Despite the significant impact of Western sanctions, Russia can finance a full-scale war against Ukraine for another year.
This is written by The Washington Post with reference to the documents of the US Ministry of Defense with the label "top secret", which got into the network during a large-scale leak.
The documents state that the Russian "economic elites", although they mostly disagree with the Kremlinʼs policy towards Ukraine, are not ready to oppose Putin.
Western sanctions have scared those they target the most. American intelligence has found out that Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov wrote a letter to Prime Minister Mykhailo Mishustin, seeking emergency support to avoid a "potentially ignominious collapse" of Russian state institutions: the International Investment Bank, the Bank for Economic Cooperation and the Eurasian Investment Bank. And the employees of the FSB of the Russian Federation were "worried" about the insufficient amount of foreign currency in Russian banks.
According to US intelligence, Russia mainly relies on increased corporate taxes, a sovereign wealth fund, increased imports and business adjustments. This situation proved to Washington the effectiveness of American economic policy towards Russia.
However, in the documents, the Pentagon has not yet taken into account the recent sanctions and losses incurred by the Russian Federation due to the introduced ceiling price for oil in Europe, its expenditure on ammunition and the need to mobilize new military personnel, etc.
- On April 6, it became known that classified military documents related to the counteroffensive of the Defense Forces of Ukraine in the war against Russia were published on social networks (Twitter and Telegram), and on April 7, it became known that a second batch of secret documents of the American authorities was published online.
- They are talking not only about Ukraine, but also about the activities of the USA in the Indo-Pacific region, in the Middle East, actions to fight terrorism and relations with China, about the UN, Hungary.
- The first documents about the war in Ukraine appeared on Discord servers (where fans of video games communicate) 48 hours after the Russian invasion, on April 13 , the FBI arrested a suspect in the leak of classified Pentagon data — 21-year-old national guard of the US Air Force, Jack Teixeira.