In the United States and around the world, the scandal surrounding the "leaks" of American intelligence and Pentagon reports, which concern both the Russian Federation's war against Ukraine and the broader context of Washington's relations with its allies, continues to gain momentum.
On April 6, the first publication of the New York Times drew attention to the "leakage" of possibly secret information. Since then, numerous details of the documents, which were distributed online in several forums as early as January-March 2023, continue to appear in the most influential American media. A number of countries around the world, including Israel, the UAE and Egypt, have already been forced to respond to the documents' assessment of their governments, services and plans.
Meanwhile, the United States is trying to overcome the consequences of the crisis, which has become the largest possible exposure of the methods and scope of work of the American intelligence community in recent years. The authenticity of the documents published on the Internet is checked, Washington is making efforts to remove them from the public space, it is currently known that at least some documents were falsified. The US is also reaching out to its allies and partners to address the fallout from the revelations.
The US State Department assured that the "leakage" of Pentagon documents will not prevent America from providing Ukraine with all necessary assistance. Ukrainian intelligence has previously stated that the documents are a forgery and a special operation of the Russian intelligence services.
Secret materials of the Pentagon could be published online by a person who wanted to make an impression on interlocutors on the Internet.
This was reported by the Associated Press with reference to one of the users of the chat, where the merged documents of the US Ministry of Defense were first published.
The participant of the chat, on the condition of anonymity, told the mass media that he communicated with the user responsible for publishing the documents on the network. According to him, they were posted on Thug Shaker Central by a person with the nickname the OG
"If we had time, we could watch how the Russian Federation disintegrates, and its "elites" devour each other. But we don't have time, because our people are dying. It is necessary to reflect less on "rainfalls" and more long-range weapons in order to correctly finalize the war and force the Russian Federation to realize the realities," wrote on Twitter the adviser to the head of the OP Mykhailo Podolyak, commenting on the publicity surrounding the leak of US intelligence.
The recent "leak" of secret US military documents, if their authenticity is confirmed, could have "deadly consequences" in Russia's war against Ukraine, writes CNN, citing Congressman Jim Himes, the representative of Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.
"It will not be difficult for the Russians to block the [intelligence] collection channels that could save lives every day," Hymes said of the possible consequences of the "drain" of intelligence. According to him, any information in the leaked documents that points to the sources and methods of the US intelligence community "carries a very real risk that those sources and methods will disappear." "And that could mean people dying, it could mean shutting down technology. And this can lead to bad results on the battlefield," he emphasized.
Himes emphasized that he was not individually informed about the documents and could not independently confirm their authenticity. But US officials told CNN that the documents appeared to be genuine.
Commenting on the large-scale leak of secret Pentagon documents, NSDC Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said that Ukraine will decide on a counteroffensive "at the last moment," and Western partners should be "more vigilant." He said this in an interview with the ARD TV channel, which Tagesschau published on April 10.
Earlier, CNN, citing a source close to Volodymyr Zelenskyi, reported that after the "leak" of documents, Ukraine allegedly changed a number of military plans. Responding to this, Danilov emphasized that although Kyiv is constantly in contact with allied countries, the number of people who know about the plans of the Armed Forces is "extremely limited."
"I don't think that the informant who was in contact with CNN has anything to do with it […] Data for carrying out certain operations, the number of units, who is involved and in what direction - this information is absolutely secret. If anyone thinks they own it, I can only congratulate them. But I don't know where he could get it from," he said.