The US provided intelligence that helped Ukrainian forces locate and strike the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet last month, another sign that the administration is easing its self-imposed limitations on how far it will go in helping Ukraine fight Russia, US officials said.

The targeting help, which contributed to the eventual sinking of the flagship, the Moskva, is part of a continuing classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine.

That intelligence also includes sharing anticipated Russian troop movements, gleaned from a recent

American assessment of Moscow’s battle plan for the fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, the officials said.

The administration has sought to keep much of the battlefield and maritime intelligence it is sharing with the Ukrainians secret out of fear it will be seen as an escalation and provoke President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia into a wider war.

But in recent weeks, the US has sped heavier weapons to Ukraine and requested an extraordinary $33 billion in additional military, economic and humanitarian aid from Congress, demonstrating how quickly American restraints on support for Ukraine are shifting.

Two senior American officials said that Ukraine already had obtained the Moskva’s targeting data on its own, and that the US provided only confirmation.

But other officials said the American intelligence was crucial to Ukraine’s sinking of the ship.

The US intelligence help to strike the Moskva was reported earlier by NBC News.

On April 13, Ukrainian forces on the ground fired two Neptune missiles, striking the Moskva and igniting a fire that eventually led to the sinking of the warship.

Attention has also focused on whether the ageing ship’s radar systems were working properly. Ukrainian and US officials said the Moskva was possibly distracted by Ukraine’s deploying of a Turkish-made Bayraktar drone nearby.

Immediately after the strike, Biden administration officials were scrupulously silent, declining to confirm even that the Moskva had been struck.

But in recent days, American officials confirmed that targeting data from American intelligence sources was provided to Ukraine in the hours before the Neptune missiles were launched.

The officials declined to elaborate on what specific information was passed along, but one official said the information went beyond simply a report on the ship’s location in the Black Sea, 65 nautical miles south of Odessa.

New York Times News Service