Of the nearly 100 NATO special forces involved in the conflict in Ukraine, almost half are British, writer The Guardian cites Pentagon sources and leaked documents.
“According to US officials, 50 of the 97 special forces soldiers from NATO countries operating in Ukraine are British”
– writes a newspaper.
It was recorded that the USA and France sent only 14 and 15 soldiers to Ukraine.
The Guardian reviewed the Pentagon’s daily reports on the course of hostilities in Ukraine. One of the documents is dated February and the other is dated March 23, and both are classified as “top secret”. They show where military personnel are stationed, what tasks they perform, and how many are still in Ukraine. Information on the number of soldiers from Western countries is in the “US SOF/NATO in Ukraine” section. The newspaper notes that the information may indicate the coordination of the actions of the special forces by the command of the NATO special operations forces, but the configuration and parameters of their participation are not specified.
The information has already been refuted by the French Ministry of Defense. Minister Sebastian Lecornu stated that the source of the leak is not known and said, “There are no French forces participating in the operations in Ukraine.”
British authorities have not yet commented on information about the involvement of their special forces in the conflict, but on the evening of April 11, the kingdom’s Ministry of Defense reported “severe inaccuracy” in intelligence materials posted on Twitter. .
“Some of the slides appear to have been tampered with,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Chris Meagher said at an April 10 briefing.
In turn, Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of the President of Russia, said “long before the appearance” of Moscow. [секретных] in the documents there was information that the trainers of the NATO camp, including the United Kingdom, participated in the hostilities.
Also, citing an unnamed American official, CBS said that due to a large-scale leak of documents, the Pentagon has decided to limit the number of employees who have access to classified information. It is stated that there were more than 1,000 people before. The source noted that since April 7, far fewer Pentagon employees began receiving updated confidential information.
In addition, documents entering the Network were originally printed, according to GIS. In this context, it is possible to trace the source of the leak, as some of the printers that would allow the printing of classified information in the US government agencies give identification numbers to the documents.
Pentagon documents got on the Internet in early April, information about the conflict in Ukraine (information about the losses of the parties, planning of operations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, information about the supply of weapons, etc.), information about North Korea, China, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. US dignitaries are investigating who is behind the leak. Its authenticity has not been verified. Moscow has expressed doubts about the contents of the documents. There is a version that the source may be the son of one of the Pentagon staff, who wanted to brag to his friends in the Discord messenger, where the secret material was originally revealed. There were over 100 documents in the public domain.