On April 10 some briefing slides for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff appeared on the internet. They seemed to be genuine. But later a second larger batch was claimed to have come into the hands of so called journalist. I had and still have strong doubts about that second round:
When media reported on the first batch of ‘leaked’ Pentagon briefing slides they also published pictures of the originals.
Then came a second round which conveniently was more about bashing Russia than on the releases itself. Those leaks were labeled as new or from a previously unknown source. Among those stories were: …
…
We have pictures of the first stash of the files. The briefing slides seem real to me. The language is correct Pentagon lingo. The abbreviations used are typical. But some of the information therein, like the casualty numbers, is dubious. Do the Joint Chiefs of Staff really get briefed with Ukrainian defense ministry numbers that are know to be mere fantasies? The Pentagon and/or the CIA certainly have their own casualty estimates. Why not brief those?
We have seen no picture of any slide that the additional stories are based on. Why were those not published?
A plausible explanation is that the first release was a real leak but that someone is now pushing new ‘leaks’ to dedicated outlets that are only half true or mere propaganda.
Another ‘exclusive’ in today’s Washington Post, allegedly based on the same leak, only increases my doubt about that alleged second stash of documents:
U.S. had intelligence of detailed Ukrainian plan to attack Nord Stream pipeline
Three months before saboteurs bombed the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack on the undersea network, using a small team of divers who reported directly to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces.
Details about the plan, which have not been previously reported, were collected by a European intelligence service and shared with the CIA in June 2022. They provide some of the most specific evidence to date linking the government of Ukraine to the eventual attack in the Baltic Sea, which U.S. and Western officials have called a brazen and dangerous act of sabotage on Europe’s energy infrastructure.
The European intelligence reporting was shared on the chat platform Discord, allegedly by Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira. The Washington Post obtained a copy from one of Teixeira’s online friends.
How convenient!
The U.S. had motives and means in place to blow up the pipeline. Seymour Hersh has sources who claim the U.S. did it.
But now WaPo gets its hands on a ‘leaked document’ that says Ukraine’s General Zaluzny was the man in charge of the issue:
The European intelligence made clear that the would-be attackers were not rogue operatives. All those involved reported directly to Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the country’s highest-ranking military officer, who was put in charge so that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wouldn’t know about the operation, the intelligence report said.
Zaluzny is in charge of Ukrainian military. He is busy and not the man to run secret missions and to get direct reports from everyone involved in them.
Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, or the SBU, the civil intelligence service of Ukraine, would be in charge of such a mission.
(Budanov probably died on May 30 during a Russian attack on the bunker of the Military Intelligence headquarter in Kiev. He hasn’t been seen or heard of since.)
The claim that Zaluzny was involved thus makes me even more skeptical.
I am not the only one who has doubts about the new ‘leak’:
Aaron Maté @aaronjmate – 15:34 UTC · Jun 6, 2023
The CIA gave its first Nord Stream cover-up story to the NYT, only fair to give their follow-up cover-up story to the Washington Post.
(https://mate.substack.com/p/in-nord-stream-attack-us-officials)
I will file the Washington Post report in the same ‘nonsense’ folder as this:
A ‘Russian soldier’ … with a beard?
According to the Chapter 8 Article 344 of the Charter of the Armed Forces servicemen are obliged ‘to regularly bath, brush teeth, cut nails, hair and shave clean’.
Just two months ago that order was reinforced:
The commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine has ordered soldiers to cut their hair and shave, sparking a row with his bearded Chechen and mercenary allies.
…
Western intelligence said that General Valery Gerasimov, appointed overall commander of Russia’s forces earlier in January by Vladimir Putin, was trying to promote more discipline in the Russian army.
The ‘Russian soldier’ claim is as real as the WaPo‘s claim about the Ukrainian involvement in the Nord Stream case.
The person in Kiev who tweeted the above clip has probably filmed his neighbor.
Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.
