The arrest, last week, of Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira as the suspected “documents leaker” has not stopped coverage of previously undisclosed leaked documents, particularly at the Washington Post, which seems to be running one to two stories per day on them. The leakage was almost certainly an issue behind the closed doors of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting at the U.S.’s Ramstein Air Base in Germany, today. “As I have discussed this issue with our allies and partners, I’ve been struck by their solidarity and their commitment to reject efforts to divide us, so nothing will fracture our unity or reduce our determination,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said at a press conference after the meeting.
One such document, apparently first covered by the French-language website Zone Militaire, provides details about U.S. and NATO aerial intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) activity in the Black Sea region between September 2022 and February 2023, the War Zone website reported yesterday. It includes data on flights of RQ-170 stealth drones, RQ-4 Global Hawk and RQ-9 reconnaissance drones, as well as activities involving British RC-135W Rivet Joints, French Mirage 2000s, and NATO Global Hawks. France’s use of Mirage 2000 fighter jets in the region in the ISR role, which they are capable of performing by carrying external reconnaissance pods, does not appear to have been revealed before now, either, says the War Zone.
According to the Washington Post, another document reports that Kiev largely ignored U.S. warnings that Ukrainian forces would not be able to hold Bakhmut. An assessment marked “top secret” cautioned that “steady” Russian advances since November “had jeopardized Ukraine’s ability to hold the city,” and Ukrainian forces would probably be “at risk of encirclement, unless they withdraw within the next month.”
