Classified U.S. Documents On Ukraine War Leaked On Minecraft Discord Server

The leaked classified documents related to the war between Russia and Ukraine that have been making the rounds on social media were originally posted on a Discord server for the popular video game Minecraft. Open-source intelligence firm Bellingcat has been trying to trace the origins of the documents since news of their existence broke last week.

Bellingcat reported that a user uploaded ten photographs of the documents, which were from early March and labeled "Top Secret," to the Discord server, which is generally used for people to discuss the popular online world-building game.

The documents were then quickly shared to 4Chan, Telegram, Twitter, and other social media platforms. The Discord server was shut down shortly after the documents were uploaded.

The intelligence firm said that some of the documents appeared to be crudely edited to change information, such as the number of Ukrainian and Russian casualties.

The original source of the leaks is unknown, and investigators in the Pentagon are scrambling to find out how somebody was able to photograph the highly-sensitive documents.

In addition to information about the war between Russia and Ukraine, some of the documents contained information about U.S. intelligence gathering programs in South Korea, Israel and the Russian mercenary organization Wagner Group.

"The Department of Defense continues to review and assess the validity of the photographed documents that are circulating on social media sites and that appear to contain sensitive and highly classified material," Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a statement. "An interagency effort has been stood up, focused on assessing the impact these photographed documents could have on U.S. national security and on our Allies and partners."