Documents seen by The Washington Post revealed that Ukrainian military intelligence planned attacks on Russian forces and mercenaries of the Wagner group in Syria last winter, before the Ukrainian president suspended those plans.
The aim of the attack, according to the American newspaper, was to inflict losses on the ranks of Russia and the Wagner Group, which is active in Syria, and to force Moscow to redeploy its resources from Ukraine.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, halted the plans in December, but the information released, based on information gathered through January 23 and gleaned from leaks made on Discord by young American Jack Teixeira, details how the military campaign would have turned out. . If that happens.
That is, the attacks on Russian forces and Wagner mercenaries in Syria were not intended to implicate the Ukrainian government.
Information indicates that Ukrainian military intelligence was in favor of using drones against Russian forces in “surgical” strikes, but also to limit the attacks to targeting only the Wagner Group.
The document says that Ukrainian officials considered training elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to attack Russian targets and carry out other unspecified “direct actions” in conjunction with drones.
A spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, Farhad Shami, told the newspaper that these documents were “not real” and that his forces were never part of this other conflict.
According to the “Washington Post”, Turkey was aware of these plans, and in order not to be caught, it suggested that the attacks be carried out from Kurdish areas, and not from the north and northeast, which are controlled by other “rebel groups”, some of them. With the support of Türkiye.
The newspaper notes that it is not clear why Zelensky stopped the operation, but it is expected to be due to pressure from the United States, the small number of drones in Ukrainian hands, or concerns about possible attacks that may result. the operation.
Jacques Teixeira, the suspected author of one of the biggest leaks of the Pentagon Papers of the past decade, was indicted on April 14 on charges of sending and extracting classified information.
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