Classified military documents have yet again been blasted out into the world by a gaming community, and for once it's not War Thunder's fault. The documents in question are related to US and NATO plans to support Ukraine's military effort against the ongoing Russian invasion, and according to Bellingcat researcher Aric Toler (via Vice(opens in new tab)), an early leak point was an unofficial Minecraft Discord server.
Some of the leaked documents eventually found their way to 4chan, where—in classic internet fashion—they were being shared to win an argument. The 4chan docs appear to contain estimates of Ukrainian and Russian losses in the war, and a map of the contested city of Bakhmut.
The documents were also shared on Russian Telegram channels, although according to Toler, the Bakhmut map was not included among them. There were also two different sets of estimates, one indicating that Ukrainian combat losses are much lower than those of Russia, and then an edited image showing them as much higher.
Toler said on Twitter that 4chan was probably not the actual source of the leak, «though it would be extremely funny if it was.» I can't say I disagree.
Put this dude in the Posters Hall of Fame if he's sent to a CIA black site in Poland for posting these on 4chan to win an argument against pepe and anime avatars anons pic.twitter.com/TzivfEgnJcApril 7, 2023
After that, he said an earlier version of the leak came from an «even dumber» source, which he told Vice was a Minecraft Discord server. This archive had even more images, including maps of Kharkiv and Kherson, and another equipment page.
But it later became apparent that another Discord server was the actual leak point. A Discord user named Lucca claimed to have found an
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