New secret US documents have appeared on the Internet. The New York Times reported that a new batch of US classified documents on Ukraine, the Middle East and China appeared on social media on Friday.
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Prior to that, a month-old American documents on the preparation of the Ukrainian offensive were leaked.
A new portion of classified material, discovered on Friday on social networks, includes more than 100 documents, writes the New York Times. The scale of the leak, along with the secrecy of the documents themselves, has the potential to cause massive damage, US officials said.
A senior intelligence official called the leak “a nightmare for the Five Eyes”, referring to an alliance of countries actively sharing intelligence (US, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada).
“Horror for the countries of the Five Eyes – what is known about the leak of a new portion of US secrets
According to the NYT, one of the documents published on the anonymous 4chan forum includes a map showing the course of hostilities in the Ukrainian Bakhmut. However, the documents probably concern not only secret data about Ukraine’s military plans.
Analysts who have reviewed the documents say the new data set contains sensitive material on briefings on China, the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East and terrorism.
A Pentagon statement Thursday said the Department of Defense was investigating information about a possible leak. On Friday, when a new batch of documents was discovered, representatives of the department said they had nothing to add.
Privately, however, officials from several national security agencies acknowledged both the government’s rush to find the source of the leak and the fear that more documents would be leaked.
One of the officials told the NYT that most likely the leak did not come from Ukraine, since Kyiv did not have access to some leaked documents.
At the same time, Ukraine announced that the so-called leak of secrets about the counter-offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is a fake planted by the Russians.
ISW: Russian reaction to leaked documents shows fear of Ukrainian counteroffensive
The latest report of the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) is also devoted to the leak of secret US documents, or rather the reaction to it from Russian propagandists and Z-bloggers.
According to the ISW report, mostly supporters of the war reacted to the leak with dismay, which is indicative of the fear stored in the Russian media space about the planned Ukrainian counter-offensive.
The authors note that they do not want to judge the authenticity of the published documents (as we wrote earlier, perhaps some of them were edited to minimize the losses of Russia and exaggerate the losses of Ukraine), but only evaluate the reaction to them in Russia.
While several influential Russian military bloggers called the documents fake, they immediately focused on the version, which is about disinformation thrown in to confuse the Russian military command.
One of them said the leaked documents could be part of Ukraine’s larger disinformation campaign on the eve of the counteroffensive. Another recalled historical precedents for spreading false information before a surprise attack.
Thus, ISW experts conclude, the New York Times article about the leak demonstrated the scale of nervous tension in the Russian information space. The reaction to the published documents shows that war bloggers are increasingly reconsidering the validity of their own assessments and assumptions regarding the Ukrainian counteroffensive, and, in general, their ability to predict the actions of the Ukrainian military.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.