Once again a classified military document has been disseminated around the world by the gaming community, only this time it is not War Thunder's fault. The documents in question relate to U.S. and NATO plans for Ukraine's military support of the ongoing invasion of Russia, and according to Bellingcat researcher Aric Toler (via Vice (opens in new tab)), the initial leak point was an unofficial Minecraft Discord server was.

Some of the leaked documents eventually found their way to 4chan, where, in classic Internet fashion, they were shared to win the argument; the 4chan documents appear to include estimates of Ukrainian and Russian losses in the war and a map of the contested city of Bakhmut.

The document was also shared on the Russian Telegram channel, but according to the Torah, the map of Bakhmut was not among them. There were also two estimates, one showing that Ukraine's combat losses were much lower than Russia's, and an edited image showing much higher.

Toller said on Twitter that 4chan would not be the actual source of the leak. I agree.

He then said that an earlier version of the leak came from an "even dumber" source, telling Vice that it was the Minecraft Discord server. The archive had more images, including a map of Kharkov and Kherson and another equipment page.

However, it was later revealed that another Discord server was the actual source of the leak: a Discord user named Lucca claimed to have found an archive of over 100 confidential files on the now-deleted Discord server, and between March 1 and 2 Over 30 files were posted to the YouTuber's Discord server; on March 4, 10 of those files were posted to the Minecraft Discord, and in early April, three were posted to 4chan and five to the Russian Telegram channel.

Unlike past War Thunder leaks (open in new tab), which were illegal (and theoretically punishable by death (open in new tab) in some countries) but largely harmless, this leak contains information about an expected Ukrainian counter-offensive against Russian forces . The document does not contain specific details of the plan and is more than a month old, so it may even be out of date at this point. However, it does contain useful information that has not previously been made public, such as the rate at which the Ukrainian military will run out of HIMARS ammunition. As The New York Times (opens in new tab) put it, the leak is "a serious violation of U.S. intelligence."

The Pentagon is currently investigating the leak. Lucca, who first found the leaked documents, shared them on Discord, and reportedly began spreading them, appears to be preparing for the worst.