Russia Ukraine war, page-126230

Washington: Classified war documents detailing secret US and NATO plans for building up the Ukrainian military before a planned offensive against Russia were posted this week on social media channels, senior Biden administration officials said.

The Pentagon is investigating who may have been behind the leak of the documents, which appeared on Twitter and on Telegram, a platform with more than half a billion users that is widely available in Russia.

Military analysts said the documents appear to have been modified in certain parts from their original format, overstating US estimates of Ukrainian war dead and understating estimates of Russian troops killed.

The modifications could point to an effort of disinformation by Moscow, the analysts said. But the disclosures in the original documents, which appear as photographs of charts of anticipated weapons deliveries, troop and battalion strengths, and plans, represents a significant breach of US intelligence in the effort to aid Ukraine.

Biden officials were working to get them deleted but had not, as of Thursday evening, succeeded.

“We are aware of the reports of social media posts and the department is reviewing the matter,” said Sabrina Singh, the deputy press secretary at the Pentagon.

The documents do not provide specific battle plans, like how, when and where Ukraine intends to launch its offensive. And because the documents are five weeks old, they offer a snapshot of time — the American and Ukrainian view, as of March 1, of what Ukrainian troops might need for the campaign.

To the trained eye of a Russian war planner, field general or intelligence analyst, however, the documents no doubt offer many tantalising clues. The documents mention, for instance, the expenditure rate of HIMARS — US-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System munitions, which can launch attacks against targets like ammunition dumps, infrastructure and concentrations of troops, from a distance. The Pentagon has not said publicly how fast Ukrainian troops are using the HIMARS munitions; the documents do

https://www.theage.com.au/world/europe/leak-of-ukraine-s-war-plans-some-altered-prompts-pentagon-investigation-20230407-p5cyvp.html