The depth of infighting within the Russian government appears wider and deeper than previously believed, judging by a recently discovered cache of classified intelligence documents that have leaked online.
Documents additionalwhich did not appear in a 53-page series made public on the Internet last week, shows a picture of the Russian government andFaced with the body count and wounded in the war in Ukraine, with the national intelligence agency accusing the military of concealing the scale of casualties Russia has suffered.
The new batch, which contains 27 pagesit reinforces how deeply US spy agencies have penetrated nearly every aspect of Russia’s intelligence apparatus and military command structure.
It also proves that the leak from US intelligence agencies could contain much more material from what has been understood so far.
In a document, US intelligence officials say that Russia’s top domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, or FSBhe “accused” the country’s defense ministry “of obscuring Russian casualties in Ukraine”.
The find highlights “the continuum reluctance of military officers to pass bad news down the chain of command,” they say.
The rumor, dated Feb. 28 in a document with a number of updates on the war in Ukraine and other global hot spots, appears to be based on telematic interceptions collected by US intelligence agencies.
Each release of classified documents has the potential to reveal additional methods and means of intelligence gathering.
The documents don’t appear to contain much or any information from human sourcessuggesting that the original leaker may not have had access to that more highly classified material.
Instead, much of the material is labeled as being from communications interceptions.
clues
Taken together, the documents underline some of the key reasons why, according to many analysts, the Russian president Vladimir Putin failed to achieve a military victory in Ukraine after more than 13 months of warfare.
These included infighting and finger-pointing between Russian agencies responsible for various aspects of the war, including the FSB and the Defense Ministry.
Leaked rumor about death toll provides limited context for intelligence officials’ finding, but reports FSB is questioning own count of casualties by the Ministry of Defense in discussions within the Russian government.
According to the document, FSB officials say the ministry’s figure does not include the dead and wounded of the Russian National Guard, the Wagner mercenary force or fighters of Ramzan Kadyrovthe leader of the Chechen republic in southern Russia.
The various fighting forces that the Kremlin has deployed in Ukraine have sometimes acted with them conflicting purposes, further complicating Russia’s military effort.
The FSB “estimated the actual number of Russians wounded and killed in action to be close 110,000“, says the document.
The document does not specify the casualty figures that the Ministry of Defense is circulating within the government.
The last time the ministry made a death toll public was in September, when the defense minister Sergey Shoigu it said 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed since the start of the war.
US officials had previously estimated Russian losses at around 200,000 soldiers.
Another leaked document reports that the Russians had suffered between 189,500 and 223,000 casualties in February, including up to 43,000 KIA, compared to between 124,500 and 131,000 Ukrainian casualties, with up to 17,500 KIA.
The new documents also provide new details on a very public dispute in February in which Yevgeny Prigozhin, the business tycoon who runs the Wagner force, accused Russian military officials of withholding urgently needed munitions from their fighters. Putin tried to resolve the dispute himself by summoning Prigozhin and Shoigu to a meeting believed to have taken place on Feb. 22, the document said.
“It is almost certain that the meeting had to do, at least in part, with Prigozhin’s public accusations and subsequent tension with Shoygu,” the document reads, using an alternative spelling of the minister’s name.
The new documents have been shared in photos and some are missing pages.
Those shown in their entirety include material from the National Security Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Intelligence Directorate of the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The material provided a The New York Times was posted on one of the Discord servers where the first set of Pentagon intelligence documents eventually surfaced.
US officials said those documents were authentic, but warned that some had been tampered with.
Documents may also contain outdated or inaccurate information.
The Times described the new set of documents to several US officials.
While officials did not dispute the information, they said they could not, nor would they, independently verify the documents.
A slide that appears to have been produced by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and dated February 23 concludes that Russia has failed to stop the massive flow of Western weapons and equipment into Ukraine since the start of the war, and claims that the Kremlin’s battered military you won’t be able to change that situation in the short term.
“Over the next 6 months, Russia’s economic woes and the degradation of its conventional capabilities will very likely further hamper their efforts, creating a largely permissive environment for the continuation of the deliveries of lethal aid“, says the document.
The new material also includes a six-page document dated Feb. 23 from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence called the “Surveillance Report.”
Rather than complementing the intelligence findings, the surveillance report compiles various accounts that reached intelligence agencies in the hours preceding its release, some from unique sources, often without in-depth context.
Government officials reading the surveillance report know some of the material will prove correct, but other information will, over time, prove incomplete, according to former officials.
For example, the report clocks he says Russian foreign intelligence “reported” that China had approved the supply of lethal aid to Russia, citing a communications intercept.
The document does not clarify whether the Chinese told the Russians that they had sent aid or whether the Russians were spying on the Chinese.
On March 3, just days after the Watch Report document circulated within the US government, NBC News reported, and The Times confirmed, that what the US knew about the plan to get lethal aid from China was state “spied on by Russian officials“.
But a senior administration official warned Wednesday that, weeks later, there is no indication that China has decided to provide lethal aid to Russia, suggesting, at the very least, Russian intelligence on Chinese intentions could be wrong.
c.2023 The New York Times Society
Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.