All news

Russian security official doesn’t rule out that US may knowingly leak information

In the future, "leaks in the interests of the American administration will continue from time to time," Sergey Ivanov surmised

MOSCOW, April 17. /TASS/. Washington may be using the situation with the Pentagon leaks to disseminate information in its interests in the form of more fake leaks, Sergey Ivanov, Russian presidential envoy for environmental issues and transport and a permanent member of the Russian Security Council, said on Monday.

"After all, I have worked for foreign intelligence services for 25 years. I think that this hype will calm down in a couple of days. This Teixeira, the whistleblower, a young man, will be imprisoned and interrogated. Nothing will be said about the results of the interrogations," he said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel.

In the future, "leaks in the interests of the American administration will continue from time to time," he surmised. "Either, this is not serious, or this is really another leak and the rules for handling secret documents need to be toughened."

The US mass media reported earlier that the Pentagon and the US Department of Justice had launched a probe into the leak of secret documents about Washington and NATO’s plans to train Ukrainian soldiers ahead of an offensive against Russia. Numerous documents on the schedules of arms supplies and the strength of forces were leaked to social networks, including Twitter and Telegram. The New York Times reported on April 7 that another batch of secret American documents related to Ukraine had appeared on the internet. Apart from that, according to the newspaper, the leaks included documents on the Middle East and China.

According to CNN, Jack Teixeira, 21, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard who was arrested in the leak case, had access to state secret data as he was running a special communications network used for classified documents.

Teixeira is charged with unauthorized removal of classified and defense information, as well as with unauthorized retention and transmission of defense information. The first charge carries a penalty of up to five years in prison, while on the second charge, Teixeira may face ten years behind bars.