From that linked New Yorker article, found this VERY interesting:
One evening in April, at an intelligence-coördination center somewhere in Europe, Ukrainian military officers asked their American and nato counterparts to confirm a set of coördinates. This had become a common practice. Ukrainian representatives might ask for verification of the location of a Russian command post or ammunition depot. “We do that, fair game,” the senior Biden Administration official said. In some cases, U.S. intelligence and military officers provide targeting information unsolicited: “We do let them know, say, there’s a battalion moving on Slovyansk from the northwest, and here’s roughly where they are.” But, the official emphasized, Ukrainian forces choose what to hit. “We are not approving, or disapproving, targets.”
The Biden Administration has also refused to provide specific intelligence on the location of high-value Russian individuals, such as generals or other senior figures. “There are lines we drew in order not to be perceived as being in a direct conflict with Russia,” the senior U.S. official said. The United States will pass on coördinates of a command post, for example, but not the presence of a particular commander. “We are not trying to kill generals,” the senior Biden Administration official said. “We are trying to help the Ukrainians undermine Russian command and control.”
Still, Ukraine has so far killed as many as eight generals, most of them at long range with artillery and rocket fire. The high death toll is partially a reflection of Russian military doctrine, which calls for top-down, hierarchical operations. In most cases, mid-ranking Russian officers and enlisted soldiers are not empowered to make decisions, creating a need for generals to be positioned closer to the front. “They were depending on them to control and direct troops,” the U.S. military official said. “It’s a huge operational catastrophe.”
The Ukrainian request in April concerned the suspected location of the Moskva, a Russian naval cruiser and the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet. Could U.S. intelligence confirm that the ship was at a certain set of coördinates south of the Ukrainian port city of Odesa? The answer came back affirmative. Soon, officials in Washington began to see press reports that the ship had suffered some sort of explosion. On April 14th, the Moskva disappeared into the Black Sea.
