The documents on the Ukraine war appeared on social media
The New York Times: The Pentagon Investigates the Kremlin Investigation of Russia-Ukraine Scenarios and their Implication for U.S. and NATO Relations
The New York Times, which first disclosed the Pentagon investigation, reported that some of the images circulating online describe intelligence that could be useful to Russia, such as how quickly the Ukrainians are expending munitions used in US-provided rocket-systems.
Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh would not weigh in on the documents’ legitimacy but said in a statement that the Defense Department is “aware of the reports of social media posts, and the Department is reviewing the matter.”
Podolyak called the documents “a bluff, dust in your eyes” and said that “if Russia really did receive real scenario preparations, it would hardly make them public.”
The documents include maps of Ukraine and charts on where troops are concentrated and what kinds of weapons are available to them. The online posts show photos of physical documents that were folded and creased in some instances.
The Russia/Ukraine Joint Staff has a daily update. J3 refers to the operations directorate of the US military’s joint staff, J4 deals with logistics and engineering, and J5 proposes strategies, plans and policy recommendations.
Asked about the images circulating on Twitter and Telegram, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told CNN in a statement that “we don’t have the slightest doubt about direct or indirect involvement of the United States and NATO in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.”
He said that the level of involvement is rising. “We keep our eye on this process. Even though it makes the tale more complicated, it can’t influence the outcome of the special operation.
Status of the Conflict as of 1 March and “Top Secret”: Two Documents About the Russia-Ukraine War and Their Implications for Security
One is titled “Status of the Conflict as of 1 March” and the other is labeled “Top Secret.” It gives a detailed battlefield summary on that particular day, though it’s not clear why the documents are emerging now, more than a month after they were prepared.
For example, one chart puts the Ukrainian death toll at around 71,000, a figure that is considered plausible. However, the chart also lists the Russian fatalities at 16,000 to 17,500. The Russian count is believed to be much larger, though neither side releases overall casualty figures.
The Ukrainians are widely expected to launch their own offensive this spring and most analysts expect it to focus on areas controlled by Russian troops.
The identity of those who published the documents, and their motives, are not known. The documents were put online to alert the Pentagon that they might have been leaked or stolen.
Before the war, Russian intelligence agencies were considered extremely active in Ukraine. Russia and Ukraine were both part of the Soviet Union, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former intelligence agent himself, had meddled in Ukrainian affairs throughout his time in power, including an initial 2014 military incursion.
In the runup to Russia’s invasion in February of 2022, the US intelligence community deliberately publicized some information about their plans.
The goal was to persuade the international community that the threat of a Russian attack was real. CIA Director William Burns has made multiple visits to Ukraine and spoken about the ongoing intelligence sharing between the two countries.
The Russians are continuing to press an offensive in eastern Ukranian while the Russian military has only made minimal progress in fighting that has claimed many lives on both sides.
Oleksii Danilov is a security official from the Ukrainian government and he said that no more than five people in the world know when and where the counteroffensive will begin.
The case against a Russian intelligence operation after a leak of a classified US military document on the war in Ukranian on March 1
The leak of a classified US military document on the war in Ukranian caused a bizarre turn Friday as it was discovered that versions of the documents had been uploaded to a video game related chatroom over a month ago.
“This sh*t was sitting in a Minecraft Discord server for a month and no one noticed,” Aric Toler, a researcher at investigative outlet Bellingcat who traced the timeline of the posted documents, told CNN. It is a popular video game.
Speculation and paranoia abounded, with some users wondering if they could get into trouble for re-posting the documents now that the US government is investigating the matter. A user who posted photos of the documents on March 1 appeared to have deleted his accounts on Twitter and Discord.
Thomas Rid, an expert on state-backed intel operations, is skeptical that this is a professional Russian intelligence operation because the edited files are available online.
If an intelligence agency makes changes to a document that they have access to, they usually don’t make any of the other versions public, said Rid, who is a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies.
