A leak of classified documents online relating to U.S. and NATO plans for a Ukrainian offensive against Russia includes classified “internal matters” of American allies and will likely impact U.S. national security, according to officials.
The Pentagon is investigating how dozens of the classified documents, which are around two months old, surfaced on Discord before appearing on Twitter and Telegram, a messaging app with wide reach in Russia. U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal that the leak will likely impact America’s national security worldwide, and the documents also include intelligence on “internal matters” from U.S. allies such as Israel, the U.K., and South Korea.
Some of the documents appear altered to show the number of Ukrainian casualties much higher and Russian casualties much lower, according to The New York Times. They also include details about Ukrainian forces and their military equipment, and reveal some information that has never been available to the public, such as the Ukrainian military’s burn rate of HIMARS munitions, which the U.S. has supplied to Ukraine.
Ukraine believes the leaked documents are full of fake information peddled out by Russia that “have nothing to do with Ukraine’s real plans,” but a U.S. official told CNN that the documents “look real.” Experts who have reviewed the documents also doubt the leak was part of a Russian disinformation campaign, the Journal reported.
Ukrainian officials, however, continue to play down the validity of the leaked documents. Ukraine’s military intelligence spokesman Andriy Chernyak said the leak is an “operation by Russia’s special services,” but Kyiv is taking more precautions after the leak. President Volodymyr Zelensky said that his country is bolstering its security to prevent unauthorized disclosures of important military information as it reportedly prepares to launch an offensive against Russia in the coming weeks.
The Department of Justice opened an investigation into how the documents were leaked and if they were altered. It remains unclear who leaked the documents and where they originated. Aric Toler, who leads research and training at Bellingcat, an investigative journalism group that specializes in open-source intelligence, said on Saturday that he traced the original posting of the documents to a Discord group called Thug Shaker Central. From January-March, hundreds of files were reportedly posted on the Discord server that attracts Minecraft gamers.
The Journal reported that U.S. officials are looking into many possibilities for how the leak of classified documents could have occurred. U.S. official said on Saturday that someone in the government with top-secret security clearance could have leaked the information or that American intelligence systems were hacked.
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Tim Pearce contributed to this report.
