Who is America spying on? Are Western special forces fighting in Ukraine? New revelations from leaked Pentagon documents

The Pentagon document leaks have become Pandora’s box for the United States. From a crucial assessment of Ukraine’s defence capability and shortcomings to the US spying on its allies and adversaries alike, all is out in the open since the news of the leak of highly classified US military documents broke last week.

Earlier documents revealed the extent of the US “spying” on key allies, including South Korea, Israel and Ukraine, as well as foes such as Russia.

The pictures of this trove of classified files, with some even marked “top secret”, have been on messaging app Discord since February. While some documents may have been doctored, Pentagon officials have reportedly confirmed that most of them are genuine.

An embarrassed US, which is now left placating its allies, has promised to “turn over every rock” to find the source of the leak.

What new information have the purported Pentagon documents revealed? Let’s find out.

Ukraine’s spring offensive

US intelligence assessments from February have expressed doubts about Ukraine’s gains in its expected spring counteroffensive against Russia.

The leaked documents state that due to significant “force generation and sustainment shortfalls,” Ukraine’s forthcoming counteroffensive would result in only “modest territorial gains”, reported The Washington Post.

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The document further warned that Russia’s elaborate defences combined with “enduring Ukrainian deficiencies in training and munitions supplies probably will strain progress and exacerbate casualties during the offensive”.

Ukraine’s air defence

Ukraine’s air defences are likely to run out of missiles and ammunition within weeks, one of the leaked documents say.

US intelligence believes that Ukraine’s medium-range air defences to provide cover for front-line forces would be “completely reduced by May 23,” reported CNN.

As per The Guardian, SA-11 Gadfly missiles would have run out by March end and S-300 missiles by May, thus giving aerial superiority to Russia.

The US intelligence also believes that Ukraine could lose the capability to gather ground troops in a counteroffensive, reported CNN.

The documents also reviewed issues with Russia’s military offensive that could eventually lead to a deadlock with Ukraine in the coming future.

“Russia’s grinding campaign of attrition in the Donbas region is likely heading toward a stalemate, thwarting Moscow’s goal to capture the entire region in 2023,” CNN quoted one of the documents as saying.

ALSO READ: The Pentagon Leaks: Who leaked the US classified documents and what has been revealed?

Western special forces in Ukraine

One of the most crucial leaks of alleged Pentagon documents reveals the presence of Western special forces in Ukraine.

The document marked 23 March contains the number of Western special forces operating inside Ukraine, without any details about their location or activity.

At 50, the United Kingdom has the largest contingent, followed by Latvia (17), France (15), the US (14) and the Netherlands (1), reported BBC.

While the UK’s ministry of defence has refrained from commenting on this, it said in a tweet on Tuesday that the leak of alleged classified information had a “serious level of inaccuracy”.

“Readers should be cautious about taking at face value allegations that have the potential to spread misinformation,” the ministry warned.

Egypt and Ukraine war

According to a leaked document from mid-February accessed by The Washington Post, Egypt had planned to covertly produce 40,000 rockets for Russia.

Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had also held talks with his top military officials about shipping artillery rounds and gunpowder to Russia.

The report further claimed that el-Sisi had told officials to keep the plans secret “to avoid problems with the West”.

As per an official named Mohamed Salah al-Din, the minister of state for military production, Egypt decided to arm Russia to “repay” Moscow for “unspecified help earlier".

However, the document does not confirm if Egypt went ahead with the delivery or not.

As per BBC, an unnamed official cited by Egyptian news channels has called the allegations “utterly baseless”, adding that Cairo did not pick sides in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

ALSO READ: How a video game chatroom is at the heart of the massive US intelligence leak

Serbia and Ukraine

According to a leaked Pentagon document, Serbia was ready to supply arms to Ukraine or have already sent them, Reuters reported.

Serbia, which is the only European country that has not sanctioned Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, was ready to provide lethal aid or already had supplied it to Kyiv.

The documents also show that Belgrade refused to train Ukrainian forces.

Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic’s government has claimed neutrality in the war, even though it shares deep historic, economic and cultural ties with Russia, noted Reuters.

“If this document is accurate, it either shows Vucic’s duplicity vis a vis Russia or he’s under enormous pressure from Washington to deliver weapons to Ukraine,” Janusz Bugajski, an Eastern European expert with the Jamestown Foundation, a foreign policy institute, told Reuters.

UAE and Russia

The purported Pentagon documents say that America found Russian intelligence officers boasting of persuading the United Arab Emirates (UAE) “to work together against US and UK intelligence agencies,” reported The Associated Press (AP).

“In mid-January, FSB officials claimed UAE security service officials and Russia had agreed to work together against US and UK Intelligence agencies, according to newly acquired signals intelligence”, the document seen by AP said.

“The UAE probably views engagement with Russian intelligence as an opportunity to strengthen growing ties between Abu Dhabi and Moscow and diversify intelligence partnerships amid concerns of US disengagement from the region,” it added.

Reacting to the allegations, the UAE government on Monday termed the report “categorically false.”

North Korea’s missile threat

US intelligence analysts believe a recent military parade in North Korea “probably oversells” the threat of its inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to America.

The document said Pyongyang intended “probably to portray a maturing nuclear threat to the US”.

“The North paraded these nonoperational systems to portray a larger, more capable missile force than it possesses and to mitigate the risk of damage to its real missiles,” the document was quoted as saying by Reuters.

China

The Washington Post came across a document that said Beijing tested DF-27 hypersonic glide vehicle, an experimental missile, in late February.

It also reported citing documents that the missile – which flew for 12 minutes spanning a distance of 2,100km – had a “high probability” of pervading US ballistic missile defence systems.

A separate intelligence report warned that China “is likely to use attacks by Ukraine that go deep inside Russia as an opportunity to cast NATO as the aggressor, and may increase its aid to Russia if it deems that the attacks were significant”, reported The Guardian.

With inputs from agencies

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