The US Pentagon is investigating the leak of several classified documents containing information about US and NATO plans for the war in Ukraine. The documents would have appeared this week published on various Twitter accounts and disseminated through Telegram, according to the New York Times. A former senior Pentagon official, Mick Mulroythink it’s about “a significant breach in security.”
The New York newspaper claims that the documents do not reveal when or where the Ukrainian offensive will take placebut the leak could affect trust between the allies, as it provides information on arms deliveries and the amount of Western-trained Ukrainian troops.
According to the aforementioned newspaper’s military sources, some aspects of the documents would have been modified before being published, such as the US estimates of the number of Ukrainians killed during the conflict, as well as Russian casualties, which according to military analysts could show an attempt of Moscow to spread disinformation that raises Russian spirits around its invasion of Ukraine. One of the leaked documents says that the Russians have lost up to 17,500 soldiers since the start of the invasion. The United States estimates that the true figure is up to 10 times higher.
“Pentagon officials acknowledge that they are legitimate Department of Defense documents, but the copies appear to have been altered in certain parts of their original format,” The New York Times reported. Even so, they point out, the leaks represent a huge breach in US intelligence, and although the government has been trying to eliminate all copies of the documents, it has not yet succeeded. The newspaper has given more details about the leaked documents, which actually these are photographs of said documentsand that they are also from five weeks ago, so they show already outdated information from US intelligence.
And although the leaked information does not include very sensitive plans, the US authorities fear that it could provide several key clues for the Russian military, and the analysts consulted by the newspaper affirm that it is difficult to estimate the real damage for the Ukrainian offensive that such a leak could cause.
A Ukrainian official told Reuters news agency that the documents contained “a huge amount of fictitious information” and that the posts looked more like a Russian disinformation operation.
The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskycalled on the authorities to take measures to prevent possible leaks in a meeting in which the heads of the armed forces, the secret service and other high-ranking officials participated.
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