Macron invitations military chiefs to Paris as US suspends intelligence sharing with Ukraine

A possible menace to 5 Eyesrevealed at 19:49 Greenwich Imply Time 5 March

19:49 GMT 5 March

Frank Gardner
Safety correspondent

As not too long ago as throughout the Munich Safety Convention, lower than three
weeks in the past, British officers had been insisting that it was “enterprise as normal”
when it got here to the UK’s extremely shut working partnership with Washington
on intelligence-sharing.

At a working degree, Whitehall officers have at all times maintained,
the connection between the UK’s three intelligence companies – SIS (MI6), MI5
and GCHQ – and their US counterparts is proof against the vicissitudes of which approach
the political wind is blowing.

However there may be nothing “enterprise as normal” about chopping
off your embattled ally from very important intel in the course of a battle. Intelligence
from UK and different allied nations’ belongings can nonetheless stream to Kyiv and the
indications are that if and when President Trump will get the mineral deal he needs
from Ukraine, plus some concessions in the direction of an eventual peace deal, then
America’s intel faucets may properly be turned again on.

But this has been a impolite shock, not only for Ukraine, not simply
for America’s shut companion Britain, but in addition for different members of the
so-called 5 Eyes partnership.

That is the mechanism whereby a lot intelligence is shared
between 5 English-speaking nations: the US, UK, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand. The US, with its roughly US$100bn
intelligence finances, supplies the lion’s share. The UK, whereas specialising in
human intelligence-gathering, has a finances roughly 20 occasions smaller than that.