Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview published on Tuesday (May 2) that he wasn’t informed about the leaks of secret US documents. In an interview with the Washington Post, Zelensky said: “I did not receive information from the White House or the Pentagon beforehand.”
He added, “It is unprofitable for us. It is not beneficial to the reputation of the White House, and I believe it is not beneficial to the reputation of the United States.”
In the aftermath of the leak of the documents, which remained in the headlines last month, US officials said they were investigating the matter. The Pentagon had said that the leak presents a “very serious” risk to national security.
When the documents appeared online, they become an embarrassment and also a headache for the US authorities as highly sensitive military and defence documents were shared and circulated on multiple social media platforms. The leak released details of secret information linked to the Ukraine war, Israel’s spy agency Mossad, South Korea, and more.
The set of leaked documents, labelled as “Secret” and “Top Secret”, included materials related to Ukraine and its military, telling a partial tale of the ongoing war. The Ukrainian defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said on April 12 that the Pentagon document leaks contained a mixture of true and false information about his country’s military and downplayed its negative impact.
One document suggested that the Ukrainian air defences are in deep crisis. The air defence systems have emerged as one of Ukraine’s key strengths to counter Russian missile and drone strikes. Ukraine even urged the allies to supply fighter jets to help in its fight against Russian aggression.
Documents show that the munitions for Soviet-era air defence systems deployed by Ukraine will soon run out and a document dated February indicates that the S300 missile defence system is expected to run out of munitions by May this year and the SA-11 Gadfly system at the end of March.
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After Zelensky’s comments, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said: “We are in constant communication with our Ukrainian counterparts about a range of issues, including over the unauthorized disclosures, but we aren’t going to get into the details of those private discussions.”
Pentagon Press Secretary Patrick Ryder said that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had spoken to a number of allies, including Reznikov. Ryder told CNN: “Austin has conducted a large number of phone calls, conducted a large amount of outreach to our allies and partners around the world to discuss the matter with them, to highlight how seriously we are taking this issue, to include several conversations with his Ukrainian counterpart, minister Reznikov.”
(With inputs from agencies)
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