According to stolen US military papers, Russia’s assault on Ukraine has taken a tremendous toll on its special forces due to their heavy deployment to the front lines, with talented commandos incurring a significant number of losses. Russian leaders’ overreliance on “spetsnaz” special operations groups prompted American officials to speculate that Moscow may need many years to reconstitute. According to a Washington Post investigation on the collection of stolen secret papers, US officials think the commando troops suffered a shocking number of deaths and were left depleted after Russian leaders deployed them in the early days of the conflict in order to capture momentum.
The estimate is based on before and after satellite photographs, which show that “all but one of five Russian Separate Spetsnaz Brigades that returned from combat operations in Ukraine in late summer 2022 incurred considerable losses,” according to US authorities. While the documents do not specify how many spetsnaz commandos were killed in the fight, intelligence intercepts supposedly show that Moscow lost nearly an entire brigade “with just 125 soldiers operating out of 900 assigned.” According to the released documents, US officials estimate that Russia’s special forces will take up to a decade to rebuild. Pictures from the early days of the Ukrainian war showed spetsnaz forces landing in Kharkiv, Mariupol, and the Donbas after regular motorized rifle battalions were unable to operate. The significant deaths among Russia’s special forces, according to the papers, will have long-term consequences, including the capacity to train paramilitary organizations “which Moscow has exploited to further its goals overseas.”
‘Lethal help’ from China
Furthermore, a US intelligence intercept included in the released documents suggests that China approved the “supply of deadly help” to Moscow and planned to conceal military equipment as civilian things. According to a US intelligence assessment from February 23, 2023, based on eavesdropping on Russia’s foreign intelligence service, China’s top military commission “authorized the gradual provision” of weapons and wanted it kept secret. According to the Washington Post, a document called The Watch Report is classified as top secret with extremely limited dissemination and contains information about China labelled “BEIJING.”
The disclosures are part of top secret US military documents that continue to surface and contain vital state secrets, including information of Ukraine’s spring offensive preparations and evidence that the US has been eavesdropping on its allies. The Pentagon said that the documents “appear to contain critical and highly secret material,” but that at least some of them had been doctored.
