Due to leak of secret documents between US and its allies, crisis has arisen in relations, - Politico
Senior US officials are trying to reassure frustrated and confused allies in Europe, the Middle East and Kyiv after the leak of classified information about the war in Ukraine and other global issues.
As reported by Censor.NET with reference to UP, this was reported by Politico citing four sources.
After the leak emerged last week, senior State Department, Pentagon, and U.S. intelligence officials contacted their foreign counterparts to reassure them.
One of the sources said that the members of the "Five Eyes" - the intelligence alliance of the USA, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand - turned to Washington with a request for briefings. The requests were sent separately to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA, and the FBI. So far they have not received an answer.
Meanwhile, officials in London, Brussels, Berlin, Dubai, and Kyiv, the newspaper writes, asked Washington about how the information ended up on the Internet, who is responsible for the leak, and what the US is doing to ensure that the information is removed from social networks and whether the Biden administration is taking steps to prevent future intelligence leaks.
As of the morning of April 10, US officials told allies that the US presidential administration was investigating and that they were still trying to understand the full extent of the leak, European officials told Politico.
Ukraine has long been concerned about the fact that the information it shares with the United States is becoming publicly available, the publication writes.
"This case showed that the Ukrainians were absolutely right about this. The Americans now owe the Ukrainians. They should apologize and compensate for the damage," said one of the European officials.
The story has led to a crisis in US relations with its allies, raising questions about how Washington will fix what officials around the world say is one of the biggest public failures of US intelligence since WikiLeaks released millions of sensitive documents online between 2006 and 2021," Politico notes.
"The method of the leak and the content are very unusual. I can't remember a time when there was such a leak and such a wide range of credible information that was simply posted on social networks, and not like Snowden's files, which were first analyzed by a group of journalists," said a former US intelligence analyst who dealt with Russia.
A high-ranking American official told the newspaper that only at the highest level of the US government are discussing how to deal with the leak of information. Even those high-ranking officials working on policy regarding Ukraine, Russia, and the countries mentioned in the documents did not know as of April 9 how the presidential administration would respond to the leak.
"I don't have any idea about the plan. I would like to know how we are going to act," said another high-ranking US official.
At the same time, the newspaper notes, a high-ranking Ukrainian parliamentarian said that the leak "is not considered a big problem here."
However, according to one of the European officials, the leak of information caused outrage among officials at the highest echelons of the national security of Ukraine.
"Although the documents are dated and probably have no direct bearing on the hostilities, the release of the information was perceived domestically as an embarrassment and a potential long-term problem for the Ukrainian military command," writes Politico.
