In a bit of synchronicity, after pointing out that the Collective West was more free with information with respect to Ukraine than was ideal during a war, today we have the US government het up about an apparent leak. The New York Times reported that some US and NATO plans for building up the third Ukraine arm, in preparation for that much ballyhooed Ukraine counteroffensive, appeared on Telegram and Twitter.
Administration and press responses effectively confirmed the authenticity of the documents, by saying the Pentagon was investigating and depicting the Administration as (amusingly? presumptuously?) trying to get Telegram to take them down. Team Biden didn’t seem to be doing any better with Twitter:
Yeah, you can totally delete things from the Internet – that works perfectly and doesn’t draw attention to whatever you were trying to hide at all
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 7, 2023
The Grey Lady early on tried to discredit the notion that as many as 71,500 Ukraine forces had been killed versus 16,000 to 17,500 for Russia as Russian propaganda via document altering. Note that a few weeks ago, Colonel Douglas Macgregor’s Pentagon contacts put Ukraine deaths plus missing in action (as in in presumed dead) as over twice as high. By contrast, the supposedly “not credible/too low” Russia death count is consistent with the BBC’s estimates.
On the reported deaths:
Is Pentagon falsifying kill-ratio to gild Easter lilies in Kyiv? Recent leak https://t.co/ar6TWo8fF8 of an apparently official NATO document shows 71,500 Ukrainians KIA and only 16,000 to 17,500 Russians, a far cry from earlier Pentagon ‘estimates’. All sounds so Vietnam-déjà vu!
— Ray McGovern (@raymcgovern) April 7, 2023
As The Grayzone added:
That [Ukraine KIA] figure is close to the 100,000 KIA’s cited by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a November 2022 speech, before her comments were retracted. It also tracks closely with statements by one of Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky’s top advisers, Mykhailo Podolyak, who told the BBC in June of last year that Ukraine was losing between 100 and 200 soldiers per day (200 deaths per day over the course of 370 days between the launch of Russia’s military operation and the date of the documents would total 74,000.)
Other American and EU state officials have offered dramatically different figures placing Russian KIA’s over the six figure mark. For instance, Norway’s defense chief has charted 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers dead to Russia’s 180,000, while Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Miley asserted that Russian losses are “significantly well over 100,000.”
The media and Twitterverse are focusing on the fact of the leak and the value of its information. The spin in the Times, so far being well amplified, is that the publication of this document is a first coup by supposedly backwards Russian intelligence. Huh?
First, if Russia’s spy services had gotten their hands on these documents and then were so sloppy as allow it to get loose in social media, that would be a sign of a real internal lapse. You don’t burn good channels, with publicity would do. And Russia would be much better served not having the West know it had gotten some potentially juicy information.
Second, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson parsed the distribution list. These reports were very widely circulated. From his post:
Images of what appears to be the Daily written brief for the “Russia/Ukraine Joint Staff J3/J4/J5” popped up on the Donbass Devushka yesterday and has not created much of a stir. Donbass Devushka has four of the documents on line. They appear authentic. One is classified as “SECRET/REL TO FIN, UKR, FVEY, NATO” and is date 28 FEB 23. (You can see the documents for your self at this link.)
The phrase, “REL TO FIN, UKR, FVEY, NATO” means that this document is available to Finland, Ukraine, the Five Eyes Nations (i.e., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and the members of NATO.
One wonders, for instance, how many at each of the Five Eyes saw these reports. Anyone who got them is a potential leakers. The list of suspects is large.1
I would put Ukrainians at the top of the list of potential tell-alls. Ukraine officials, starting with Zelensky and including military top brass, have made clear they need much more in the way of weapons to launch a counteroffensive. Yet the US and NATO are pushing Ukraine to make its attack sooner rather than later precisely because Ukraine’s ammo situation is not good and set to get worse. So it’s not hard to imagine that some Ukraine insiders have worked out that the Collective West scheme is to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, and they aren’t on board with that.2
Remember that both sides in this war have strong ISR capabilities. That’s why, for instance, the US could discern the size and disposition of Russian troops right before the launch of the Special Military Operation, and Russia could similarly see that Ukraine forces were then massing for a big attack on the Donbass. So most of the information in these documents would not be big revelations, but would still be extremely helpful in calibrating the accuracy of Russian intelligence.
Below I am embedding a must-read tweetstorm from Dr. Snekotron, who is one of the first to mine the documents for information. Keep in mind he’s not keen about Russia; he makes dismissive comments about its performance, as in territorial acquisition, not seeming to understand that Russia is fighting an attritional war and taking ground isn’t a priority.
Given that, his conclusions are even more deadly. For instance, Ukraine units are getting tank training on an accelerated basis, which means inadequately training. Many units as of the start of March still being formed. Many of the tank delivery dates TBD.
Needless to say, this is not a fighting force ready to go to battle any time soon. But the plan apparently is to throw it into the Russian meat grinder soon.
So it isn’t hard to think that someone who could see that these presentations were depicting a disaster in the making, not just for Ukraine but also for NATO, might want to throw sand in the gears.
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1 It is possible that Russian operatives did get copies of these presentations but an entirely different leaker passed it on to the Telegram posters.
2 Mind you, that does not necessarily mean they favor negotiation, but instead want a Plan C with a more viable counterattack plan. I suspect Ukraine officials don’t buy Western claims that they are running out of weapons.
00 Dr. Snekotron tweetstorm April 7 2023