One of the recurrent themes of the recent global
news cycle is the leak of Pentagon documents. In early April, secret documents reflecting
intelligence assessments of the US Department of Defense on a vast array of topics started
appearing on different social media platforms. Of course, one of the most common topics
of these leaks was the war in Ukraine. While there are many interesting reports on other
issues in the leaked documents, we will focus on what the Pentagon leaks tell us about the American
perspective on the war in Ukraine. How strong does the United States see the Ukrainian army? What
is going on behind the scenes in the process of military support to Ukraine? How aware is the
Pentagon about the plans of the Russian army? We will unpack everything important about
the war in Ukraine in the Pentagon leaks and assess their impact on how things will
unfold on the battlefield in this video. There’s one more prediction we can
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ridge dot com slash kingsandgenerals. Let’s first note that the United States government
has acknowledged the authenticity of most of the leaked documents, except documents that
the Russian has altered for misinformation purposes like the one exaggerating Ukrainian
casualties and diminishing Russian losses. These leaks are a massive breach of the American
system of security of secret documents and have been causing a headache for American diplomats,
who are currently engaging in damage control to prevent any souring of relations with its
allies. The moral of the story is not to give access to secret and damaging documents
to 21-year-old Air National Guards, who have nothing to do with these documents. Now without
further ado, let’s talk about the documents. One of the things we all suspected all along is
that the United States has a lot of information about the inner workings of the Russian government
and army. There are documents which reveal Russian plans and strategy. For instance, there is
information about the intended targets of Russian strikes inside Ukraine. One of the
documents reveals the Russian strategy of fighting Western tank supplies, which envisaged
the creation of three fire zones against them. Evidently, Russia failed to implement this
strategy, as we have yet to see any recent indication of the destruction of Western-supplied
assets before they made it onto the battlefield. The leaks inform us about conflicts inside
the Russian elite too. The dispute between the Wagner PMC chief Yevgeni Prigozhin and Defense
Minister Shoigu has been relatively public. At one point, Prigozhin even accused the Ministry
of treason for not supplying his troops with sufficient numbers of shells. According to the
leaks, Putin organized a meeting between the two on February 22 to resolve any issues they had. We
have not seen any public evidence of this meeting, but since late February, Prigozhin has indeed
toned down his criticism of the Defense Ministry. Another document claims that the FSB has
accused the Defense Ministry of hiding the actual scale of Russian losses. According to
their information, Russia had suffered 110k killed and wounded in the war at that point. One
of the leaks is related to Wagner. It is claimed that Wagner operatives contacted their Turkish
contacts to buy weapons and equipment from Turkey. We have yet to see evidence of Turkish weapons
and equipment used by Wagner or any unit of the Russian army, so even if Wagner mercenaries tried
to buy weapons from Turkey, they were rejected. We see a similar trend concerning Russian
attempts to purchase weapons from Egypt and China, reflected in the leaked documents. A leak claims
that the President of Egypt Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, agreed to produce 40k rockets to sell to Russia.
Since Egypt is one of the main allies of the United States in the Middle East, this news
is truly surprising. Ultimately, this move did not materialize, which may indicate that the US
managed to persuade El-Sisi against doing that. The Pentagon leaks also inform us about the
intention of China to sell weapons to Russia. This specific leak is from February 23.
Immediately before and after this date, we see numerous statements from President Biden,
Secretary of State Blinken and CIA chief Burns, where they have publicly warned China
against sending weapons to Russia. There have been reports of minimal arms deals
made between Russian and Chinese companies, but we have no evidence of large-scale Chinese
military aid to Russia, indicating that China has decided against this step. There is a curious
leaked document about the increased Russian movement in Belarus in late 2022 and early
2023. According to the Pentagon, this was a deliberate misinformation operation conducted
by the Russian GRU to convince the Ukrainian leadership that Russia was indeed planning
to conduct one more offensive from Belarus. The document also notes that GRU considered this
operation a success. This part is more complex. Many Ukrainian officials warned about increased
activity in Belarus, while the commander-in-chief, Zaluzhny, claimed that he was sure of another
attack from Belarus at some point. Still, many other officials downplayed the likelihood
of this. For instance, defence minister Reznikov repeatedly stated that Russia did not gather
enough men to launch an offensive from Belarus. We reached a similar conclusion in our videos,
discussing Russian activity in Belarus. The leaked documents from the Pentagon also give
us a peak at the background of relations between Ukraine and the USA since the start of the war.
While in public, we see military pledges and mutual praises, many things not reported in
social or traditional media have been going on in the background, as the United States have
both been trying to dissuade Ukraine from taking potentially escalating steps and securing more
military support for Kyiv from around the globe. The United States has so far refused
to give long-range missiles to Ukraine, and one of the leaked documents reflects
concerns of the US government that the Ukrainian army may use it to strike deep into
Russia, which Washington sees as an escalation. This is something that has already been
circulating in the news cycle related to the American refusal to provide long-range missiles
to Kyiv. The United States has apparently also convinced the Ukrainian government against a mass
strike on targets in Russia on the anniversary of the war in fear of escalation. America may have
also been responsible for stopping the Ukrainian plan of striking Russian forces in Syria. The
American efforts to dissuade Ukraine from taking potentially escalatory steps have been paired
with attempts to expand the global coalition of countries supplying Kyiv with weapons. The
leaks indicate that the US government has been considering ways of persuading Israel and South
Korea to provide military support to Ukraine. Neither of these countries has done that so far,
as South Korea is trying to maintain its long-term policy of not selling weapons to countries at
war, while Israel has primarily acted neutral. One of the leaks indicates that a small number
of less than 100 NATO military personnel is in Ukraine. They most probably act as military
instructors rather than active combatants. The Pentagon has also expressed concerns with the
Ukrainian air defense, the bulk of which comprises Soviet-era S-300 and Buk systems. According to
the Pentagon estimates, at the current rate of expenditure, Ukraine should have run out of Buk
missiles by mid-April and of S-300 missiles by May 3. This leak is possibly the worst for Ukraine
in terms of the actual impact it may have. If Russia was not aware before, now they know
that Ukraine is running low on surface-to-air missiles. This information may help Russia
reshape its drone and cruise missile usage, which may be more harmful to Ukraine. Ukraine
may be already doing this, but if the air defense missile shortage is real, it would have to find a
way to resupply its stocks, since the Western air defense system supply is insufficient to defend
the Ukrainian air space. Leaks also do not give an encouraging picture regarding providing fighter
jets to Ukraine or say anything about F-16s. One of the documents gives us a peak at the
battle of Bakhmut. It says that Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut were almost encircled on February
25, as the usually optimistic chief of the Ukrainian military intelligence Kyrylo Budanov
assessed the situation as “catastrophic.” The situation was mitigated by sending elite units
probably to fight to maintain supply lines to Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut. The Pentagon
is also apparently not optimistic about Ukraine’s chances of turning the war around with a
counter-offensive, assessed to launch on April 30. They expect only “modest territorial gains”
by Ukraine. The leaked documents also provide information about casualties. In February,
the Pentagon assessed 43k Russians killed with overall losses at 189500-223000, including
many from elite GRU forces of GRU. According to the Pentagon, Ukraine has lost 17500 men
killed, with total casualties at 124500-131000. These numbers are consistent with the
estimates of most of the military commentators. One of the documents was photoshopped, probably
by Russia, to exaggerate Ukrainian losses, but it did not gain much traction
due to its evident fakeness. The Pentagon has also reported a scary and
potentially disastrous moment from September 2022. According to one document, a Russian Su-27 fired
on a crewed British surveillance plane in the Black Sea. British Defense Minister Ben Wallace
reported this incident to the House of Commons, stating that the British plane remained unharmed
due to the malfunction of the Russian jet. Just imagine how much the situation
would have escalated if Russia had managed to down a British plane.
The majority of the Pentagon leaks reflect information that has already been widely assumed
in the analyst community, and just confirms many reports about different events surrounding the
war in Ukraine. But there are documents which may create some distrust of the Ukrainian government
towards American officials, especially in sharing information about their military plans. A leak on
the Ukrainian shortage of surface-to-air missiles may be particularly damaging, as it gives the
Russian command real information to work with. The Russian government may also utilize
information on the composition of forces in Ukrainian assault brigades to deduce how these
brigades will be used in the counter-offensive if Russia has information on the deployment and
movement of these brigades. More leaks are being revealed as we speak, and we may find out more
about the war in Ukraine from them yet. We are working on more videos on the war in Ukraine, so
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