US reportedly halts intelligence sharing on Russia-Ukraine peace talks

The US has stopped sharing intelligence on ongoing peace talks between Russia and Ukraine with its partners in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, CBS News reported on Thursday.

According to CBS News, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard signed a directive on 20 July classifying all information related to Russia-Ukraine negotiations as NOFORN — “no foreign dissemination” — effectively blocking its distribution to the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, who have exchanged sensitive intelligence with Washington for decades as part of the Five Eyes group, founded in the 1940s.

Unnamed US intelligence officials told CBS News that the directive limited sharing even between US intelligence agencies and restricted distribution to information already made public. It did not, however, affect the exchange of diplomatic or military intelligence unrelated to the peace talks, they said.

While the White House did not respond to the agency’s request for comment, experts warned that the move could harm US interests, including those related to the war in Ukraine.

Former CIA and Department of Homeland Security intelligence officer Steven Cash said the restrictions could weaken the “common intelligence picture” provided by the Five Eyes and undermine efforts to “coordinate our positions and get the best deal we can, or fight the best war we can”, while former intelligence official and national security commentator Sam Vinograd added that excluding partners “could have a chilling effect on critical intelligence sharing”.

Others, however, downplayed the significance of the decision, with Ezra Cohen, who previously served as Trump’s acting under secretary of defence for intelligence, stressing that there was always a “lot of information” that the US did not share with its Five Eyes partners and vice versa.

“Our interests are not always aligned with our Five Eyes partners”, Cohen told CBS News. “And where we have diverging interests, and it’s not just Ukraine, we absolutely mark things NOFORN”.

The report came as US President Donald Trump, following his recent meetings with Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, signalled his intention to let Moscow and Kyiv organise a bilateral summit between their leaders “without directly playing a role for now”, according to The Guardian.

Putin and Zelensky are expected to meet in person for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the coming weeks, with Austria, Switzerland, Hungary and Türkiye all floated as potential locations for the summit.