A lot of water has flowed

Whoever stood behind the drain of supposedly secret documents of the United States, most of the information was already known to everyone. The rest, apparently, was forged already in Russia

Last week, the New York Times published information about the appearance of several packages of documents allegedly prepared in the Pentagon on the appearance on Twitter and Telegram. These files contained intelligence data on the Middle East, China, as well as information regarding the war in Ukraine and the preparation of Kiev long -expected counterattack.

A hole in the Pentagon

Part of the documents, according to Nyt journalists, looks falsified. US military authorities reported a leak investigation. This was stated by the deputy press secretary of the Pentagon Sabrina Singh. In addition, the military department sent a request to the Ministry of Justice, which has already opened a criminal case.

Some of the files that appeared on the Internet told the details of the US surveillance of its allies - Ukraine, South Korea and Israel. Others talk about the penetration of American intelligence into the Russian Ministry of Defense and PMC Wagner. Also there are data on Ukrainian weapons, air defense, sizes and readiness of units.

Former US Ministry of Defense official Michael Malra told Reuters that "now the main attention is paid to the fact that this is a leak from the United States, since many documents were only in their hands."

The paper that has fallen into the network does not disclose specific dates of the counterattack of the counterattack, but contain information about the composition and weapons of some Ukrainian formations, as well as the supply of ammunition and military equipment.

So, the documents say that 9 out of 12 brigades of the Ukrainian reserve are equipped with the support of Western allies. This will require about 250 tanks and 350 infantry combat vehicles. In addition, information about daily ammunition costs for Himars missile systems has been published.

The most distrust is caused by documents with data on Russian and Ukrainian losses. So one of the above pictures claims that the Russian Federation lost only 16-17.5 thousand soldiers killed, while Ukraine is 71.5 thousand.

This looks like a clear forgery, because representatives of the Pentagon have already officially announced that according to their estimates we are talking about 200 thousand killed and wounded Russian troops and more than 100 thousand killed and wounded Ukrainian military.

CNN, with reference to a source close to the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky, claims that Ukraine has already begun to change its military plans, despite the fact that the authenticity of the files that have entered the network has not yet been established. At the same time, official Kyiv said that the merged papers do not correspond to the real intentions of Ukraine. Advisor to the office of the President of Ukraine Mikhail Podolyak in his Telegram channel called the data from Photoshop and "virtual fake leaks."

Games for adults

“Some of the documents that have since been widely covered in the media were devoted to the invasion of Russia to Ukraine, while others contained a detailed analysis of the potential policy of Great Britain in the South China Sea and the activities of the Husites in Yemen,” the investigation of this incident conducted by the Bellingcat project says . “The existence of these documents was first informed by The New York Times after a number of Russian Telegram channels shared five photos of files regarding the invasion of Ukraine on April 5, at least one of which was subsequently recognized as Bellingcat rudely edited.”

According to Bellingcat, the documents were dated to the beginning of March of this year. Around this time, they were first posted on the network on the Discord message exchange site, popular among gamers.

However, the investigators found evidence that some documents allegedly created in January could get to the network and until the beginning of spring.

Three members of the Discord community, who agreed to communicate with Bellingcat, said that in recent months, much more documents have been published on other Discord servers. In the future, these platforms were deleted due to the disagreement caused by the leak, and Bellingcat could not confirm this statement. “The channels on which the documents dated to March were focused on the computer game Minecraft and the fandom of the Philippine celebrity YouTube,” Bellingcat said. “Then they spread to other sites, such as 4chan imageboard, before appearing in Telegram, Twitter, and then in recent days in large media editions around the world.” In the images there is an “information update of the CIA operational center” marked “Top Secret” of March 2.

Investigators failed to identify the primary source of leaks, but they were able to trace the distribution of documents for various Internet forums in recent months. Before the files on April 5 began to appear on pro-Russian Telegram channels, they were quite chaotically published in various forums and chats. The initial source of messages with secret files, as the work of Bellingcat shows, was located on the now -existing “Thug Shaker Central” server, which had several other names at different times and several other names.

It is interesting that in one of the documents, after the appearance on the pro-Russian Telegram channel, the initial data on the number of losses killed by the Russian and Ukrainian sides during the conflict was changed.

“A more attentive study of the second image with much higher indicators of Ukrainian Kia (losses), which was placed in Telegram, shows rough manipulation of images,” the investigators of Bellingcat were able to establish. - In addition to a later time of publication and much more blurry permission, the numbers do not coincide. The distance between some numbers and letters is also too large to match the font. Thus, it seems that either the Telegram account or the previous source has changed the original image to present Ukrainian losses more severe than in the initial assessment. ”

Not a reason for a quarrel

“Judging by the opinion of people who are familiar with this type of documents, most files are originals,” says Israeli military expert David Sharp, “it is undoubtedly that in some cases, the data were subjected to serious processing. As, for example, it happened with the numbers of losses. In other cases, fake may not be so obvious. It is not a fact that it will be possible to find out that from merged information is true. After all, we are dealing with an extensive array of information of different types. It is clear that its publication is harmful to the Pentagon and the American intelligence community. And the fact that an official investigation of this incident has begun can confirm the reality of the leak. ”

David Sharp suggests that the drain of some documents can adversely affect the relations of the United States with some allies. After all, the stuffing made it clear that the Americans are conducting intelligence work against their partners. As an example, our interlocutor talks about one of the documents regarding Israel. At the same time, the expert is confident that things will not reach a big scandal. Indeed, in the past, it has already become known more than once that the United States spy on the leadership of friendly countries.

Another important point David Sharp considers the publication of documents related to Russia. Indeed, in his opinion, they testify to the deep penetration of intelligence of the United States into the secret areas of activity of the Russian Federation. In this case, we are talking about information obtained using electronic intelligence. This is interception of negotiations, correspondence, hacking of e -mail drawers.

“Despite the drain of a large amount of data regarding Ukraine, I do not see that this could prevent the beginning of the expected counterattack,” the expert says to the Israeli. “Almost all information on prepared reserves, graphs of the supply of techniques for Lend-Lease, the nomenclature of these weapons and other data have already appeared in open sources.”

“In the merged documents, we also see obvious signs of falsification,” says Alexander Musienko, head of the Center for Military Legal Studies, the head of the Center for Military Legal Studies. - Even if initially it was about the original, they were subjected to serious changes. First of all, we are talking about the number of losses. The Russian special services responsible for this leak allowed obvious inconsistencies, significantly lowering the number of their dead military personnel. ”

According to Alexander Musienko, Russian sources began to throw documents. Their goal was a violation of confidence between Ukraine and its Western allies. It is clear that investigations and conducting inspections do not strengthen the mutual understanding of partners. Especially on the eve of a widely announced counterattack.

“Russia in this way hopes to disrupt Ukrainian plans,” says Alexander Musienko.

-However, this incident will not somehow influence the course of prepared operations. The counterattack is being prepared, help is going on, and its nomenclature is expanding. ”

"Daza" in a beautiful shell

With the version that the leak in the press was carried out by the Russian side, the Ukrainian military expert Roman Svitan also agrees. “This was done by employees of the body similar to the Ukrainian center of information and psychological special operations,” explains the interlocutor of the new-Europe. " - The main task is to send information about the enormous losses of Ukraine. Absolutely non -reality data ”are wrapped“ in a shell from real information, most of which were already in the public domain and was known to the Russians. And then journalists and experts begin to replicate and multiplic the lies for free. ” Svitan himself is convinced that the losses of the Russian army only dead amount to 150 thousand soldiers. At the same time, the Ukrainian side, the Svatan believes, lost the same 150 thousand, but already taking into account the seriously wounded who cannot return to duty.

According to Roman Svitan, the real operations of operations are extremely reliably protected. They are stored on media that are never connected to the Internet, and are not printed on paper. Whereas the information contained in the merged documents about the forces prepared by Ukraine can calculate for the forces any experienced senior officer based, for example, the famous December statement by Valery Zaluzhny. The Commander -in -Chief of Ukraine stated that it would take 300 tanks for the offensive, which is 10 tank battalions. That is how much the coalition partners are passing to Kyiv now. As a rule, one such battalion includes one such battalion. A simple calculation shows that in total, about 40-50 thousand bayonets are preparing for counterattack.

“I am sure that not Russian intelligence agencies, but those who want to get in to the propagandists,” explains a high -ranking Russian military on the basis of anonymity. - After all, having received secret information, intelligence will never be thoughtlessly to throw them into a public information space, but will try to use it for their own purposes. And how clumsy the data in published reports were correctly corrected, clearly demonstrates that falsification was engaged in frank fans. Most likely, some blogger who accidentally stumbled upon curious documents on the Internet decided to get in front of the authorities and launched all this campaign. Not sure that in the end this whole situation is beneficial even in the sense of agitation. After all, it shows the good preparation of Ukraine for offensive actions and the real strength of the enemy, that the Russian side is trying in every possible way to hide. ”