According to the leaked documents, the US thinks that Ukraine can quickly end the war against Russia

What have we learned from the Ukraine counteroffensive? Brandon Van Grack, former deputy justice department “leak czar” and former discord partner at Morrison & Foerster

Additional documents have also emerged. According to the Washington Post, a leaked document from February warns that challenges with troops, equipment and equipment could cause Ukraine to fall short of its goals in the counteroffensive.

It’s not known what impact the new material has on the war trajectory as Ukrainians prepare to launch a counteroffensive sometime this spring.

While there’s still a lot we don’t know, former Justice Department “leak czar” Brandon Van Grack says national security damage has certainly been done.

“The only debate now is how much damage there was and the threat is still live,” he says. The top priority is to make certain that no one has access to classified information and that there are no additional leaks.

Van Grack held multiple national security-focused roles at the Justice Department, including leading the investigation into Edward Snowden after the then-National Security Agency contractor leaked thousands of documents in 2013. Van Grack is now a partner at Morrison & Foerster, which represents Discord — one of the sites where the Ukraine documents were shared.

He spoke with A Martnez of Morning Edition on Monday about what was going to happen behind the scenes as law enforcement and intelligence officials try to plug the leak.

The FBI along with the DOJ are issuing search warrants and subpoenas in order to find third parties, companies that have relevant information, and that has been happening through the weekend. The leaked documents are being reviewed by the intelligence committee as well as the FBI, to see if they can identify anyone who had access to them.

The FBI, the Department of Justice, and companies who may have posted this are some of the places you can begin. At the same time, you are closely coordinating with the intelligence community. I think you’re trying to narrow down the group of people who may have had access to some of the documents, because there are multiple documents and there are images.

You are chewing gum at the same time. Identifying who this person or these persons are is the focus right now. That needs to be the top priority. If they identify someone, then you’re starting to put together a charging document, figuring out who that person is. The identification is the top priority right now, and there are no more leaks in sight.

Because of special counsel appointments we don’t know exactly what the overlap is, but there should be some overlap of those individuals and expertise. And so certainly there’s at least some subset of those persons who have been sprinting for the last few months on those cases and now would probably need to do some sort of pivot to focus on this for the time being.

This case shows why it is so critical that we enforce criminally the laws that make it unlawful to willfully retain or disclose classified information. There’s millions of Americans that have access to … untold amounts of classified information, and they can’t all be monitored. Ensuring that it is not disclosed to people who don’t have access is an important part of the way you control access.

Cold War in Ukraine, Cold War, and Cold War: Analysis of Kyiv’s Military Counteroffensive Observations from July 19 to March 20

The documents show many of the shortfalls in the military as Kyiv prepares for a spring counteroffensive against Russia.

The documents also underscore lingering problems with Russia’s own military offensive, predicting that the result will be a stalemate between the two sides for the foreseeable future.

“Russia’s grinding campaign of attrition in the Donbas region is likely heading toward a stalemate, thwarting Mosco’s goal to capture the entire region in 2023,” states one of the classified documents.

“I haven’t seen anything in the documents I’ve seen that would cause me as a commander to change my plans,” Hertling said. “It’s given some information to the Russians in terms of unit locations and ammo and equipment capabilities, but I would venture to say the Russians already knew all that anyway.”

In many ways, the assessment of the conflict in Ukraine is like what top Biden administration officials have said publicly, which is that the conflict is likely to drag on for a long time.

The assessment of the war laid out in the slides is brutally honest about the challenges that Ukraine has to face despite its successes in the war.

It was alarming to see the leaked information about the conflict inUkraine, an official from a country in the Five Eyes agreement told CNN.

The official said that the private assessment pointed to a likely yearlong stalemate and that it did not help to have the public assessment.

On Tuesday, Kuleba reported that Blinken reinforced the U.S. support and denied attempts to cast doubt on Ukraine’s ability to win on the battlefield.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/11/politics/pentagon-documents-ukraine-war-assessment/index.html

The Time for Ukraine to Do Something About It: Austin, Turner, Tapper and Bakhmut — Update on Ukrain’s Defense Counteroffensive and US Forces

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the press conference on Tuesday that every rock will be turned over until they find who leaked the intelligence documents.

CNN previously reported that one of the documents appears to have been altered and that it listed Russian and Ukrainian casualty numbers, before being spread on pro-Russian Telegram channels.

These documents are not constantly changing. They’re a picture of a specific time. House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner told Jake Tapper that there is plenty of time for Ukraine to do something about the issue.

A document from February states that the US assesses Ukraine can generate 12 combat brigades for the spring counteroffensive, including three trained in Ukraine and nine trained and equipped by the US. Six of the brigades would be ready by the end of March and the remaining six by the end of April, according to the document.

There are assessments of Ukrainian forces around Bakhmut, where some of the fiercest fighting between the two sides has taken place this year. In one update in February, the intelligence assessment includes details on villages where Ukraine’s military had withdrawn and which positions it was still controlling.