Ukrainian military intelligence said that the supposed classified war documents recently leaked online were forged by Russia.
Russia or pro-Russian elements are likely behind the leak, undisclosed U.S. officials told Reuters on April 7.
"In recent decades, the most successful operations of the Russian special services took place in Photoshop," Ukraine's Defense Ministry's Main Intelligence Directorate spokesperson Andrii Yusov said on national television on April 7.
According to the New York Times, classified documents detailing U.S. and NATO plans for supplying aid to arm Ukraine for the upcoming counteroffensive were posted this week on Twitter and Telegram. Senior U.S. officials told the newspaper that this prompted an investigation by Pentagon.
The documents do not reveal details of when, how, or where Ukraine intends to launch its counteroffensive and are reportedly five weeks old.
According to military analysts with whom the New York Times spoke, the documents were likely modified from their original format, understating the casualties on the Russian side and overstating those on the Ukrainian side.
Yusov said the Russians may have forged documents to disrupt or slow down Western aid to Ukraine and that the losses figures on the documents were "false" from both sides, and some of the information in the documents appeared to originate from open sources.
The documents appear to have been altered to lower the number of Russian casualties, U.S. officials told Reuters, adding their assessments were separate from the investigation into the leak.
Biden officials told the newspaper that attempts to get the information deleted from social media had not yet proved successful.
Francis Farrell
