MOSCOW, April 12. /TASS/. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov acknowledged the possibility that leaks of classified US intelligence documents may be false and are targeted disinformation aimed at misleading Russia.
"We don’t have a position; it may perhaps be interesting for somebody to scrutinize these materials as to whether they are [genuine US] documents, or maybe they are fakes, maybe it’s deliberately targeted disinformation," he told reporters on Wednesday in reply to a question by TASS regarding Moscow’s position on the situation and the potential causes of the leak.
"Given that the US is a party to the conflict and is, essentially, waging a hybrid war against us, it’s possible that such ploys may be used in order to mislead the adversary, that is, the Russian Federation," the senior diplomat noted. "I am not asserting anything; I am simply acknowledging that various scenarios and models are not beyond the realm of possibility here," he added.
"So, probably, specialists would know better how realistic all of this may be. There have been situations previously, which we can recall, where authentic documents did end up in the public domain. This is a fact. But, the extent to which all of this brouhaha, both the publications themselves and everything else, have some kind of grounding in reality, remains an open question for me personally," Ryabkov concluded.
US media reported earlier that the departments of Defense and Justice were investigating a leak of secret documents revealing American and NATO plans to build up Ukrainian forces before a counteroffensive. Numerous tranches of documents disclosing sensitive information about weapons delivery timeframes and troop strengths were posted on Twitter and Telegram. On April 7, the New York Times reported that another batch of classified US documents on Ukraine had been leaked on the Internet. The materials include sensitive briefing slides on the Middle East and China, the newspaper said.