But this situation, US officials say, is very different. Washington’s claims about Russia’s troop build-up have been confirmed by commercial satellite images of a quality previously unavailable. The details of Moscow’s secret disinformation plots are in line with the Kremlin’s propaganda campaigns that play out on social media platforms and have been tracked by independent investigators.
Most importantly, the officials said, there is a fundamental distinction between Iraq in 2003 and Ukraine in 2022. “In Iraq, intelligence from this stage was used and deployed to start a war,” Sullivan said Friday. “We’re trying to stop a war.”
The last time Russia took action against Ukraine, in 2014, intelligence officials blocked the Obama administration from sharing what they knew. But the Biden administration has studied those mistakes. The new revelations reflect the influence of Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, and William J. Burns, the CIA director, who are willing to release information in an attempt to disrupt Russian planning, government officials said.
“We have learned a lot, especially since 2014, about how Russia is using the information space as part of its overall security and military apparatus,” said Emily J. Horne, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council. “And we learned a lot about how to deny them any influence in that space.”
A US intelligence official said if the country’s espionage services have information that could help the world make a better judgment about Russia’s activities, it should be released as long as the government can prevent it from disclosing how the information is handled. was collected or by whom it was passed on.
It is, according to some strategists, a full-fledged information battle.
“I love it,” said Beth Sanner, a former top intelligence official who regularly briefed President Donald J. Trump. “My guess is that these revelations terrify the Kremlin and the security services. And, most importantly, it could narrow Putin’s options and make him think twice.”