The Department of Justice has launched an investigation into the possible release of DoD documents posted on multiple social media sites. The document appears to detail US and NATO support for Ukraine, but it may have been falsified or used as part of a misinformation campaign.
Documents posted on sites such as Twitter are labeled confidential and resemble regular updates produced daily by the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff but not publicly distributed. They are dated from February 23rd to March 1st and provide what appear to be details on the progress of weapons and equipment entering Ukraine with a more accurate timeline and quantity than the United States publicly provides to the public. Offers.
They are not war plans and provide no details about the planned Ukrainian offensive. Some also question the document’s authenticity due to several inaccuracies, such as estimates of the number of Russian military casualties that are significantly lower than those published by U.S. officials.
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In a statement on Friday, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said the Pentagon “formally referred” the matter to the Justice Department for investigation. The Department of Justice also said in a separate statement on Friday that it “has been in contact with the Department of Defense regarding this matter and has initiated an investigation.”
The investigation comes amidst swirling questions about the document’s provenance and validity, reports suggest that more information has begun to appear on social media sites.
Ukrainian Military Intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov told Ukrainian television, “It is very important to remember that in recent decades the most successful operations of Russian special forces have been conducted in Photoshop. Important: “From our preliminary analysis of these materials, using some of the information gleaned from open sources, we see erroneous and distorted figures for losses on both sides.”
Separately, however, the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky released a statement on Friday about a meeting he had with a senior military staff officer, saying that “the participants in the meeting were accused of leaking information about the Wehrmacht’s plans”. The focus was on measures to prevent .Ukraine.”
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However, if the published documents are somewhat genuine, a sensitive data leak would be troubling and raise questions about what other information about the Ukraine war or upcoming attacks might be distributed. U.S. officials on Friday did not clarify the origin of the documents, their authenticity, or indeed who originally posted them online.
The New York Times first reported on the document. Later on Friday, The Times reported that more documents related to Ukraine, as well as other sensitive national security topics such as China and the Middle East, began appearing on social media.
A U.S. official said the initial document resembled data produced daily by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, although some figures were incorrect. Even if they were legitimate, the United States believes the documents have little real intelligence value, as much of the information Russia already knows or can glean from the battlefield. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence documents.
Charts and graphs show battlefield conditions on both sides a month ago, U.S. military movements over the past 24 hours, personnel numbers, and local weather forecasts.
But I have an error. Under the section titled “Total Assessed Losses”, one document lists between 16,000 and 17,500 Russian casualties and up to 71,000 Ukrainian casualties. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, publicly said last November that Russia had lost “well over” 100,000 troops and Ukraine had lost a similar number. Those estimates have continued to climb in recent months, though officials have stopped providing more precise figures.
© 2023 The Canadian Press
