There could be as many as 50 British special forces operators currently active in Ukraine if it turns out that the leaked documents are accurate. Britain apparently has the most special forces currently located on Ukrainian soil, along with others who come from NATO states, such as the US, France, and Latvia, according to the Daily Mail.
However, the Ministry of Defense has warned against accepting the information contained in the leaks at face value, suggesting that they could have been doctored. The Ministry published a response to the situation, saying: “The widely reported leak of alleged classified US information has demonstrated a serious level of inaccuracy.”
Pentagon spokesman Chris Meagher has also suggested that the documents have been altered, but he did not address how they might have been changed. This comes after the documents were allegedly released by a Discord moderator on an obscure meme site.
However, the US intelligence community has taken the leak seriously, with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin vowing to “investigate and turn over every rock until we find the source of this and the extent of it.”
It appears that the UK deploying operators to Ukraine was not a secret, with the former head of the Royal Marines, Lt. Gen. Robert Magowan, confirming back in December that British soldiers had already been sent to Ukraine earlier in 2022. The first time they were deployed was in January when they helped evacuate the British Embassy located in Kyiv, and then again in April to “provide protection to critical personnel,” per the report.
Magowan said that the personnel who had been deployed were operating in Ukraine “with a high level of political and military risk.”
Britain has sent 50 operators to aid Ukraine, which is more than any other NATO country. There are also 17 from Latvia, 15 from France, 14 from the US, and just a single operator from the Netherlands. However, where the operators are was not revealed in the documents.
The documents could have been leaked through Discord, but it is still unclear if this was the first place they were revealed to the public.
