According to the Ministry of Defence, there is “a serious degree of inaccuracy in leaks that claim UK special forces were operating in Ukraine.”
After allegedly being leaked military documents, the claims were widely reported.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence cautioned against using the reported leak as “face value”.
In a tweet, a spokesperson stated that the widely reported leakage of classified US information had shown serious inaccuracy.
“Readers should not take at face value any allegations that could spread disinformation.”
According to media outlets, 50 British special forces personnel were deployed to Afghanistan alongside other special forces from the West.
However, the document does not reportedly state where the allegedly deployed troops are located or what they do.
Chris Meagher, a spokesperson for the Pentagon, advised caution in “promoting and amplifying any document” and said that it “does appear that slides were doctored.”
According to Associated Press, the documents could have first been published in a Discord chatroom, a popular social media platform for gamers.
Unidentified chatroom user shared documents which were allegedly classified. They first typed them with their thoughts and then began to post images of papers that had folds in them.
The posts appeared to have been unnoticed by anyone outside the chat, until a few week ago when they started to spread more widely via social media.
Many of the details that the person shared have not been independently verified, so the chatroom was deleted.
John Kirby, National Security Council spokesperson, was asked Monday if the US government was actually waiting for additional intelligence documents to appear online. He replied that he didn’t know. Is that something we should be concerned about? It is, and you are absolutely right.
The leak occurred after the US defense department started investigating the source of the potentially dangerous leak.
Continue reading: Russian ambassador ‘evidences’ involvement of UK special forces in attack
The New York Times first reported the breach. Military analysts said that the files appeared to have been altered in some parts. This could indicate that Moscow tried to spread disinformation.
Yaroslav Trofimov, Wall Street Journal’s correspondent, said that Russian propaganda channels had photocopied at least one document after the originals were posted.
Trofimov observed that there was a sudden increase in Ukrainian casualties and equipment loss, and a dramatic decrease in Russian battle damage.
Mykhailo podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential official, stated that the leak appeared to be a Russian disinformation operation and contained “very large amounts of fictitious data”.
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It is an act that enables you to steal secret documents and leak them without modification. This is information warfare, which can be used to weaken your opponent.
Russia would be well served if information about Ukraine’s war plans and Western support was leaked online.
The classified files, which include one marked “top secret”, and another marked “secret”, were created in late February and early March.
They don’t give any details or dates about Ukraine’s planned spring offensive in the east or south.
They do however provide clues as to the type of military formations that Western allies help their Ukrainian counterparts build.
According to the New York Times, US officials tried to get the files removed from social media sites.
As of Friday morning, however, the leaked versions were still widely shared.