The investigation was announced at a time when questions regarding the origin and validity of what was written continue to arise.
The Department of Justice of the United States has launched an investigation into the possible dissemination of Pentagon documents that were published on various social networks and that appear to detail the aid that the North American nation and NATO provide to Ukraine, but that may have been altered or used as part of a disinformation campaign.
The documents, which were posted on sites including Twitter, are labeled secret and resemble routine updates that the US Army’s Joint Chiefs of Staff would produce daily but not distribute publicly.
They are dated between February 23 and March 1, and provide what appear to be details on the progress of weapons and equipment going to Ukraine, with more precise timeframes and amounts than Washington typically provides publicly.
They are not war plans, nor do they offer details of any planned offensive in Ukraine.
And some inaccuracies — such as the estimates of Russian soldier deaths, which are significantly lower than the figures publicly stated by US officials — have led some to question the authenticity of the documents.
In a statement issued Friday, Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the Defense Department referred the matter to the Justice Department for investigation.
And the Department of Justice, in a separate statement, said: “We have been in communication with the Department of Defense regarding this matter and have launched an investigation.”
The investigation was announced at a time when questions continue to arise regarding the origin and validity of the documents, and while some reports indicate that more have begun to appear on social networks.
“It is very important to remember that in recent decades the most successful operations of the Russian special services have taken place in Photoshop,” Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Military Intelligence Directorate, told Ukrainian television.
“From a preliminary analysis of these materials, we see false and distorted figures on the losses on both sides, and that part of the information has been collected from open sources,” he said.
Separately, however, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office issued a statement on Friday regarding a meeting he held with his top military commanders, noting that “participants in the meeting focused on measures to prevent the leak of information concerning the plans of the defense forces of Ukraine”.
The consequences
If the released documents are any degree authentic, the leak of classified data is worrisome and raises questions regarding what other information regarding the war in Ukraine — or any upcoming offensive — might be released.
US officials did not clarify on Friday the origin of the documents, their authenticity or who was really the first to post them online.
The New York Times was the first to report on the documents. Later on Friday, the newspaper reported that more documents related to Ukraine and other sensitive national security issues such as China and the Middle East have begun to appear on social media.
A US official said the documents resemble data produced daily by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, although some numbers are wrong.
Even if they were legitimate, the official said, the United States believes there is little real intelligence value in the documents, as much of it is information that Russia would already know or might obtain on the battlefield.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the intelligence documents.
The tables and graphs describe part of the state of the battlefield for both sides from a month ago, the US military movements during the previous 24 hours, the number of troops and local weather forecasts.
But there are errors. In a section titled “Estimated Total Losses,” one document lists between 16,000 and 17,500 Russian casualties and as many as 71,000 Ukrainian casualties.
General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly stated last November that Russia had lost “well over” 100,000 troops, and that Ukraine had also lost regarding that many.
And those estimates have continued to rise in recent months, though officials have stopped providing more exact numbers.
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