Are American Troops Fighting in Ukraine? What U.S. Intel Leaks Reveal

A trove of leaked classified documents from the Defense Department suggests that more than a dozen American troops have been operating in Ukraine.

The leaked U.S. intelligence documents about the war in Ukraine and other national security issues were found online on a social messaging platform called Discord, which is popular with gamers. One of the documents show that the U.S. is among a number of nations with military special forces deployed in Ukraine, the British newspaper The Guardian reported.

Hundreds of pages of sensitive government documents were found online last month in a Discord chatroom of about two dozen teenagers, called Thug Shaker Central. The chat group's leader was likely Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard's intelligence wing, who was arrested on Thursday in connection with the leak.

The Pentagon has called the leak of sensitive files as a "deliberate, criminal act." It's unclear how long the classified files had been circulating online prior to discovery.

One of the leaked files, reviewed by The Guardian, that appears to be dated March 2023, suggests U.S. officials assessed at the time that there were 97 special forces from NATO countries operating in Ukraine, including 14 U.S. special forces.

According to the leaked document, the U.K. deployed the largest number of special forces in Ukraine—50. This was followed by Latvia (17), France (15), the U.S. (14), and the Netherlands (1).

In response to a request for comment from Newsweek, the Defense Department said: "We are not going to discuss or confirm classified information due to the potential impact on national security as well as the safety and security of our personnel and those of our allies and our partners."

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told Fox News on Wednesday that a "small U.S. military presence" was stationed at the American embassy in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv.

"I won't talk to the specifics of numbers and that kind of thing. But to get to your exact question, there is a small U.S. military presence at the embassy in conjunction with the Defense Attaché's Office to help us work on accountability of the material that is going in and out of Ukraine," Kirby said. "So they're attached to that embassy and to that defense attaché."

Those troops "are not fighting on the battlefield," Kirby said.

Kirby added: "There has been no change to the president's mandate that there will not be American troops in Ukraine fighting in this war."

The Kremlin has repeatedly accused the U.S. and other NATO members of waging a proxy war in Ukraine.

Russian diplomat Dmitry Polyanskiy, the first deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, told Newsweek in February that he believes the U.S. and other NATO member states are "pouring oil onto the fire" by supplying Ukraine with military aid and weapons to assist in the fight against Russia.

"All the red lines have already been crossed by Western countries," Polyanskiy said in a phone interview, adding that he believes "there is already semi-direct involvement of NATO in the conflict."

He said at the time that there were "no NATO troops on the ground" but said there are mercenaries from Western countries fighting for Ukraine.

"We know this from the people that we capture and from the bodies that we see on the battlefield," Polyanskiy added.

Teixeira, who was taken into custody without incident on Thursday, is due to make an initial court appearance in Massachusetts on Friday.

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