Pentagon leaks and the Ukraine war: What do the highly classified documents say and how did they get out?

The Pentagon is racing to find the source behind the leaking of a slew of highly classified military documents about the Ukraine war.

Bizarrely, the documents somehow surfaced on an online gaming forum. The US is now conducting damage control to reassure its allies.

The accuracy of the dozens of leaked slides has been questioned.

But they appear to reveal potential vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s defences, as well as the numbers of UK special forces allegedly active in the country.

So what are the key revelations from the documents, and what has the reaction been? Sky News takes a look at the growing scandal.

Ukraine war latest:
‘Horrific’ video ‘shows beheading of Ukrainian troops’ – updates

US officials ‘simply don’t know’ how leak happened

The release of the documents has sent shockwaves through the US government and further afield, but it’s still unclear where they came from. Even the chief of the Pentagon doesn’t know.

“They were somewhere in the web, and where exactly, and who had access at that point, we don’t know. We simply don’t know,” Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday.

The documents may first have been published in a chatroom on Discord, a social media platform popular with gamers, the Associated Press reported.

It also appears to be unclear exactly how many records were leaked, but some estimates put the total in the hundreds.

What’s more, it seems that the US doesn’t know if all the documents have surfaced yet or if more is yet to come.

‘Very serious risk to national security’

The trove of slides appear to contain a lot of information about the conflict in Ukraine, including potential weaknesses in its defences and details of support being provided by Kyiv’s allies.

Officials in several countries have denied or rejected allegations from the leaked records.

There have also been discussions about how much of the information contained within the documents is accurate.

However, a top Pentagon spokesperson said the leak presents a “very serious risk to national security”.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Sky News: “Like everyone else, we don’t know the degree of authenticity of these documents.

“But even if we disengage from them, long before these documents appeared, we had and still have information that many instructors, including the ones from Britain, and fighters are taking part in the military actions.”

Are Western special forces active inside Ukraine?

Since the beginning of the war Ukraine’s allies in the West have insisted that they are not directly involved in the conflict and that they are simply providing Kyiv with material aid, intelligence and advice.

There had been whispers that special forces from foreign nations might nevertheless be active in Ukraine, but there was never any evidence to support the theory.

However, a leaked document circulating online and seen by Sky News that appears to be from 1 March 2023 suggests that, at that time, a number of countries had special forces in Ukraine.

These included the UK (50), US (14), France (15), Latvia (17) and Netherlands (1), for a total of 97 special forces troops.

The document reportedly does not state where the allegedly deployed forces were located or what they are doing.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence said there is “a serious level of inaccuracy” in the leaks and warned against taking the claims at “face value”.

Defence and security expert Professor Michael Clarke told Sky News that it should come as no surprise if UK special forces were indeed active in Ukraine.

“The Ukrainians need all the intelligence they can get”, he added.

Read more:
‘A shell exploded and shrapnel hit my face’
Why NATO expansion may lead to ‘axis of evil’

Is Ukraine running out of missiles?

Another apparently leaked document, purportedly dating from February, suggests that Ukraine’s air defences risk running out of missiles within weeks.

The Guardian reported that a record dated 23 February and marked “Secret” discusses in detail how Ukraine’s S-300 air defence systems would be depleted by early May at the current usage rate.

Ben Barry, from the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, remarked: “Publicising an apparent shortage of anti-aircraft missiles may give comfort to Russia.

“But if it energises Ukraine’s partners to accelerate delivery of missiles and other air defence capabilities, Kyiv will be grateful.”

Egypt and UAE accused of smuggling and secrets

The leaks have also highlighted how closely the US monitors how its friends interact with Russia and China.

One claim that has surfaced is that Egypt – a longtime US ally – planned for around 40,000 rockets to be covertly shipped to Russia earlier in the war.

The Washington Post alleged that President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi ordered the weaponry to be produced and transported.

The Egyptian leader reportedly told officials to keep the production and shipment of the rockets secret “to avoid problems with the West”.

According to another document, US spies apparently caught Russian intelligence officers boasting that they had convinced the oil-rich United Arab Emirates “to work together against US and UK intelligence agencies”.

The UAE rejected the allegations, calling them “categorically false.”

What has the US response been?

As it tries to conduct damage control, the Pentagon has begun an internal review to assess the leak’s impact on national security.

The US was also quickly taking steps to reduce the number of people who have access to briefings, a defence official said.

Pentagon officials are also closely monitoring where the leaked slides are “being posted and amplified,” Chris Meagher, assistant to the secretary of defence for public affairs, said.

Separately, the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into how the slides were obtained and leaked.