A stunning leak of a cache of classified Pentagon documents appears to be one of the most significant breaches of U.S. intelligence in decades, purportedly revealing national security secrets regarding Ukraine, Russia, Asia, and the Middle East, as well as details about U.S. espionage methods and the country’s spying on adversaries and allies. The Pentagon has confirmed the leak’s authenticity, and while the documents have been circulating online for more than a month, U.S. officials figured this out only after the leaked documents were reported by the New York Times on April 6. The Justice Department has since opened a criminal investigation into what happened. Below is what we know about the leak thus far, including what the documents reveal and who may be responsible for it.
What are the documents, and how many were leaked?
It appears that at least 100 documents were leaked, according to analysts who spoke with the Times. Other news organizations have reported on the contents of 50 pages. The surfaced files are photographs of briefing documents and slides, mostly prepared in February and March, based on intel collected by the NSA, CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, DEA, and National Reconnaissance Office (which manages U.S. spy satellites). Markings on the documents indicate that some were cleared for sharing with allies, while others were designated for U.S. eyes only — suggesting they originated from an American source.
Many of the documents appear to have been prepared for Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, though anyone with a high enough security clearance would have had access to them. Former U.S. officials who spoke with the Times say the documents are likely part of a classified briefing that was folded and put in someone’s pocket, then taken somewhere where the pages could be photographed. The Wall Street Journal reports that “a variety of items can be seen in the margins of the photos, including Gorilla glue, shoes and instructions for a GlassHawk HD spotting scope, details that could facilitate the search for the leaker.”
Some of the circulating leaked documents appear to have been doctored but apparently after they were leaked.
How did they come out?
Per what has been reported thus far, the documents began appearing in early March on Discord servers, which are essentially group-chat channels focused on specific interests like video games. According to a Bellingcat investigation, a Discord user seems to have shared more than 30 of the purported documents on one server on March 1 and 2. Some of those documents were then apparently reshared on another server days later, about a month before they began appearing on Telegram, the 4chan messageboard, and Twitter — at which point they gained far more widespread attention. Some news reports have indicated documents were shared on Discord in late February as well.
It’s also possible the leak began as early as mid-January. According to Discord users who spoke with Bellingcat, some of the documents might have been shared on January 17 on yet another Discord server.
On April 7, a larger collection of documents began to appear on social-media platforms, though they might have just been resurfacing from the earlier leak.
Who leaked them and why?
That’s far from clear. Based on what has been reported, it’s probable that the photographed documents were at some point in the possession of a U.S. official since some of them were marked for U.S. eyes only. At least hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans have the level of security clearance required to access such documents.
It seems unlikely at this point that Russia was behind the leak. As one intelligence expert, Brunel University lecturer Dan Lomas, explained to the Financial Times:
The documents reveal how good U.S. intelligence is and the extent to which it has penetrated Russian agencies — and the FSB, GRU and SVR have already had a bad war. So an insider job is far more likely. The enemy within is always the bigger threat.
Are there more?
It’s not clear if this was a onetime leak, if all of the documents have now surfaced, or if the leaker has more to share. The documents revealed thus far seem to have been prepared no later than early March.
What about the doctored documents?
Some of the documents circulated on social media have been doctored — for instance, to reduce the number of estimated Russian casualties in Ukraine and inflate Ukraine’s estimated losses. But that disinformation effort appears to have been made after the documents were leaked.
How has the Pentagon responded to the breach, and what damage could the leak do?
After becoming aware of the leaked documents, the Pentagon launched an investigation and reportedly imposed a strict clampdown on access to U.S. intelligence.
The potential damage of the leak is manifold. It might have compromised various intelligence-collection methods, allowing adversaries like Russia and China to evade future U.S. espionage efforts. Information in the documents regarding Ukraine’s military weaknesses may also prove valuable to Russia if the country was not previously aware of that information. But the documents also contain numerous assessments based on U.S. signals intelligence (the spy term for intercepted communications) that targeted friends and foes alike. In addition to the diplomatic fallout, this could prompt allies to shore up their defenses against U.S. surveillance.
Revelations So Far
Although no news organization or government source has confirmed the accuracy of the information contained in the leaked documents, there is at this point little reason to doubt the documents themselves are authentic. Below are some of the key purported revelations from the cache.
The leak has offered an unparalleled look at U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts
The Washington Posthighlights how the leaked documents have shed new light on the ways the U.S. conducts espionage:
Among other secrets, they appear to reveal where the CIA has recruited human agents privy to the closed-door conversations of world leaders; eavesdropping that shows a Russian mercenary outfit tried to acquire weapons from a NATO ally to use against Ukraine; and what kinds of satellite imagery the United States uses to track Russian forces, including an advanced technology that appears barely, if ever, to have been publicly identified.
The U.S. has achieved deep penetration of most Russian security and intelligence services
The New York Times and Washington Post report that the documents indicate the U.S. has gained access to most of Russia’s security and intelligence services and high levels of Russian military command. It has intercepted communications within Russia’s defense ministry; gained insight into the internal planning of Russia’s military-intelligence agency, GRU; and has obtained actionable intelligence on Russia’s military capabilities and war plans in Ukraine — many of which the U.S. likely passed along to Kyiv.
The U.S. is spying on top allies, including Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy
One of the leaked documents indicates the U.S. has been surveilling Zelenskyy’s communications, CNN reports:
The U.S. intelligence report, which is sourced to signals intelligence, says that Zelensky in late February “suggested striking Russian deployment locations in Russia’s Rostov Oblast” using unmanned aerial vehicles, since Ukraine does not have long-range weapons capable of reaching that far.
Though it’s not unexpected that the U.S. would be monitoring Ukraine’s leadership, Ukraine has publicly attempted to discredit the disclosures, and Ukrainian officials are reportedly furious about the leaked intel, which has forced Kyiv to make changes to its spring-offensive plans.
The leaked documents also reveal that the U.S. had intercepted recent discussions with South Korean leadership on whether to break policy and provide military aid to Ukraine via an intermediary country. South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol has since attempted to downplay the breach and the subsequent scandal it has caused in his country.
The U.S. doubts Ukraine’s spring offensive will make significant gains
U.S. intelligence assessments from early February expressed serious doubt about Ukraine’s ability to take back a great deal of Russian-occupied territory this spring, according to a review of one of the leaked documents by the Washington Post. The upcoming offensive is likely to produce only “modest territorial gains” owing to Ukraine’s lack of equipment, ammunition, and troops, the document said. It also noted that “enduring Ukrainian deficiencies in training and munitions supplies probably will strain progress and exacerbate casualties during the offensive.”
Russia’s Wagner Group tried to purchase weapons from Turkey through Mali
According to the Washington Post, one of the reports in the leaked documents indicates that, in early February, the Kremlin-backed mercenary force “met with Turkish contacts to purchase weapons and equipment from Turkey for [Wagner’s] efforts in Mali and Ukraine,” and that Mali’s interim president confirmed it could get the arms from Turkey on the group’s behalf. Turkey declined to comment on the allegation when contacted by the Post, but if the assessment is accurate, it could mean the NATO member was covertly supplying weapons to both sides of the Ukraine conflict.
Egypt’s president secretly planned to send rockets to Russia
According to a leaked top-secret document from mid-February, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi secretly ordered the production and shipment of as many as 40,000 rockets to Russia, the Washington Post reports. Egypt, a longtime key U.S. ally in the Middle East, has publicly maintained a policy of noninvolvement toward the war in Ukraine, and in a statement to the Post, the foreign ministry suggested that policy has not changed. Regarding the rocket plan, an anonymous U.S. official also told the Post, “We are not aware of any execution of that plan.” It’s not clear how far the plan has progressed, assuming the leaked intel is accurate, nor is it clear how such a move would have impacted the relationship between the U.S. and Egypt.
Russia almost shot down a U.K. surveillance plane near Ukraine
According to one leaked U.S. military document, British defense minister Ben Wallace told U.K. lawmakers last October that on September 29, two Russian Su-27 fighter jets intercepted and harassed a British RC-135 reconnaissance plane flying in international airspace over the Black Sea. Wallace said one Russian jet had flown within 15 feet of the U.K. plane and another had released a missile from a distance, but Russian defense officials had told him the missile launch was due to a “technical malfunction.” The U.S. military document referred to the incident as a “near shoot down.” British officials have pushed back on the leaked U.S. assessment.
Russian hackers working with Moscow claimed to have accessed Canada’s natural-gas infrastructure
Another of the leaked documents reveals that, earlier this year, the U.S. intercepted electronic communications between the pro-Russian hacking group Zarya and officers with Russia’s FSB security service in which the hackers said they had breached a Canadian gas-pipeline company and gained access to its control systems. The hackers purportedly shared screenshots of their access with the officers and claimed the breach gave them the ability to “increase valve pressure, disable alarms, and initiate an emergency shutdown of the facility.” The leaked briefing did not identify the Canadian company or the facility. It said the hackers claimed that they did unspecified damage, causing “profit loss” for the company, and that FSB officers told the hackers to maintain their access and await further instructions.
After news of the alleged hack surfaced, the Globe and Mail reported that it was unable to verify the claims and noted that “there is no evidence to date that a natural-gas pipeline company in Canada suffered such an attack, which the Pentagon documents suggest occurred earlier this year.” According to cybersecurity reporter Kim Zetter, “a U.S. government source who closely follows critical infrastructure incidents in the U.S. said they heard chatter a while back that something had occurred at a Canadian gas facility, but was not aware of anyone confirming that any ‘physical impact’ had occurred.”
Mossad leaders purportedly encouraged protests against Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul in Israel
According to one of the leaked documents, a March 1 CIA assessment said that, according to intercepted communications, leaders of Israel’s intelligence agency had backed protests against prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial attempt to overhaul the country’s judiciary. Mossad leaders “advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest against the new Israeli Government’s proposed judicial reforms, including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli government,” the assessment said.
Netanyahu’s power play has triggered mass protests and strikes in Israel, and the backlash recently prompted him to at least temporarily abandon the effort. Israeli officials have denied the leaked assessment. Some Israeli pundits have also suggested that the assessment might have been referring to an open letter supporting the protests sent by former Mossad leaders and/or how the agency’s leadership allowed employees to join the demonstrations, provided they did so only as private citizens.
Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries looked into working in Haiti
One late-February report in the leaked documents said the Wagner Group, the notorious Kremlin-backed Russian mercenary force, “planned to discreetly travel to Haiti to assess the potential for contracts with the Haitian government to fight against local gangs.”
It’s not clear how far those plans progressed. The Miami Herald reports that a Haitian government official told the paper “that Prime Minister Ariel Henry has not had any discussions with the Wagner Group or any Russian officials, nor has he sought help from either as part of his request to international partners to deploy a rapid response force to Haiti to help the national police take on gangs.”
China held secret negotiations with Nicaragua over building a new port in the Caribbean
Another document said that, according to intercepted communications, Nicaragua has been deepening its ties with China since its primary security ally, Russia, became entangled in the Ukraine invasion. Nicaragua and China have conducted negotiations over building a deepwater port in Bluefields, and a Chinese engineering firm purportedly began moving forward with initial plans in the middle of 2022. The U.S. assessment concludes that though Nicaragua still favors Russia, it “probably would consider offering Beijing naval access in exchange for economic investment.”
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What’s in the Leaked Pentagon Documents?
Leaked Pentagon Documents Reveal Secrets About Friends and Foes
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Germany in January.Credit...Ronald Wittek/EPA, via Shutterstock
The Pentagon said on Monday that top officials were investigating the disclosure of a trove of classified documents but offered no clues about the source of the leaks or how many people had access to the information.
“We’re still investigating how this happened, as well as the scope of the issue,” Christopher Meagher, the chief Pentagon spokesman, told reporters.
The leaked material, from late February and early March, but found on social media sites in recent days, outlines how deeply Russia’s security and intelligence services have been penetrated by the United States as well as dire ammunition shortages facing Ukraine’s military.
The documents revealed that Washington appears to be spying on some of its closest allies, including eavesdropping on conversations between senior South Korean national security officials over whether the country would sell artillery shells that might be used in Ukraine. That led to a political backlash in Seoul, where opposition lawmakers on Monday denounced what they called “a clear violation of our sovereignty by the United States.”
U.S. officials “are engaging with allies and partners at high levels” over the leaked documents, “to reassure them of our commitment to safeguarding intelligence,” Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, told reporters on Monday. But he declined to provide more specifics, including whether Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken had reached out to officials in South Korea.
Mr. Patel would not address any potential damage to the U.S.-South Korea relationship, saying only that Washington’s commitment to the country “is ironclad. They are one of our most important partners in the region.”
Mr. Meagher, the Pentagon spokesman, declined to answer most questions about the investigation, citing a criminal inquiry launched by the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Pentagon is leading a separate interagency team, including the White House, State Department and intelligence agencies, to determine the extent of the damage caused by the disclosures, and to assess what needs to be done to address the leak.
“That includes taking steps to take a closer look at exactly how this type of information is distributed and to whom, but beyond that, I’m not going to get into any more specifics,” Mr. Meagher said.
Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, called the leaks “quite interesting” on Monday and noted that “everyone is analyzing and broadly discussing them.”
When asked if Russia bore any responsibility for the leak, he said, “No, I can’t comment on this in any way. We all know that there is in fact an inclination to always blame Russia for everything, and to attribute everything to Russia.”
The leak could damage Ukraine’s war effort by exposing which Russian agencies the United States knows the most about, giving Moscow a potential opportunity to cut off the sources of information.
Mr. Meagher said that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III was initially briefed on the leak last Thursday morning. The next day, Mr. Austin began convening departmentwide meetings to address the widening disclosures.
“The secretary and Department of Defense, and the United States government take this apparent unauthorized disclosure extremely seriously,” Mr. Meagher said. “This is a top priority for us.”
Mr. Meagher said Pentagon and other U.S. officials began contacting congressional leaders and allies over the weekend to alert them to the disclosures.
The leak has already raised doubts about America’s ability to keep its secrets.
“The reports of intelligence leaks are incredibly concerning,” Representative Mike Rogers of Alabama, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement on Monday. Mr. Rogers said the panel was “actively seeking answers from the Department of Defense.”
Mr. Patel also would not discuss any fallout over a claim in the leaked documents that the leadership of Israel’s intelligence service, the Mossad, had encouraged the agency’s staff and Israeli citizens to participate in mass anti-government protests.
As with the surveillance of South Korea, the document attributed the information about the Mossad to “signals intelligence,” or electronic eavesdropping. The Israeli government issued a statement on Sunday calling the assertions “mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever.”
A K9 howitzer at a test site for Hanwha Aerospace, South Korea’s largest defense contractor. The country has become a major exporter of weapons.Credit...Jun Michael Park for The New York Times
SEOUL — When reports emerged late last year that South Korea had agreed to sell artillery shells to help the United States replenish its stockpiles, it insisted that their “end user” should be the U.S. military. But internally, top aides to President Yoon Suk Yeol were worried that their American ally would divert them to Ukraine.
Mr. Yoon’s secretary for foreign affairs, Yi Mun-hui, told his boss, National Security Adviser Kim Sung-han, that the government “was mired in concerns that the U.S. would not be the end user if South Korea were to comply with a U.S. request for ammunition,” according to a batch of secret Pentagon documents leaked through social media.
The secret report was based on signals intelligence, which meant that the United States has been spying on one of its major allies in Asia.
Both Mr. Yi and Mr. Kim stepped down last month for unclear reasons. Neither man could be reached for comment.
South Korea was aware of the news reports about the leaked documents and planned to discuss “issues raised” by the leak with Washington, a senior government official in Seoul told reporters on Sunday. When asked whether South Korea planned to lodge a protest or demand an explanation from Washington, he said the government would study precedents from the past and similar cases involving other nations.
A group of opposition lawmakers held a news conference in South Korea on Monday denouncing the United States for spying. They said the revelations included in the leaked documents may be “just the tip of the iceberg,” and strongly urged Washington to launch an investigation and ensure that similar acts did not happen again.
“This is a clear violation of our sovereignty by the United States and a super-scale security breach on the South Korean part,” they said in a statement.
Although U.S. officials have confirmed that the trove of leaked documents appear to be legitimate intelligence and operational briefs compiled by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, at least one had been modified from the original at some point. And the apparent authenticity of the documents is not an indication of their accuracy.
The documents pertaining to South Korea showed a key American ally torn between Washington’s pressure on Seoul to help supply ammunition to Ukraine and its official policy of not providing lethal weapons to countries at war. Seoul feared that President Biden would call Mr. Yoon directly to press the matter.
“Yi stressed that South Korea was not prepared to have a call between the heads of state without having a clear position on the issue, adding that South Korea could not violate its policy against supplying lethal aid, so officially changing the policy would be the only option,” the document said.
Mr. Yi said that Mr. Yoon’s presidential secretary for national defense, Im Ki-hun, had promised to determine “a final stance by March 2.”
But their boss, Mr. Kim, was worried that if the announcement of Mr. Yoon’s state visit to Washington coincided with an announcement of South Korea changing its stance on providing lethal aid to Ukraine, “the public would think the two had been done as a trade.” Mr. Yoon’s state visit to Washington, which is to take place on April 26, was announced March 7.
Instead, according to the document, Mr. Kim “suggested the possibility” of selling 330,000 rounds of 155-millimeter artillery shells to Poland because “getting the ammunition to Ukraine quickly was the ultimate goal of the United States.”
Mr. Yi agreed that it might be possible for Poland to agree to being called the end user and send the ammunition on to Ukraine, but that South Korea would need to “verify what Poland would do.” It is unclear exactly what he meant by this because South Korea’s export control rules stipulate that its weapons or weapon parts sold to a foreign country should not be resold or transferred to a third country without Seoul’s approval.
The senior South Korean official on Sunday declined to reveal details of what he called “internal discussions” within Mr. Yoon’s government. But he added that “nothing has been finalized” and that there was still “no change” in Seoul’s policy on Ukraine. South Korea has been shipping humanitarian aid to Ukraine but has insisted that it would not directly provide any lethal weapons.
“South Korea’s position has been that it will cooperate with the United States while not clashing with Russia,” said Yang Uk, a weapons expert at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul. “The documents leaked put South Korea in a more difficult position.”
And the mere fact of the spying taking place, leaving aside what it might uncover, is a damaging revelation, he said.
“It’s reasonable to suspect that the United States spies on top defense and security officials in Seoul, but it’s bad news for the general public ahead of the South Korea-U.S. summit,” he added. “People will ask, ‘We have been allies for seven decades, and you still spy on us?’”
The Pentagon in Arlington, Va.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
How highly sensitive U.S. intelligence documents on the war in Ukraine ended up on social media remained a mystery on Monday, with few clues — if any — yielding who might have leaked them. That did not prevent the Kremlin from saying something — or, really, nothing.
“These are quite interesting leaks,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told reporters on Monday. “Everyone is analyzing and broadly discussing them.”
When asked if Russia bore any responsibility for the leak, he said, “No, I can’t comment on this in any way. We all know that there is in fact an inclination to always blame Russia for everything, and to attribute everything to Russia.”
The leak of the Pentagon documents, found on Twitter and other sites on Friday, wasn’t entirely in Russia’s best interests. They portrayed a battered Russian military that is struggling in its war in Ukraine and a military apparatus that is deeply compromised.
The documents also contain daily real-time warnings to American intelligence agencies on the timing of Moscow’s strikes and reveal the American assessment of a Ukrainian military that is also in dire straits.
Although the material reinforces that the U.S. has a clearer understanding of Russian military operations than it does of Ukrainian planning — an idea that intelligence officials have long acknowledged — Mr. Peskov also suggested that the leaks provide compelling arguments for the idea that Washington has been spying on President Volodymr Zelensky of Ukraine.
“This cannot be ruled out,” Mr. Peskov said, in response to a question about whether Mr. Zelensky was being spied on.
“The fact that the United States has been spying on various heads of state, especially those in European capitals, has been revealed on many occasions for a long time and has caused scandals,” he said.
The leak has already complicated relations with allied countries and raised doubts about America’s ability to keep its secrets. The documents could also hurt diplomatic ties in other ways.
The newly revealed intelligence documents make plain that the United States is not spying just on Russia, but also on its allies. While that would hardly surprise officials of those countries, making such eavesdropping public could hamper relations with key partners, like South Korea, whose help is needed to supply Ukraine with weaponry.
A Ukrainian tank on a street in Siversk, north of Bakhmut, last month. Both sides in the war have long relied on Soviet-era machines.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
To brace for the introduction of advanced NATO-supplied tanks on Ukraine’s battlefields, Russian forces are preparing to pay a bonus to troops who manage to damage or destroy one, according to recently leaked U.S. intelligence documents.
The monetary incentive is part of a larger tranche of initiatives structured to help Russian formations and boost morale as they struggle to seize territory in Ukraine’s east, the documents say.
“Financial incentives would be offered for the capture and destruction of foreign tanks, and videos of tanks being destroyed would be widely distributed to reduce the confidence of Ukraine and the West and reassure Russian troops of their ability to overcome this new weaponry,” according to the document, which was labeled top secret.
The Russian strategy to deal with the new tanks was tucked away in a trove of U.S. intelligence documents that were leaked online in video game chat rooms before making their way to other social media sites in recent days. U.S. officials have said the documents are legitimate, though at least one of the dozens of pages of classified reports had been altered.
Though intelligence gathering is difficult and the reports it yields are sometimes wrong, the documents have given the clearest look yet at the internal workings of both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries since the war began last year. Both sides are struggling with casualties and setbacks, the documents say.
Britain, Germany, Poland and the United States have pledged to send dozens of their militaries’ main battle tanks before an expected Ukrainian spring offensive against Russian forces in occupied Ukraine. The new tanks are supposed to outclass their Soviet-era counterparts, which both Ukraine and Russian forces have been using.
But sound defensive and offensive strategies, including the use of small portable anti-tank guided missiles and anti-tank mines, have often managed to mitigate the presence of tanks on the battlefield, as seen in earlier phases of the war and other conflicts in the Middle East.
The Russian strategy to destroy the tanks, according to the documents, calls for “establishing three fire zones based on range.”
“At the same time, personnel training efforts would be administered to educate on the vulnerabilities of NATO tanks.”
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, both sides have used tanks as mobile artillery and to support infantry attacks on enemy trenches. The new NATO tanks would be important in both roles if Ukraine hopes to retake Russian-captured territory in the coming months.
The Kremlin has a record of creativity in how it rewards achievements considered important to the state. Olympic gold medalists sometimes receive cars or apartments. The main suspect behind the poisoning of a Russian intelligence turncoat in London in the 2000s was given a seat in Russia’s Parliament.
Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting.
Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system intercepting rockets fired from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory on Friday. Israel has rebuffed Ukrainian requests to supply it with more robust weaponry for air defense.Credit...Mohammed Abed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
JERUSALEM — One of the secret Pentagon documents that was exposed on social media lays out an American assessment of scenarios that could lead Israel to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine — in contravention of current Israeli policy.
Israel’s policy so far has been to offer humanitarian assistance. It is also working with Ukraine to develop a custom-made, smart early-warning system to help Ukraine defend itself against incoming rockets and missiles.
But Israel has rebuffed Ukrainian requests to supply it with more robust weaponry for air defense, such as Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome missile interception system, and has ruled out providing it with offensive weapons.
Israel has tried to maintain a delicate balancing act, helping Ukraine mainly in the civilian sphere while avoiding provoking Russia. Russia has a military presence in Syria, where Israel conducts frequent airstrikes against Iranian and pro-Iranian targets.
The leaked document on lethal aid, marked as a top secret “exploratory analysis” and dated Feb. 28, states that Israel is committed to providing Ukraine with intelligence and nonlethal defensive systems while working to preserve Israel’s freedom of action in Syria by balancing its ties with the United States and Russia. But it adds that Israel would probably consider providing lethal aid to Ukraine under increased U.S. pressure or a perceived degradation in its ties to Russia.
The “most plausible” of four options laid out in the assessment is that Israel could adopt the “Turkish model” under U.S. pressure and provide lethal defense systems through third parties while advocating a peaceful conclusion to the war in Ukraine and offering to host mediation efforts. The document notes that Turkey has successfully maintained cordial relations with Russia while facilitating arms transfers to Ukraine.
The other three outlined situations that could encourage Israel to provide lethal aid, on a sliding scale of plausibility, involve Russia’s transferring strategic systems to Iran, Israel’s archenemy, or expanding assistance to Iran’s missile or nuclear programs; the United States’ using its leverage should Israel seek increased support for its operations against Iran; and Russia’s incurring Israeli casualties by employing sophisticated air defense systems against Israeli warplanes operating in Syria, thus complicating Israel’s relations with Russia.
For years, Israel and Russia have maintained a de-confliction mechanism to avoid fatal errors in Syria. Israeli officials notify their Russian counterparts about impending strikes as Israel tries to stem the flow of arms that Iran sends to its proxies in both Syria and Lebanon and to limit a military buildup on its northern border.
The document lists Israeli weapons that could be transferred to Ukraine, including the Barak-8 and Spyder surface-to-air missiles and Spike anti-tank guided missile.
A senior Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the leaked assessment publicly, said on Sunday that Israel had taken “a very clear stand in support of Ukraine since Day 1 and had decided to focus on humanitarian aid,” mostly because of Israel’s strategic interests regarding Russia’s influence and the Iranian presence in Syria.
A crude-oil pipeline in British Columbia. Canada, the largest source of oil imported to the United States, has a wide array of pipeline systems to serve both the Canadian and American markets. Credit...Ian Willms for The New York Times
A hacking group, under the guidance of Russia’s Federal Security Service, may have compromised the I.P. address of a Canadian gas pipeline company in February and caused damage to its infrastructure, according to leaked Pentagon documents.
If the attack by the cybercriminal group, Zarya, succeeded, the intelligence report said, “it would mark the first time” the United States intelligence community “has observed a pro-Russia-hacking group execute a disruptive attack against Western industrial control systems.”
The New York Times was unable to verify the U.S. intelligence assessment independently, and the Canadian national agency responsible for signals intelligence and cybersecurity, the Communications Security Establishment, said it did not comment on specific cybersecurity episodes.
According to the Pentagon’s assessment, on Feb. 15, Zarya shared screenshots with the Federal Security Service — the main successor agency to the K.G.B., known by its Russian initials, F.S.B. — that purportedly showed that the attacker had the capability to increase valve pressure, disable alarms and make emergency shutdowns of an unspecified gas distribution station in Canada.
“The F.S.B. officers anticipated a successful operation would cause an explosion at the gas distribution station, and were monitoring Canadian news reports for indications of an explosion,” the report said.
On Feb. 25, Russian-based cyberactors compromised the Canadian I.P. address of an unnamed gas pipeline company and claimed that sufficient damage had been done to undermine the company’s profits, according to the assessment, citing signals intelligence. The cyberactors, the report said, were aiming not to “cause loss of life” but economic damage. As of Feb. 27, it added, the group had maintained access to the I.P. address and was on standby for other instructions.
I.P. addresses are the unique sequences of numbers assigned to every website, computer, game console or smartphone connected to the internet.
While Canada’s information technology security agency declined to comment on the leaked intelligence, it said in an email that a recent National Cyber Threat Assessment had expressed concern about the potential disruption of critical infrastructure, in particular internet-connected operational technology “that underpins industrial processes.”
Canada, a strong ally of the United States and a NATO member, has been among the most fervent critics of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, imposing sanctions on more than 2,400 Russian individuals and entities.
The country, which is the largest source of oil imported to the United States, has a wide array of pipeline systems of various sizes and lengths to serve both the Canadian and American markets. The pipelines largely originate in the province of Alberta, but there are also regional systems in other provinces.
Canada’s federal cyberprotection agency previously warned that the pipelines could be struck by the same kind of audacious digital attack that targeted a major American pipeline in May 2021. At that time, one of the largest pipelines in the United States, which carries refined gasoline and jet fuel from Texas up the East Coast to New York, was forced to shut down after being hit by ransomware, in a vivid demonstration of the vulnerability of energy infrastructure to cyberattacks.
Ransomware is a type of modern-day piracy that has targeted businesses, local governments and hospitals. In some cases, victims receive emails with links or attachments that contain software that encrypts files on their computers and holds them hostage until ransoms are paid.
Experts say that criminal groups that have loose affiliations with foreign intelligence agencies have been known to operate on their behalf in waging such attacks.
Assaults on critical infrastructure have been a major concern for a decade, but they have accelerated in recent years in the United States and beyond after breaches. Among them were the SolarWinds intrusion by one of Russia’s intelligence agencies and another against some types of Microsoft-designed systems that was attributed to Chinese hackers.
A Ukrainian armored vehicle carried soldiers near the front line on Friday in Bakhmut, Ukraine. According to a leaked classified document, the city and the forces defending it were in immediate danger of being encircled in late February.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
KHARKIV, Ukraine — The Ukrainian Army was close to losing a key battle of the war. A single, tenuous supply road for Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the streets of the eastern city of Bakhmut was taking fire. A general called the threatened road the “last breathing tube.”
The assessment captures only one moment, from late February, in the now 10-month-long fight for Bakhmut, a midsize university and mining town of questionable strategic significance but one that both sides have freighted with political meaning.
The city is now mostly in ruins, as fires sweep through buildings and soldiers fight in fierce, block-by-block combat.
Ukrainian soldiers have fought human-wave assaults by former convicts in the Wagner mercenary group and by elite Russian special forces troops, and they have endured round-the-clock artillery bombardments.
However, the leaked assessment focused on a related theater of the battle for Bakhmut, including two flanking maneuvers by the Russian Army through fields and villages to the city’s northwest and southwest that were intended to encircle Ukrainian troops by cutting off supply roads.
It described internal Ukrainian military deliberations on how to respond, with commanding generals deciding to deploy elite units from the military intelligence agency to push back the Russians.
The documents, from late February and early March but found on social media sites in recent days, outline critical shortages that the Ukrainian military is facing. The intelligence reports show that the United States also appears to be spying on Ukraine’s top military and political leaders, a reflection of Washington’s struggle to get a clear view of Ukraine’s fighting strategies.
The leak pulled back the curtain on decision-making inside the Ukrainian military command in a way not seen in public before.
The Ukrainian military has effectively safeguarded key secrets throughout the war, including foreshadowing of the successful, surprise counterattack last summer in the Kharkiv region that swept over Russian lines. Ukrainian officials have called the document leak a Russian propaganda ploy.
A soldier with the Ukrainian 80th Air Assault Brigade in February near Bakhmut. Ukrainian officials deployed elite units to the Bakhmut area in late February to try to push back Russian forces.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
“Ukrainian forces as of 25 February were almost operationally encircled by Russian forces in Bakhmut,” the leaked intelligence assessment noted.
The leaked assessment said that Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s director of military intelligence, offered to deploy elite units under his command for two weeks to push back Russian troops threatening the supply road. It cited General Budanov as describing Ukraine’s position at the time as “catastrophic.”
Roman Mashovets, an adviser to Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, also offered a cleareyed assessment in a briefing, the document says.
Mr. Mashovets advised that a single supply road, winding over hills to the west of Bakhmut, remained accessible for the forces inside the city — and that it was under artillery fire.
“Mashovets reported that, for those reasons, the morale in Bakhmut was low, with the Ukrainian forces under the impression that they were almost operationally encircled,” the leaked assessment said.
In the fighting on the plains of southeastern Ukraine, encirclement poses a grave danger feared by soldiers on both sides.
Once surrounded, ammunition quickly runs low, wounded soldiers cannot be evacuated and those still fighting are at risk of being overrun and killed. The commander of ground forces in the east, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, called the single supply road the “last breathing tube” and asked that Kraken, a unit in the military intelligence agency, be deployed to Bakhmut, the document said.
The leak opened a window on internal deliberations in the Ukrainian leadership and showed a Western intelligence assessment that Bakhmut was teetering by late February.
Yet the broader picture it paints was hardly secret. Russian forces had closed in on supply roads in February, according to the military’s daily briefings and public comments by soldiers fighting in the area, before Ukraine sent in reinforcements. A variety of elite units joined the fight.
This fighting, which came after the intelligence assessment was written, was successful in pushing Russian forces far enough from the roads to allow resupply of soldiers in the city and evacuation of the wounded.
But it came at a strategic cost for Ukraine, which has been seeking to retain its best trained and equipped soldiers for a counteroffensive anticipated in the coming weeks or months.
A Ukrainian soldier moving toward the Bakhmut front line on Friday. Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
A recruitment ad for the Wagner mercenary group in Moscow last month. Very little was public about the group before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but it has now emerged as a main force in the war.Credit...Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters
LVIV, Ukraine — A cache of leaked Pentagon documentsportrays the Russian military as running out of steam, short on men and equipment, and facing stalemate. But one group of Russian fighters stands as an exception.
The mercenary group Wagner — known for its skill on the battlefield, its army of former prisoners and its murder of at least one perceived traitor with a sledgehammer — remains a potent force, with influence not just in Ukraine, but all over the world, according to the documents. Wagner, the documents say, is actively working to thwart American interests in Africa and has explored branching out to Haiti, right under the nose of the United States, with an offer to help that country’s embattled government take on violent gangs.
According to one confidential document, emissaries from Wagner secretly met with “Turkish contacts” in February, slipping onto NATO territory in search of weapons and equipment for its fight in Ukraine.
Whether weapons actually changed hands and the Turkish authorities were aware of the effort was not clear. Officials from the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not immediately comment on the revelation.
But the brazenness of the outreach, conducted even while NATO as a whole is deeply involved in supporting Ukraine with arms and equipment, underscores the cowboy nature of Wagner. It also points to its apparent autonomy from the Russian military establishment, thanks to supply networks that extend far outside Russian territory. The document discussing the meeting in Turkey suggested that the West African nation of Mali, where Wagner has set up a significant outpost, could serve as a proxy and acquire the weapons from Turkey on Wagner’s behalf.
The choice of Mali as a fig leaf for such an arms smuggling operation shows just how influential Wagner has become since it first established a presence in that country a few years ago, working to provide security for a military junta that took over in 2021. Another document, citing a Wagner employee, said there were more than 1,645 Wagner personnel in Mali, which the document said had sparked security concerns in neighboring Ivory Coast.
But the weapons scheme also shows how much further Wagner must now go for its supplies, a sign that Western sanctions against Russia have begun to bite.
“This is a very interesting sign that there’s a degrading of their capabilities,” said Candace Rondeaux, an expert on Wagner who is a senior director at New America, a Washington think tank. “Going further afield certainly suggests impact U.S. and European sanctions are starting to have on degrading the pipeline.”
Before the Ukraine war, little was known about Wagner. Though mercenary fighters associated with the group known by that name had appeared on the battlefields of Syria and Libya, its origins were shadowy and there was debate over whether Wagner existed at all or was simply a product of Kremlin mythmaking.
But in September, after years of denying any connection with the group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close confidant of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and a businessman who had served as caterer for important Kremlin events, acknowledged that he had created Wagner.
Since then, Mr. Prigozhin has become an unavoidable — and menacing — fixture of the war, donning a helmet and body armor to visit his troops at the front line, while calling for the firing (or worse) of military leaders who have refused to follow his cavalier example. In one of the more disturbing episodes of the war, he endorsed the execution by sledgehammer of a Wagner fighter who had defected to the Ukrainian side but was sent back in a prisoner exchange.
He has created an army out of freed Russian convicts and hired guns that one of the leaked Pentagon documents assessed to be about 22,000 strong in the area around Bakhmut —possibly larger than the entire Ukrainian contingent along that front.
Even as Mr. Prigozhin has criticized Russia’s military leadership, demanding in one instance that failed generals be stripped of their ranks and forced to march barefoot to the front, the military establishment appears to have jumped to do Wagner’s bidding, according to the leaked documents.
After years of denying any connection with Wagner, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin acknowledged last September that he had created the mercenary group.Credit...Yulia Morozova/Reuters
After Mr. Prigozhin publicly accused the Russian military in late February of failing to provide his troops with sufficient ammunition, unnamed Defense Ministry officials seemed to go into damage-control mode, acknowledging Mr. Prigozhin’s claims might be true and proposing to double the amount of munitions supplied to Wagner forces, according to a C.I.A. document.
Later, the ministry issued a rare public response to Mr. Prigozhin, but gave no hint that it had caved. The ministry declared that it devoted “priority attention to the supply of everything necessary for all volunteers and fighters in assault units,” and gave a detailed account of the number of shells provided over a three-day period in late February.
What neither the Russian military nor Wagner have been able to escape is infiltration by the American intelligence establishment.
The documents indicate American spies have been gathering signals intelligence from Prigozhin associates, allowing them to glimpse the inner workings of Wagner’s operation. One document describes how American intelligence operatives apparently listened in on a Prigozhin associate in February planning to recruit prisoners again into Wagner’s ranks.
American intelligence officials also picked up that Mr. Prigozhin wanted prisoners returning home from the battlefield to help in the recruitment effort.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Israel in March to demonstrate a proposed overhaul of the judicial system. Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
The Israeli government issued a statement on Sunday firmly rejecting assertions contained in the leaked Pentagon documents that the leadership of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, had encouraged the agency’s staff and Israeli citizens to participate in the anti-government protests that roiled the country in March.
Mossad and other senior Israeli defense officials denied the assessment’s findings, and The New York Times was unable to independently verify the U.S. intelligence assessment.
The statement issued on Sunday by the Israeli prime minister’s office on behalf of the Mossad described the assertion as “mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever.”
Senior U.S. officials said the F.B.I. was working to determine the source of the leaked documents. The officials acknowledged that the documents appeared to be legitimate intelligence and operational briefs compiled by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, using reports from the government’s intelligence community, but that at least one had been modified from the original at some later point.
The apparent authenticity of the documents, however, is not an indication of their accuracy.
Israel, which returned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to power in December as the head of the most far-right government coalition in its history, was paralyzed by protests and strikes in March after the government revealed plans to overhaul the country’s judiciary. The proposed changes, which were criticized by Israel’s closest ally, the United States, aim to curb judicial review of legislation and give the government more control in the selection of judges.
According to the leaked documents, an assessment attributed to a Central Intelligence Update from March 1, leaders of the Mossad “advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest against the new Israeli Government’s proposed judicial reforms, including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli Government.”
According to a leaked American assessment, Israel’s foreign intelligence service encouraged its staff and Israeli citizens to participate in the anti-government protests.Credit...Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
According to the documents, the information was obtained through signals intelligence. Many of the leaked documents are labeled with orders that they are to be shared only among American intelligence agencies.
Current and former Israeli intelligence officials said the agency’s rules and longstanding tradition of nonpartisanship would have precluded direct involvement by the agency’s leadership in a political crisis.
The Israeli government said in its statement that “the Mossad and its senior officials did not — and do not — encourage agency personnel to join the demonstrations against the government, political demonstrations or any political activity.”
It added: “The Mossad and its serving senior personnel have not engaged in the issue of the demonstrations at all and are dedicated to the value of service to the state that has guided the Mossad since its founding.”
Some Mossad employees, however, requested and received permission to participate in the demonstrations as private citizens. The Mossad chief, David Barnea, in consultation with Israel’s attorney general, allowed junior employees to participate so long as they did not identify themselves as members of the organization, according to a defense official familiar with the agency’s policy.
Several hundred former Mossad employees, including five former chiefs, also signed a statement in March opposing the overhaul promoted by the government.
Israeli political commentators said on Sunday that the leaked assessment appeared to confuse the notions of “encouraging” and “allowing,” and to mix up the actions of former Mossad employees with those of current employees.
Ultimately, the protesters stalled the proposal’s progress and the government said it would delay the legislation for several weeks and allow time for negotiations with the opposition parties.
The Mossad itself has never taken a position on any political or social controversy in Israel. Also, in contrast to the Shin Bet, which deals with domestic security, the Mossad works exclusively outside the country.
The information included in the leaked documents, however, has some overlap with unsubstantiated accusations promoted by Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son. The younger Mr. Netanyahu has claimed that hostile elements inside Israel’s intelligence community and the U.S. State Department were behind the protest. The State Department has denied any involvement.
The protests, which paralyzed cities across the country, were attended by some junior Mossad employees who received permission from the agency to participate as private citizens.Credit...Amit Elkayam for The New York Times
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Dual purpose leak. Why were the "secret" documents of the Pentagon and NATO leaked to the media?
Recall that The New York Times published a large amount of classified information about the alleged imminent offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and a number of other important documents.
The leak caused a great resonance both in Russia and in Western countries. Meanwhile, according to a number of analysts, not everything is so simple.
So, according to the former member of the Soviet KGB station in Washington, Yuri Shvets, who now lives in the United States, the leak looks more like a deliberate leak as part of a special operation of the American intelligence services in order to strategically deceive the enemy.
If this is true, then it can be stated that this leak is not only a strategic deception, but also aimed at psychological pressure on the Kremlin in an attempt to destabilize the governance structures of the Putin regime.
The fact is that from the secret documents of the US and NATO, which "got" into the network, it is clear how well the US intelligence is aware of the actions of Russia and its plans.
The US military receives daily information about the timing of Russian strikes and even the specific targets of future attacks. The argument that the publication of such information could help Moscow cut off American intelligence officers from the information they receive seems unlikely.
Recall that on the eve of a large-scale invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine on February 24, the United States declassified more sensitive information about Moscow's plans, which, according to many commentators, should have led to discrediting US sources of information.
However, this did not happen. Moreover, judging by the latest leaks, American intelligence still keeps abreast of Russian military activity and has impressive amounts of secret data from the headquarters of the Kremlin regime.
As the NYT notes, the documents that got into the Network indicate that American intelligence manages to obtain information from almost all Russian departments.
Thus, one of the leaked notes discusses the plans of the Russian General Staff to counter the tanks that the United States is transferring to Ukraine.
Another document refers to the plans of the Main Directorate of the General Staff (known as the GRU) to conduct an information campaign in Africa to promote Russian foreign policy in order to form public opinion against the United States.
Part of the published information can be used by Ukraine during the war. One of the documents refers to the plans of the Russian Ministry of Defense to strike at specific targets in Odessa and Nikolaev on March 3.
Another discusses a report by the Russian National Defense Control Center on the reduction in the combat capabilities of the Russian army in eastern Ukraine.
The March 2 document discusses plans by the Russian Defense Ministry to counter accusations by Yevgeny Prigozhin about the undersupply of ammunition to PMC Wagner.
The leaked documents also show that US intelligence is on the lookout for Ukraine's top military and political leaders. The documents contain an assessment of the situation of the Ukrainian army: reports of an acute shortage of air defense ammunition and successes in the defense of Bakhmut.
The publication writes that information about which Russian departments the United States receives the most data from can help Moscow fight leaks. The NYT clarifies that the leak has already complicated US relations with allies.
Like, the publication of documents raises doubts about their ability to store confidential information.
Meanwhile, the very fact of the publication of secret data leaks of such a volume, as well as the NYT comments, may indicate that this leak has a dual purpose - the strategic deception of the enemy and the psychological suppression of Moscow by demonstrating that all the secrets and plans of the bunker dwarf regime are coming to the table of the American intelligence online.
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