- Paul Adams
- BBC foreign affairs correspondent
Leaked documents include details of foreign training provided to Ukraine
What can be drawn from dozens of classified U.S. Department of Defense documents — maps, charts and photographs — that are now circulating online?
Together with various timelines and dozens of military acronyms that no one has deciphered, the documents, partially marked “top secret,” paint a detailed picture of the war in Ukraine.
It reveals the casualties suffered by both sides, each side’s military weaknesses and, critically, what might be the advantage for both sides should Ukraine decide to launch its much-anticipated “spring offensive.”
How real are these photocopies that were probably spread out on a table somewhere? What do they tell us? Or tell the Kremlin what? What are some that we didn’t know before?
First things first: This is the largest leak of secret American information about the war since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine 14 months ago. Some of the documents are six weeks old, but the potential impact is still enormous.
A Pentagon official was quoted as saying the document was authentic.
Information on at least one document appears to have been tampered with in a later version, but in a pile of more than 100 documents, this appears to be a relatively minor detail.
The BBC has seen more than 20 of them. Parts of it describe details of the delivery of training and equipment to Ukraine, which is organizing a dozen new brigades for an offensive that could be launched within weeks.
It said when the units would be ready and listed all the tanks, armored vehicles and artillery provided by Ukraine’s Western allies.
But it noted that “equipment delivery time will affect training and readiness”.
Ukrainian soldiers fired a German-made PzH2000 self-propelled howitzer
One map includes a “Zone Soil Freeze Timeline,” assessing ground conditions across eastern Ukraine over the course of spring.
There was also a sober analysis of the decline in Kiev’s air defenses after a winter that tested Ukraine’s air defenses, trying to find a balance between protecting civilians, critical infrastructure and frontline troops with limited resources.
How much of this is new?
Many of the details are familiar. It’s just that this time the amount of information is much larger, and it’s all aggregated.
Taking the casualty figure as an example, the document does not surprisingly state that the U.S. estimated Russian casualties to be between 189,500 and 223,000.
The Ukrainian figure — between 124,500 and 131,000 — is also in line with the approximate range reported in the media in recent weeks.
On both figures, the Pentagon said it had “low confidence” in their accuracy, citing information gaps, operational security and a likely intentional misleading effort on both sides.
Interestingly, it is at this point that an attempt has been made to rewrite the document to make it appear that Ukraine suffered the worst casualties.
A version that appeared on a pro-Russian Telegram site included the number of Ukrainian “killed” people (“16,000-17,500”) in Russian statistics, but reversed the numbers on the Ukrainian side so that the numbers became “61,000-71,500”.
All of this makes us wonder, who leaked these documents, and why?
“Look at some leaked documents”
Aric Toler of Bellingcat, an open-source intelligence and investigative agency, has discussed how these documents flowed from the messaging platform Discord to 4Chan and Telegram.made a report。
Toller said that the original source of the leaked documents has not yet been revealed, but traced back to the documents appearing in early March on a communication platform commonly used by gamers.
On March 4, some debates about the war in Ukraine appeared on the server of the Discord platform frequented by players of the computer game “My World” (Minecraft). 10 of the documents.
This is an unusual, but by no means unique, way of leaking documents.
In 2019, before the UK general election, documents about US-UK trade relations appeared on Reddit, 4Chan and other sites.
At the time, Reddit said the unsmeared files came from inside Russia.
In another case last year, players of the online game War Thunder repeatedly posted sensitive military documents, seemingly trying to win their own arguments.
Recent document leaks are more sensitive and potentially damaging.
Ukraine has always been vigilant about its “operational security” and would never be happy that such sensitive material was leaked at such a critical juncture.
Ukraine’s spring offensive could be a make-or-break moment for Zelensky’s government, which wants to turn the tide on the battlefield and set the tone for subsequent peace talks.
In Kiev, officials have spoken of a possible Russian disinformation operation.
Other military bloggers suggested the opposite: It was all a Western plot to mislead Russian commanders.
The key point is that there is no information in the leaked documents to point out the direction and goal of Ukraine’s counteroffensive.
The Kremlin certainly has a better understanding of the scale of Ukraine’s preparations (though Moscow’s intelligence failures have been evident throughout the war), but Kiev needs to keep its enemies guessing how the operation will unfold, This will maximize your chances of success.
