said the new data would make it easier for Ukraine to hit infrastructure such as refineries, pipelines and power plants with the aim of depriving the Kremlin of revenue and oil.
Responding to the reports on Thursday (local time), Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the "supply and use of the entire infrastructure of NATO and the United States to collect and transfer intelligence to the Ukrainians is obvious".
Trump has been pressing European countries to stop buying Russian oil in exchange for his agreement to impose tough sanctions in a bid to try to dry up funding for Russia's invasion.
Neither the White House nor Ukraine's mission to the United Nations immediately responded to requests for comment from Reuters. Russia's UN mission in New York declined to comment.
The move comes as the United States considers a Ukrainian request to provide Tomahawk cruise missiles, which have a range of 2500 km (1550 miles) - easily enough to hit Moscow and most of European Russia if fired from Ukraine.
Ukraine also has its own long-range missile, Flamingo, in early production but quantities are unknown.
According to US officials cited by the Wall Street Journal, the approval for additional intelligence came shortly before Trump posted on social media last Tuesday suggesting that Ukraine could retake all its occupied land.
"After seeing the Economic trouble (the war) is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form," Trump wrote on Truth Social shortly after meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Russia says there is no quick fix for war with Ukraine
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, calling it a "special military operation" to halt Kyiv's Westward geopolitical drift and what it considers to be a dangerous eastward NATO expansion.
Kyiv and European allies consider the invasion to be an imperial-style land grab.
Trump began his second term as president in January vowing to end the war in Ukraine rapidly.
"President Trump is a special kind of politician. He likes quick fixes and this is a situation where quick fixes do not work," Russia's UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said on Wednesday at a press conference to mark the start of Russia's month-long presidency of the UN Security Council.
Nebenzia also cited his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, as saying that if the US supplied Ukraine with Tomahawks, "it will not change the situation on the battlefield".
Energy duties remain the Kremlin's single most important source of cash to finance the war effort, making oil and gas exports a central target of Western sanctions.
Trump has taken steps to impose an additional tariff on imports from India to pressure New Delhi to halt its purchases of discounted Russian crude oil, and lobbied the likes of Turkey to stop buying Russian oil too.
Several major European importers of Russian oil and gas have moved to diversify supplies in recent weeks. Turkey signed long-term deals to buy USliquefied natural gas after Trump met President Tayyip Erdogan. On Thursday, Hungary, one of the biggest remaining buyers of Russian gas, signed a deal to import LNG from France's Engie.
On Wednesday, the Group of Seven major Western nations' finance ministers said they would jointly increase pressure on Russia by targeting those who were continuing to increase their purchases of Russian oil.
- Reuters
