The Leak is Totally Fake

C'mon guys. Really?

So, that leak that everyone is talking about now is rather a bizarre story and I don’t pretend to understand it all. Frankly, there is a lot confusion out there about what actually happened and then yet more confusion over what it all means. This is to be expected. After all, we now live in the disinformation age.

So, the actual story regarding the leak is complicated. Here, RT, of all places, had a good article on the topic. Not because they wrote it, mind you. They took it from Telegram, where all the good info and analyses are to be found. Not on RT. But hey, they went to the trouble of translating it and so saved me the trouble.

On Friday, photos appeared of a document allegedly containing details on a planned imminent Ukrainian offensive on territories controlled by Russia. The ‘leak’ coincided with suggestions that the NATO Defender 2023 exercises – planned for the end of this month – could be a cover for an operation to supply and support Ukrainian units. However, upon closer examination, doubts arise concerning the document’s authenticity.

When did it appear?

The supposed secret plans to support an offensive by Kiev's forces hit the internet the day before Anthony Blinken made a statement on the subject. The US Secretary of State said the operation will begin “within a few weeks.” 

What information does it contain?

There hasn't been a leak of this nature since Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine began, over 13 months ago. It is noteworthy that the published plans contain not only a schedule for supplying Ukrainian units with NATO weapons and ammunition, but also information about the structure of the brigades and battalions allegedly preparing for the offensive.

The document, dated March 1, says Kiev's brigades need 253 tanks, more than 380 infantry fighting vehicles and APCs, 480 vehicles, 147 artillery pieces, and 571 HMMWV armored vehicles to carry out the offensive.

The probable locations of Russian units, indicated on the combat map in red, appear to have been collected from open sources. Several pro-Kiev resources that track military operations contain almost identical information.

Also, the ratios of killed and wounded for the Ukrainian and Russian Armed Forces which initially appeared in these ‘secret plans’ have since been changed. When first posted, the losses for the Ukrainian side were underestimated at about 16,500 –17,000 people. Then (probably to be more realistic), they increased almost fivefold, up to 65,000 – 75,000. At the same time, the numbers given for Russia's purported losses of vehicles and equipment coincide with data published by Kiev's Ministry of Defense.

I’m not going to post the papers here, because apparently people might get in trouble for that. So go check them out yourselves if you want. I think a lot of people have seen them already anyway.

Fake or not?

Here, we have to define what we mean by fake. Are the numbers made-up or is the leak part of some larger, sinister agenda?

Let’s start with the second question.

There are very few cases of genuine leaks from the US government making their way out onto the internet. There have, however, been many controlled leaks that were almost all certainly done to make one faction or the other’s political opponents look dumb, or as part of a running internal dispute within the ruling establishment. For example, America’s most famous journalist, Seymour Hersh, owes his entire investigative journalism career to people in the government leaking him confidential information for one reason or another. The only genuine leaks that come to mind are the Wikileaks information dumps. And we all know how that turned out for Julian Assange and everyone else involved.

Knowing this, Q: why would anyone leak anything unless they had a krisha over their heads to protect them?

A: They almost certainly do have a krisha over their heads or they’re going to jail for a long time. And for what discernible reason?

Otherwise, we are supposed to believe that someone either leaked this information to settle an internet dispute or because of a desire to tell the truth about, what, exactly? What shocking revelations are contained in the document? That NATO has out-of-uniform soldiers fighting in the Ukrainian army’s ranks? That they are helping Kiev to prepare an offensive against Russia just like they did the last two offensives? The agency’s estimates of war casualties?

Apparently that is the conclusion that many people are drawing:

Twitter has banned embedding links on Substack. Also, they have banned links to Stacks on Twitter. This is even worse than what we had before Elon took over. Good thing I didn’t invest much time into my new account there. I knew that it was too good to be true.

Also, as always, we should ask ourselves: who benefits?

So far, it is unclear who would benefit enough to make such a play. There is no clear narrative that immediately jumps to mind with this leak of information. In other words, there is no call to action that follows logically from the information contained in the leak. Does this mean that NATO should back off? That Russia is winning? Losing?

Since I mentioned Seymour Hersh, it seems that he has proven that there are indeed people within NATO or the US Deep State trying to slow down the escalation. Why else would they give Seymour the inside story on how it wasn’t actually Russia that blew up its own pipelines? I mean, it was pretty obvious that it was either the US or the UK to literally anyone. I mean, if it was Russia doing it to itself, why were all the NATO people so happy then? But, I guess the Seymour scoop convinced the demographic of people smart enough to know about and read Seymour Hersh, but dumb enough to not be able to figure out for themselves that Russia didn’t bomb its own pipeline.

Who knows.

From where I am sitting, there is literally no new takeaway from this information at all. If anything, that is the one detail that lends the leak some credibility. That is, the fact that it was just an info dump, without a clear narrative behind it like the need to start a war with Iran or something, makes it less suspicious to me. Maybe an agenda will emerge in the coming days, I don’t know, but, so far, all we have heard are the authorities making vague threats about punishing the spreaders of the leaked documents.

I suppose it is a shock still to some people that NATO has troops in Ukraine? That they are funding the war and training the military? That the Western media is lying about casualties? That men don’t magically become women when they put wigs and make-up on?

..

Now for the numbers.

Well, first of all we ought to consider the fact that even if we accept that this indeed a leaked intelligence briefing, it could be mistaken or deliberately misleading. So, for example, I am convinced that Putin is being kept in the dark by his own Security Council, headed up by the FSB, of course. If someone leaked one of the morning briefings that makes its way to Putin’s desk, we ought to expect it to be filled with misinformation if we take this thesis to heart. So, the number of casualties would be deliberately rounded down for the Russian army and the number of Ukrainian dead inflated as well. It would be a rosy report and, having leaked it, many in Russia could be tricked into thinking that all was well.

Long story short - even if it is legit, that doesn’t mean it is accurate. Worse, the numbers were changed. First, a highly unrealistic number for Ukrainian losses was given - 16k.

Here’s what it read originally:

TOTAL ASSESSED LOSSES

Russia:
Assessed combat sustainability: MODERATE
72 fighter/bomber; 82 rotary-wing
6,004 ground vehicles
35.5k—43.5k KIA

Ukraine:
Assessed Combat Sustainability: MODERATE
60 fighter/bomber; 32 rotary-wing
11 strategic SAMs; 34 tactical SAMs
16k—17.5k KIA

This is what the Ukrainians claim their official number stands at. But then it was revised to 60k because no one actually believes that Ukraine has lost so few men. This should discredit the leak right then and there. But, instead, the 5Ders focus in on. the Russian KIA triumphantly to prove that there aren’t actually 200k Russian dead as the Western media claims.

Well, duh.

But this doesn’t prove that this 40k number is any better. I was saying 40k back in December. I have since revised that number up to 70k on the low end. I would tell you the upper bound, but I don’t want to upset you.

And I hold to these numbers for now.

So, the 5Ders claim that we can’t trust the Ukrainian KIA numbers because they are clearly fake and changed, but focus in on the Russian KIA numbers, which they like, because they are so low.

But even taking into account the numbers, they seem to prove that Russia’s so-called “attrition warfare” campaign is a failure. Again, there aren’t 300+ thousand dead Ukrainians as some of the bigger 5D idiots were claiming back in December!!! even. How many years of grinding will it take before Russia kills off the entire male population of Ukraine and wins that way? 5 years? 10 years?

Ridiculous!

And if you can’t prove that Russia is killing 10x the number of Ukrainians as they themselves are losing, what exactly is the point in gloating over the numbers? Because if you now want to say that there are only 40k Russian dead, then it still begs the question: how many Ukrainian dead are there? Are there 400k dead? Where is the proof? If not, then what is the cause for celebration? Only 40k dead Russians - great. But no new territory taken since summer, and no proof of a massive attrition campaign succeeding against Ukraine.

But, again, it is ridiculous to even be taking this story seriously. No one that I read on Telegram takes it seriously. The consensus among the Russian patriots that I read is that it is fake. They’re not even vocally condemning it - they’ve just sort of shrugged and moved on. The only people who have latched onto the story are big-brained analysts like Big Serge, Simplicius and the usual Twitter morons.

Simplicius has a huge write-up about how the numbers from the leak prove that Russia is succeeding beyond all previous expectations and that Ukraine will lose by summer, this time for sure. He lists a lot of details and rattles off a lot of numbers. None of that means anything though and none of his conclusions follow logically. But this is a favorite tactic of 5Ders - they drown you in technical information that no one but a few professional war bloggers writing in Russian (or Ukrainian) could check for their veracity and then, when you’re well and truly awed and bamboozled, they give you the executive summary and everyone is too dazzled to say, “wait, what?”

Remember when Simplicius wrote all those analyses PROVING that Russia had massed a huge army with which to crush Ukraine in the winter? All those impressive numbers and figures! It made my head spin! Wow! Despite that, I found the courage to write a takedown article and said that literally the opposite was true - that Russia would be on the defensive, that Ukraine would be the next to attack, and that there was no guarantee that Russia would fend off the coming attack. It’s all here:

Hedging My Bets on the Russian Winter Checkmate

Seriously, go read that article if you haven’t yet. Stop letting yourself get cowed by all the fancy details and simply use common sense. You won’t be disappointed by the results. Also, shame on the people who are still reading these people and linking their stuff. You should know better by now.

By the way, my offer to have a cordial chat with Simplicius or literally anyone from the 5D camp still stands. But, I’m not holding my breath. I threaten a very lucrative grift that they have running.

Basically, the same people who are wrong about everything literally all the time seem to think that the document proves their version of the narrative (HOW?) and so have latched onto it.

They say, “look at how the Pentagon is reacting!” But I would counter by pointing out that no one in Russia is reacting to it - not even Peskov is taking the bait. All he said was, “but we already knew about NATO involvement in Ukraine”. Neither the Russian government, nor the Kremlin-critical bloggers nor the Russian media are taking it seriously. That’s quite the rare consensus in Russian society! You don’t see that often, let me tell you!

Meanwhile, the West is saying that it is a Russian hack. Another Russian hack you say? Maybe that is the reason why this story is gaining traction? Another Russian hacker on the loose! Also, let’s shut down 4chan for posting the files for good measure!

For fuck’s sakes, people. Stop falling for obvious bullshit and on “owning the libs/hohols” and instead focus on the stuff that actually matters.

Russia is losing this war and is bracing for a massive Ukrainian offensive. The Kremlin needs to mobilize more men - a lot more men. They need to fire Shoigu. They need to start opening massive war factories. They need to use some of that 5D Russian diplomacy that we have heard so much about to get China or Iran or North Korea to start sending them weapons too.

We are literally weeks out from what even the Russian state media admits is a massive Ukrainian offensive. Maybe we ought to see how that goes before we pop the champagne bottles?