The man behind a hugely embarrassing leak of highly classified military documents is believed to be a young gun enthusiast who shared the secrets in a group for gamers.
Known as “OG” in the Discord chatroom, the man allegedly claimed to spend parts of his day inside a secure facility where phones were banned, according to a story published by the Washington Post.
He initially typed up versions of highly secret documents and posted them for the group of about 25 active members from various countries to read, but later switched to posting slews of photos of the documents themselves.
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The Pentagon is racing to find the culprit and the scale of the scandal has been compared to the Edward Snowden leaks in 2013.
While their accuracy has been questioned, the leaked documents appear to reveal potential vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s defences, as well as the numbers of UK special forces allegedly active in the country.
As well as sharing state secrets, OG would also forecast major events before they became headline news, according to another member of the Discord chat interviewed by the Post.
“He’s fit. He’s strong. He’s armed. He’s trained. Just about everything you can expect out of some sort of crazy movie,” he said.
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What do the highly classified documents say?
As more and more of the information contained in the documents is reported, the reach of American intelligence agencies is being increasingly thrown under the spotlight.
According to the New York Times, the documents also illuminate the depth of infighting inside the Russian government.
They paint a picture of feuding behind the walls of the Kremlin over the number of casualties in the Ukraine war.
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Officials in several countries have denied or rejected allegations from the leaked records.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Sky News: “Like everyone else, we don’t know the degree of authenticity of these documents.
“But even if we disengage from them, long before these documents appeared, we had and still have information that many instructors, including the ones from Britain, and fighters are taking part in the military actions.”