Leaked documents could both help and hurt Ukraine

The trove of leaked Pentagon documents has the potential to both help and hurt embattled Ukraine, as the documents paint a messier picture of the war but also amp up pressure to get more weapons to the country.

Ukraine is largely dismissing the leaked documents as inconsequential for the war effort as they only provide a snapshot of U.S. assessments in March and February.

But the Pentagon papers, circulated online for millions to see, are emboldening critics across western nations who support less involvement in the war.

One February document reviewed by The Hill details a U.S. conclusion that the war is headed into a stalemate beyond 2023 and both sides are unlikely to make headway anytime soon.

The Pentagon’s intelligence predicts that Russia will continue to pound Ukrainian lines in the eastern regions, “slowly overwhelming Ukrainian defenses with a daily deluge of artillery fires, airstrikes, and repeated, multi-pronged, small-unit ground assaults.”

“These tactics have diminished Russian forces and munition stockpiles to a level that, barring an unforeseen recovery, can exhaust Russian units and frustrate Moscow’s war aims, resulting in a protracted war beyond 2023,” the assessment says.

The stunning conclusion is contrary to the public U.S. stance that Ukraine will be successful in its coming spring counteroffensive. The Pentagon is still reviewing the leaks, including whether any of the documents may have been altered.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a fierce critic of continued U.S. support for Ukraine, tweeted that the Biden administration and the Pentagon have been “caught lying” about the war.

“While yes, leaking classified documents is serious, many are calling [Jack] Teixeira a hero for pulling back the flimsy transparent curtain and revealing what we suspected all along,” Greene wrote, referencing the 21-year-old Air National Guard servicemember who is accused of leaking the documents.

Other critics also seized on the documents because they reveal U.S. involvement in Ukraine, with officials sharing detailed intelligence with Kyiv.

Although it has long been known that Washington was providing support to Ukraine, Fox News host Tucker Carlson said the documents spilled secrets on an illegal war undeclared by Congress, falsely claiming that American troops were directly fighting Russian soldiers.

“It’s our war. The United States is a direct combatant in a war against Russia,” Carlson said on Thursday. “This is a hot war between the two primary nuclear superpowers on Earth and yet this war has never been formally declared.”

He also said the U.S. was treating the alleged leaker “like Osama bin Laden” for telling the truth about Ukraine’s struggles in the war.

Additional records present a more unflattering picture of the war, including a document that says Ukraine sent drones to attack inside Russia and Belarus — when Ukrainian leaders have publicly pledged not to strike sovereign territory. 

The documents, at least partly, offer a different story than the one told so far, which has been dominated by Ukraine’s successes and Russia’s failures through a more controlled narrative directed by Washington and Kyiv.

Michael Butler, a professor of political science at Clark University who specializes in foreign policy and security studies, said this might be exactly what the suspected leaker of the documents wanted.

“There’s clearly some attempt to try to stage manage how the perception of the war is going,” Butler told The Hill. “The actors driving these leaks and distributing these documents are trying to construct or advance a particular narrative about how the war is going.”

He said the motivation behind the leaks is a thinly veiled push at “attempting to move more people into that camp” of skeptics.

The Justice Department has charged Teixeira, an airman with the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 102nd Intelligence Wing, under the Espionage Act on charges related to disseminating classified records.

Teixeira was upset about the war, according to the Washington Post, but it’s unclear if he meant to more broadly influence American perceptions on the conflict. 

For months, Teixeira allegedly provided pictures of the documents to a select online community on chat forum site Discord — most commonly used by gamers and young people — but they were never meant to break out into the wider public sphere, The Post reported.

The leaks have already seized global attention, though Ukraine is trying to move on from the issue. In a Telegram post after the first batch of documents surfaced, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, dismissed the leaks as an attempt to “divert attention” and “sow certain doubts” between allied nations.

Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelensky has not publicly commented on the documents, but after the leaks he appeared to be trying to shift control of the narrative back in his favor.

Zelensky recently called out a video that surfaced of Russian soldiers allegedly beheading a Ukrainian servicemember. In a Tuesday address, the Ukrainian leader said his troops “must be supported by Ukrainian positions politically and informationally, by the power of weapons and the power of our social unity, by our internal resilience and the strength of Ukraine’s ties with the world.”

“And this is the task of both the state and everyone in the state, of both Ukraine and everyone in the world who values a free life and an international order based on rules,” he said.

The documents may also serve as something of a silver lining for Ukraine.

Branislav Slantchev, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, who studies the conduct of war, said that for the Russians, “all of this is bad news.”

Slantchev said Moscow is unsure whether the documents are accurate or not, keeping them guessing, while there are also no battle plans or detailed operational assessments for the coming Ukrainian counter-offensive in the leaks.

“I actually think this is going to be beneficial to the Ukrainians,” Slantchev told The Hill. “They are in a very advantageous position … sitting in the center of a circle and they can strike in many directions. 

“The Russians cannot guess which way and so it’s a big problem,” he continued. “I don’t see anything in these documents that even remotely indicates or reveals what the Ukrainians are going to do.”

And the records indicate Ukraine is inflicting a much higher toll on the Russian army than it is in turn taking on the battlefield, which is consistent with the Pentagon’s public assessments.

Somewhere between 189,000 to 223,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the war, compared to Ukraine’s 124,000 to 131,000, according to the leaked documents, which the U.S. gave with low confidence.

Russian forces have also lost more than 3,000 tanks and upwards of 10,000 armored personnel carriers, compared to about 1,700 Ukrainian tanks and 5,700 APCs, documents say.

The documents could also drive up pressure to better arm Ukraine, potentially leading to faster movement on advanced weaponry transfers. But, the gravest concerns from the leaks regarded how Soviet-era systems, which make up 89 percent of Ukraine’s air defenses, are likely to run out by May. 

While some analysts noted these documents are a month or older and might be corrected by now, it could increase pressure to get more western air defense systems — such as Patriots — to Ukraine to bolster defenses.

Documents also reveal just how much more aircraft are deployed by Russia compared to Ukraine, with Moscow maintaining 696 fighter jets and bombers compared to 145 warplanes for Kyiv. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal made a public plea to the U.S. for F-16 fighter jets as the document leaks were the hottest story in Washington.

Other records contain troubling information about how American-made smart bombs, or precision-guided rockets, are being jammed by Russia, potentially opening the door to public discussion and efforts to resolve the issue.

Tomasz Blusiewicz, a research fellow with the Hoover Institution, said the document leaks overall won’t damage the war effort in the long run — but it does reveal a “general mess” in Washington to other countries.

“It makes a comedy out of the whole thing,” he told The Hill. “Just the inability of the U.S. intelligence community to not only keep the house in order but also watertight.”