US Senate leader requests all-Senate classified briefing about Pentagon documents on Ukraine

Ukraine’s National Security Council has stated that some of the leaked Pentagon documents, which have caused concern about Russia’s intentions towards Ukraine, contained information that was “not secret at all”. In an interview with German broadcaster ARD, Oleksii Danilov said that Ukraine is in constant contact with key allies such as the US, UK, Germany and Poland, but certain information about the Ukrainian military’s operations, including the size of its units and the identities of those involved, was highly classified. However, Danilov also said that some of the information leaked was already publicly available, and that translation errors in documents had led to some misunderstanding. He added that the timing of the leak was suspicious.

Earlier media reports had suggested that Ukraine had changed its military plans following the leaked documents. However, another Ukrainian official, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said the documents had “nothing to do with Ukraine’s real plans”. According to Podolyak, the documents were based on “a large amount of fictitious information” disseminated by Russia.

The Pentagon papers sparked concerns that Russia might attempt to provoke a crisis as a pretext for military intervention in Ukraine. Russia has denied plans to invade Ukraine and has criticized NATO for its military buildup in the region. Meanwhile, the US has warned of serious consequences if Russia invaded Ukraine.

As we noted last week, the leak of the highly classified documents was a major breach of the US and NATO’s security, and has led to calls for greater protections for sensitive data. The leaked documents were online for just days, but it’s unclear whether hackers downloaded or copied them while they were available.



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