The United States is providing Ukraine with the coordinates to Russian army positions, an anonymous hacker has claimed.
Known as the "DPR Joker," the hacker shared on his Telegram channel intelligence from November that he said was transmitted by the U.S. to the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The documents, published by the hacker on Tuesday, purportedly contain U.S. intelligence on the positions of Russian ships, aircraft, and the location of warehouses.
Newsweek has reached out to U.S., Russian and Ukrainian authorities for comment.
The hacker said a Russian patrol ship is located in the western part of the Black Sea while providing coordinates to Russian air defense systems in Luhansk, Kherson, and other regions. He said he was able to access the coordinates of warehouses with ammunition and fuel for air defense systems in the Luhansk and Kherson regions.
The documents purportedly contain coordinates of equipment at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Russia's Iskander missile systems, and military equipment at the training ground in the Mogilev region in Belarus.
According to the DPR Joker, similar intelligence from the U.S. to Ukraine had previously been transmitted via Ukraine's "Delta" system. Ukraine has described the system as providing "data about the enemy" and helping to "coordinate forces on the battlefield."
Ukraine's military said in a press release on October 27 that the Delta system's software is being developed at a center of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense with the support of the Ministry of Digital Transformation and its foreign allies.
"Delta provides a comprehensive understanding of the battle space in real-time. It also integrates information about the enemy from various sensors and sources, including those from intelligence, on a digital map," it said. "Delta doesn't require any additional settings and can work on any device: on a laptop, tablet, or mobile phone."
The hacker claimed he unearthed "spies" in the headquarters of Ukraine's Armed Forces "who would have access to these materials."
"The honey trap that I put under [Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii] Zaluzhnyi worked. Oh, did I say that out loud?" the hacker wrote.
Newsweek was not able to independently verify the hacker's claims.
Last month, pro-Russian hackers logged into Zaluzhnyi's Instagram account and changed his profile picture to an image of a Joker meme, claiming that they had hacked Ukraine's Delta system.
At the same time, Daniil Bezsonov, an official with the pro-Russian separatist Ukrainian region calling itself the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), said officials had gained access to Ukraine's military plans after the DPR Joker hacked Delta.
"The fact that our special services can now access the system indicates that we know everything about the enemy. We know everything that the enemy knows about our forces and their deployment," Bezsonov wrote on his Telegram channel.
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About the writer
Isabel van Brugen is a Newsweek Reporter based in Kuala Lumpur. Her focus is reporting on the Russia-Ukraine war. Isabel ... Read more
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