WASHINGTON, April 11. /TASS/. The leaked Pentagon documents that surfaced on the Internet are unlikely to significantly influence the course of the conflict in Ukraine, although they may prove useful for Moscow, the Washington Post said in an editorial on Tuesday.
"Granted, the material may have provided the Kremlin with some useful details. But there is little in the document dump that is likely to be a game changer in the war itself," the editorial board said.
It might be helpful for Russia, the editorial said, to have gained the data on the amounts of arms and munitions possessed by the Ukrainian military and to have learned that Pentagon analysts are concerned about the status of Ukrainian air defense systems. Moscow will probably have more appreciation of the chance to "discover the range of US intelligence capabilities" that enabled the gathering of such data, the editorial said. However, the leaks didn’t provide any information that "might have forced Ukraine to fundamentally alter its plans — for instance, revelations on the timing and location of an anticipated spring offensive by Kiev," according to the Washington Post.
"While Russia will likely be interested in the leaked assessments showing the shortages facing Ukrainian air defenses, there is still much it will not know from the new information, including the rate at which Kiev is taking delivery of new Western antiaircraft munitions," the editorial said.
Some of the leaked information could be outdated by now, it said.
US news media earlier reported that the Pentagon and the US Department of Justice started an investigation into the leak of the classified documents that are related to the plans of NATO and Washington to make Ukrainian forces ready for a counteroffensive. A large number of materials disclosing the schedules of weapons supplies and troops numbers were posted to Twitter and Telegram, among other social media. The New York Times reported on April 7 that another portion of classified US documents relating to Ukraine had surfaced on the Internet. Reuters reported it could be the most significant data leak since more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables were posted on WikiLeaks in 2013. The report also said the latest leaks circulating on the Internet could be fake.