The leak of a trove of highly sensitive US documents online could be a move by Washington to “deceive” Moscow, its deputy foreign minister was quoted as saying Wednesday.
It’s probably interesting for someone to look at these documents if they are documents or they could be a fake or it could be an intentional leak.”
Sergei Ryabkov told Russian news agencies.
Since the U.S. is a party to the (Ukraine) conflict and is essentially waging a hybrid war against us, it is possible that such techniques are being used to deceive their opponent, the Russian Federation, Ryabkov added.
The violation includes classified information about Ukraine’s fight against Russian forces, as well as secret assessments of U.S. allies.
A document reviewed by AFP stressed U.S. concerns about Ukraine’s capacity to keep guarding against Russian strikes, while the Washington Post reported that another voiced suspicions about the success of an upcoming offensive by Ukraine’s forces.
The Guardian newspaper said that in one document U.S. officials estimated that there were 97 special forces members from NATO countries active in Ukraine at one point, including 50 British troops.
Dozens of photographs of documents — some of which also point to U.S. spying on allies and partners including Israel, South Korea, and Ukraine — have been found on Twitter, Telegram, Discord, and other sites in recent days, though some may have been circulating online for some time.
Many of the documents are no longer available on the sites where they first appeared, and Washington is reportedly working to have them removed.
