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Spies have infiltrated large parts of the Russian security services.
In daily reports, the US receives information about Putin’s war plans and upcoming attacks on Ukraine.
This is shown by the leaked documents that are shaking both Moscow and Washington.
A mysterious detail in an image can now be used to reveal the source.
The Pentagon is in crisis mode after all the classified documents that have been published on social media in recent days.
An investigation to quickly find the source of the leaked documents has been launched by the FBI.
At the same time, in an emergency measure, the US Department of Defense has shut down access to sensitive information about the country’s spying activities.
Spies everywhere
It is feared that access to information may be throttled following the revelations, writes The New York Times.
The information about how the US has infiltrated large parts of the Russian war machine has hit like a bomb.
In different ways, the leak is a hard blow to both Biden and Putin.
Pentagon sources have described the intelligence leak as “a nightmare” and “excruciating”, writes The New York Times.
According to the leaked documents, American spies have access to the Department of Defense, the military leadership and the military security service.
The documents show that they have knowledge of everything from planned attacks on targets in Ukraine to how Russia trains soldiers to find weaknesses in the tanks that the NATO countries will now send.
Revealed planned attack
One of the leaked information comes from within the Russian military security service GRU and is about how to plan an operation in Africa to create public opinion against the US and “promote Russian foreign policy”.
Some information is extremely specific and has been passed on to Ukraine to help them defend against attacks.
For example, the US had days in advance information about a planned attack on Odessa and Mykolaiv on March 3. There, it was announced that Russia, among other things, was planning to knock out a staging area for drones.
CIA intelligence documents show how the Russian Defense Ministry planned to respond to allegations by the Wagner group that it was not getting enough ammunition for its soldiers in the field in Ukraine.
Examining detail in picture
Other information is said to have been collected from the Russian military leadership and deals with how to cope with “reduced combat capacity” among the forces in eastern Ukraine.
The information must be compiled by the Pentagon and has been collected from various parts of the country’s intelligence operations, according to sources to The New York Times.
They have been used in daily reports shared between different authorities. According to the newspaper, hundreds, possibly thousands, of people with a sufficiently high security classification have access to the reports.
This makes the search for the source difficult.
But The New York Times states that one detail in the material published may help the investigators.
The leaked documents are images of photographed documents. Several of these photos show a newspaper behind the acts, which could be a piece of the puzzle in the hunt for the leak.
In another difficult blow for the Pentagon, it is also revealed how the US spied on and eavesdropped on its allies, including South Korea.
Earlier this week, a first wave of leaked documents was discovered. In these, Ukraine’s plans for an upcoming counter-offensive in the spring were discussed.
Dismissed as misinformation
That leak was dismissed as false information from both the Ukrainian and Russian sides.
– There is no doubt that this is yet another example of hybrid warfare. Russia is trying to influence Ukrainian society, so fear, panic, mistrust and doubt. This is typical behavior, said Mychajlo Podoljak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi. to The New York Times.
On the Russian side, many military experts saw the data as part of an operation to deceive the Russians.
In a post on a channel on Telegram linked to the Wagner Group, one is suspicious of the time when the documents appeared in the public domain.
“With a high probability” it is about “disinformation from Western intelligence services with the aim of deceiving the military leadership about the enemy’s strategy in the upcoming counter-offensive”, it was written on the Gray Zone when the leak was discovered.