Bellingcat journalists identify primary sources of “leaked” documents on AFU counteroffensive 

This is reported by Bellingcat.

Investigators note that these documents first appeared on the Discord platform, popular among gamers. They saw evidence that some of the documents, dated January, may have been published online much earlier, although it is not known exactly when.

"Bellingcat also spoke to three members of the Discord community where the images had been posted who claimed that many more documents had been shared across other Discord servers in recent months," the article said.

After being shared on Discord, the documents started appearing on other platforms, such as 4Chan, Telegram and Twitter.

The documents started being discussed after people started sharing them in pro-Russian Telegram channels on April 5. The first version of the documents was discovered in the Telegram channel Donbass Devushka. The post contained four images. Later, a new post with other images was published there.

A few hours before, the documents were published on one of the forums on the 4Chan platform. They were posted in a thread of eight posts by an anonymous user. The veracity of the material being shared was questioned by users. 

The files in the two publications had one image in common: a map that showed a number of statistics, including the total number of soldiers killed on the Russian and Ukrainian sides during the war. However, the casualty numbers differed: 4Chan had more casualties on the Russian side, while Donbass Devushka showed a larger number of Ukrainian casualties.

However, the images first appeared on March 4, more than a month before the 4Chan and Telegram posts. 10 photos were posted on the Discord server related to Minecraft. The user who shared these photos wrote that there are documents related to Ukraine among them. Some of them were marked "Top Secret". Also, among them were such images that were not distributed on other platforms.

These photos, seen by Bellingcat investigators, were photographed, not scanned. Later, the Discord user also noted that he had found these documents on another server called WowMao, run by a YouTuber of the same name. The latter distributed 30 documents on March 1 and 2, and later he published a number of other documents about Ukraine. On April 7, WowMao removed them.

Bellingcat subsequently chatted with members of a separate Discord server and discovered that other images had previously been shared on Thug Shaker Central's deleted server. The photos shared the detail of an additional document in the same style and formatting that was posted on the WowMao server, dated January 13. However, these images were screenshots, as the server itself has been removed. Therefore, it is impossible to check their authenticity.

One server member named Vakhi reported that Thug Shaker Central was originally named after its founder. However, server admin duties were passed to other users before a new admin, who changed many names, took over. Vakhi did not want to name this person, but noted that they are the original source of the leaked documents. According to him and two other users, the files shared by WowMao are only the tip of the iceberg compared to the amount of documents published on the Thug Shaker Central server.

This server has currently left no traces. According to former members who are currently members of WowMao servers and others, there were about 20 active users on the server. They talked about music, videos, and Orthodoxy. They also discussed Oxide's YouTube channel about weapons and defense methods. The users of the server mostly held conservative views, although the server itself was not political. Racist statements were also spread there.

• On April 6, The New York Times wrote about the leak of classified documents detailing US and NATO plans to build up the Ukrainian army before a planned counteroffensive.

• Mykhailo Podolyak, Zelenskyy’s adviser, said that Russian troops will be the first to know when Ukraine launches a counteroffensive, which will be very soon.

• On April 8, Ukrainian Intelligence reported that the so-called classified military documents about the offensive plans of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are actually fake – it is a special Russian operation. Russia could forge documents to disrupt Western aid to Ukraine.

• On April 8, Mykhailo Podolyak named the purpose of "leaking" secret data about the AFU counteroffensive.