One of the recurrent themes of the recent global news cycle is the leak of Pentagon documents.
In early April, secret documents reflecting intelligence assessments of the US Department
of Defense on a vast array of topics started appearing on different social media platforms.
Of course, one of the most common topics of these leaks was the war in Ukraine.
While there are many interesting reports on other issues in the leaked documents, we will focus on
what the Pentagon leaks tell us about the American perspective on the war in Ukraine. How strong does
the United States see the Ukrainian army? What is going on behind the scenes in the process of
military support to Ukraine? How aware is the Pentagon about the plans of the Russian army?
We will unpack everything important about the war in Ukraine in the Pentagon leaks
and assess their impact on how things will unfold on the battlefield in this video.
There’s one more prediction we can make based on top secret knowledge:
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Let’s first note that the United States government has acknowledged the authenticity of most of the
leaked documents, except documents that the Russian has altered for misinformation
purposes like the one exaggerating Ukrainian casualties and diminishing Russian losses.
These leaks are a massive breach of the American system of security of secret documents and have
been causing a headache for American diplomats, who are currently engaging in damage control to
prevent any souring of relations with its allies. The moral of the story is not to
give access to secret and damaging documents to 21-year-old Air National Guards, who have
nothing to do with these documents. Now without further ado, let’s talk about the documents.
One of the things we all suspected all along is that the United States has a lot of information
about the inner workings of the Russian government and army. There are documents which reveal Russian
plans and strategy. For instance, there is information about the intended targets of
Russian strikes inside Ukraine. One of the documents reveals the Russian strategy of
fighting Western tank supplies, which envisaged the creation of three fire zones against them.
Evidently, Russia failed to implement this strategy, as we have yet to see any recent
indication of the destruction of Western-supplied assets before they made it onto the battlefield.
The leaks inform us about conflicts inside the Russian elite too. The dispute between the
Wagner PMC chief Yevgeni Prigozhin and Defense Minister Shoigu has been relatively public.
At one point, Prigozhin even accused the Ministry of treason for not supplying his troops with
sufficient numbers of shells. According to the leaks, Putin organized a meeting between the two
on February 22 to resolve any issues they had. We have not seen any public evidence of this meeting,
but since late February, Prigozhin has indeed toned down his criticism of the Defense Ministry.
Another document claims that the FSB has accused the Defense Ministry of hiding the
actual scale of Russian losses. According to their information, Russia had suffered 110k
killed and wounded in the war at that point. One of the leaks is related to Wagner. It is claimed
that Wagner operatives contacted their Turkish contacts to buy weapons and equipment from Turkey.
We have yet to see evidence of Turkish weapons and equipment used by Wagner or any unit of the
Russian army, so even if Wagner mercenaries tried to buy weapons from Turkey, they were rejected.
We see a similar trend concerning Russian attempts to purchase weapons from Egypt and China,
reflected in the leaked documents. A leak claims that the President of Egypt Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi,
agreed to produce 40k rockets to sell to Russia. Since Egypt is one of the main allies of the
United States in the Middle East, this news is truly surprising. Ultimately, this move did
not materialize, which may indicate that the US managed to persuade El-Sisi against doing that.
The Pentagon leaks also inform us about the intention of China to sell weapons to Russia.
This specific leak is from February 23. Immediately before and after this date,
we see numerous statements from President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken and CIA chief Burns,
where they have publicly warned China against sending weapons to Russia.
There have been reports of minimal arms deals made between Russian and Chinese companies,
but we have no evidence of large-scale Chinese military aid to Russia, indicating that China has
decided against this step. There is a curious leaked document about the increased Russian
movement in Belarus in late 2022 and early 2023. According to the Pentagon, this was a
deliberate misinformation operation conducted by the Russian GRU to convince the Ukrainian
leadership that Russia was indeed planning to conduct one more offensive from Belarus.
The document also notes that GRU considered this operation a success. This part is more complex.
Many Ukrainian officials warned about increased activity in Belarus, while the commander-in-chief,
Zaluzhny, claimed that he was sure of another attack from Belarus at some point. Still,
many other officials downplayed the likelihood of this. For instance, defence minister Reznikov
repeatedly stated that Russia did not gather enough men to launch an offensive from Belarus.
We reached a similar conclusion in our videos, discussing Russian activity in Belarus.
The leaked documents from the Pentagon also give us a peak at the background of relations between
Ukraine and the USA since the start of the war. While in public, we see military pledges and
mutual praises, many things not reported in social or traditional media have been going
on in the background, as the United States have both been trying to dissuade Ukraine from taking
potentially escalating steps and securing more military support for Kyiv from around the globe.
The United States has so far refused to give long-range missiles to Ukraine,
and one of the leaked documents reflects concerns of the US government that the
Ukrainian army may use it to strike deep into Russia, which Washington sees as an escalation.
This is something that has already been circulating in the news cycle related to the
American refusal to provide long-range missiles to Kyiv. The United States has apparently also
convinced the Ukrainian government against a mass strike on targets in Russia on the anniversary of
the war in fear of escalation. America may have also been responsible for stopping the Ukrainian
plan of striking Russian forces in Syria. The American efforts to dissuade Ukraine from taking
potentially escalatory steps have been paired with attempts to expand the global coalition
of countries supplying Kyiv with weapons. The leaks indicate that the US government has been
considering ways of persuading Israel and South Korea to provide military support to Ukraine.
Neither of these countries has done that so far, as South Korea is trying to maintain its long-term
policy of not selling weapons to countries at war, while Israel has primarily acted neutral.
One of the leaks indicates that a small number of less than 100 NATO military personnel is in
Ukraine. They most probably act as military instructors rather than active combatants.
The Pentagon has also expressed concerns with the Ukrainian air defense, the bulk of which comprises
Soviet-era S-300 and Buk systems. According to the Pentagon estimates, at the current rate of
expenditure, Ukraine should have run out of Buk missiles by mid-April and of S-300 missiles by May
3. This leak is possibly the worst for Ukraine in terms of the actual impact it may have.
If Russia was not aware before, now they know that Ukraine is running low on surface-to-air
missiles. This information may help Russia reshape its drone and cruise missile usage,
which may be more harmful to Ukraine. Ukraine may be already doing this, but if the air defense
missile shortage is real, it would have to find a way to resupply its stocks, since the Western air
defense system supply is insufficient to defend the Ukrainian air space. Leaks also do not give an
encouraging picture regarding providing fighter jets to Ukraine or say anything about F-16s.
One of the documents gives us a peak at the battle of Bakhmut. It says that Ukrainian forces
in Bakhmut were almost encircled on February 25, as the usually optimistic chief of the
Ukrainian military intelligence Kyrylo Budanov assessed the situation as “catastrophic.” The
situation was mitigated by sending elite units probably to fight to maintain supply lines to
Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut. The Pentagon is also apparently not optimistic about
Ukraine’s chances of turning the war around with a counter-offensive, assessed to launch on April 30.
They expect only “modest territorial gains” by Ukraine. The leaked documents also provide
information about casualties. In February, the Pentagon assessed 43k Russians killed
with overall losses at 189500-223000, including many from elite GRU forces of GRU. According
to the Pentagon, Ukraine has lost 17500 men killed, with total casualties at 124500-131000.
These numbers are consistent with the estimates of most of the military commentators.
One of the documents was photoshopped, probably by Russia, to exaggerate Ukrainian losses,
but it did not gain much traction due to its evident fakeness.
The Pentagon has also reported a scary and potentially disastrous moment from September 2022.
According to one document, a Russian Su-27 fired on a crewed British surveillance plane in the
Black Sea. British Defense Minister Ben Wallace reported this incident to the House of Commons,
stating that the British plane remained unharmed due to the malfunction of the Russian jet.
Just imagine how much the situation would have escalated if Russia
had managed to down a British plane. The majority of the Pentagon leaks reflect
information that has already been widely assumed in the analyst community, and just confirms many
reports about different events surrounding the war in Ukraine. But there are documents which may
create some distrust of the Ukrainian government towards American officials, especially in sharing
information about their military plans. A leak on the Ukrainian shortage of surface-to-air missiles
may be particularly damaging, as it gives the Russian command real information to work with.
The Russian government may also utilize information on the composition of forces in
Ukrainian assault brigades to deduce how these brigades will be used in the counter-offensive
if Russia has information on the deployment and movement of these brigades. More leaks are being
revealed as we speak, and we may find out more about the war in Ukraine from them yet. We are
working on more videos on the war in Ukraine, so make sure to subscribe and press the bell button.
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