Classified war documents detailing U.S. and NATO plans for strengthening the Ukrainian military before a planned offensive against Russia were posted this week on Twitter and on Telegram, a platform with more than half a billion users that is widely available in Russia, senior Biden administration officials said. The Pentagon is investigating the leak.
Military analysts said the documents appear to have been modified in certain parts from their original format, overstating U.S. estimates of Ukrainian war dead and understating estimates of Russian troops killed. Biden officials were working to get the figures deleted but had not, as of last night, succeeded. It was unclear how the documents ended up on social media.
The modifications could point to an effort at disinformation by Moscow, the analysts said. But the disclosures in the original documents — which appear as photographs of charts of anticipated weapons deliveries, troop and battalion strengths, and other plans — represent a significant breach of U.S. intelligence in the effort to aid Ukraine.
Details: The documents, which are five weeks old, do not provide specific battle plans about Ukraine’s offensive, which U.S. officials say is probably coming in the next month or so. But they mention, for instance, how fast Ukrainian troops are using the HIMARS munitions supplied by the U.S., information that the Pentagon has not disclosed publicly.
In other news from the war:
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine won strong backing from Polish leaders for his country’s rapid entry into NATO, and he signed a deal paving the way for the joint production of arms and ammunition.
Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, and Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, appealed for a return to peace talks to end the war in Ukraine. But Xi has not publicly agreed to pressure Moscow to negotiate.
Protests resume in France
Hundreds of thousands of protesters in France marched and went on strike for the 11th time in three months, even after Macron’s pension overhaul, which raised the legal age of retirement to 64 from 62, became law.
Though large, the number of protesters — about 570,000, according to French authorities, and about 2 million, according to unions — was lower than in previous rounds of protests, a sign that the movement was losing some steam, at least for now. The number of strikers in key sectors like transportation and education has also slowly declined.
The protests came a day after a cordial but fruitless meeting — the first since January — between Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne and the heads of the main labor unions. The union representatives left after less than an hour and complained that they were not being heard.
Next steps: Unions are also planning a new day of protests on the eve of a key ruling on the pension law by the body that reviews legislation to ensure that it conforms to the Constitution. That ruling is expected next week.
Strikes on Israel and Gaza
Lebanon yesterday rained rocket strikes on Israel, apparently in response to an Israeli police raid early on a mosque at a sensitive holy site in Jerusalem. Early Friday, Israeli fighter jets then struck parts of southern Lebanon and Gaza amid fears of a wider conflagration across multiple fronts. The flare-up in hostilities came as Jews celebrated Passover, and Muslims were midway through Ramadan.
The Israeli military attributed the rocket fire from Lebanon to branches of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, two militias based in Gaza with a presence in Lebanon. But instead of retaliating against the Lebanon-based branches, Israeli warplanes instead struck Gaza shortly after midnight. Armed groups in Gaza then fired more rockets into Israeli airspace, before Israel later struck southern Lebanon.
Military experts said the barrage from Lebanon was the heaviest in northern Israel since 2006, when Israel and Hezbollah, the armed group and political movement that dominates southern Lebanon, last fought a full-scale war. The Israeli military said it believed that the militias had acted with the knowledge of Hezbollah.
Consequences: The events prompted municipal councils in Israel to open public bomb shelters, in expectation of further rocket fire from either Gaza or Lebanon. No injuries were reported in Gaza during the first hour of the Israeli airstrikes.
THE LATEST NEWS
Around the World
Twenty-five years after the Good Friday Agreement, world leaders will travel to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to commemorate the signing of the accord. But for those in the country, the past is not always easy to leave behind.
The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran held talks in Beijing, the highest-level meeting between the regional rivals in seven years.
Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister, is being treated in a hospital for a lung infection related to leukemia.
A French cabinet minister’s (clothed) appearance on the cover of Playboy has prompted debate about her timing and choice of publication.
A man in Australia faces charges for kidnapping a platypus.
Other Big Stories
The U.S. government acknowledged that it should have started evacuations from Afghanistan earlier.
The Biden administration proposed a rule change that would forbid schools from banning transgender athletes from teams that are consistent with their gender identities.
The French aircraft company Airbus agreed to double production at its Chinese factory.
Representatives of the Chinese government roundly criticized U.S. lawmakers on social media for the congressional hearing on TikTok.
The oil giant ConocoPhillips is preparing to drill in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the largest expanse of wilderness in the U.S.
The Week in Culture
Johnny Depp’s first major film since winning a high-profile defamation trial last year will open the Cannes Film Festival in May. The actor plays King Louis XV of France.
Fifty years after his death, works by Pablo Picasso will be featured in art exhibitions in New York, Paris and Madrid.
“Vardy v. Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial,” a dramatization of the trial between the wives of two soccer stars, is returning to the West End in London.
Worldwide art and antiques sales reached an estimated $67.8 billion in 2022, lifting the market higher than its 2019 level.
In a TV interview, the actor Jeremy Renner described the snow plow accident that led to his breaking more than 30 bones.
A Morning Read
Sulaiman Addonia is a British-Eritrean-Ethiopian writer. His mother, even as she has long been one of his literary influences, cannot read or write and has never read any of his work beyond the snippets shared by relatives in translation.
“I want to explain to her why intimacy is central to my work, why my sole purpose as a writer is to surrender to my imagination and go wherever it takes me,” he writes in this essay. “But I don’t have the right vocabulary to say all this in the languages we speak to each other.”
SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC
The Premier League’s weirdest hire makes sense: Chelsea have decided to appoint a manager they formerly fired to manage their team on a temporary basis. Here’s why it could work out.
How F1 could change its sprint race format for Baku: By adding another qualifying session, F1 hopes to make its sprint races less risky for drivers — and more fun for fans.
From The Times: Many of the world’s best golfers teed off at Augusta National Golf Club. Among this year’s most interesting questions: How will Tiger Woods play? Will Rory McIlroy finally complete a career Grand Slam? Or will we get a repeat winner?
ARTS AND IDEAS
A glorious, barbarous board game
Twenty-eight years ago, Klaus Teuber created The Settlers of Catan, an enduringly popular board game that has spawned college intramural teams and international tournaments, been name-checked on “South Park” and “Parks and Recreation,” inspired a novel and sold some 40 million copies worldwide.
The 1995 game — in which players build settlements in a new land by collecting brick, lumber, wool, ore and grain — has attracted millions of fans with its mix of strategy, luck and persuasion. Many revisited their fond memories of Catan this week when Teuber’s death was announced, playing games of mourning or of celebration for his life and work.
PLAY, WATCH, EAT
What to Cook
Feed a crowd with this honey-roasted ham.
What to Watch
“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” is a propulsive thriller based on an environmental manifesto.
Travel
Spend 36 hours in Tokyo.
Now Time to Play
Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Like many aged chardonnays (four letters).
And here are today’s Wordle and the Spelling Bee.
You can find all our puzzles here.
That’s it for today’s briefing. Thanks for joining me, and happy Easter to those who are celebrating. — Natasha
P.S. Neima Jahromi is joining The Times Book Review as an editor.
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Home » Analysis & Comment » Your Friday Briefing
Your Friday Briefing
A classified Ukraine war document leak
Classified war documents detailing U.S. and NATO plans for strengthening the Ukrainian military before a planned offensive against Russia were posted this week on Twitter and on Telegram, a platform with more than half a billion users that is widely available in Russia, senior Biden administration officials said. The Pentagon is investigating the leak.
Military analysts said the documents appear to have been modified in certain parts from their original format, overstating U.S. estimates of Ukrainian war dead and understating estimates of Russian troops killed. Biden officials were working to get the figures deleted but had not, as of last night, succeeded. It was unclear how the documents ended up on social media.
The modifications could point to an effort at disinformation by Moscow, the analysts said. But the disclosures in the original documents — which appear as photographs of charts of anticipated weapons deliveries, troop and battalion strengths, and other plans — represent a significant breach of U.S. intelligence in the effort to aid Ukraine.
Details: The documents, which are five weeks old, do not provide specific battle plans about Ukraine’s offensive, which U.S. officials say is probably coming in the next month or so. But they mention, for instance, how fast Ukrainian troops are using the HIMARS munitions supplied by the U.S., information that the Pentagon has not disclosed publicly.
In other news from the war:
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine won strong backing from Polish leaders for his country’s rapid entry into NATO, and he signed a deal paving the way for the joint production of arms and ammunition.
Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, and Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, appealed for a return to peace talks to end the war in Ukraine. But Xi has not publicly agreed to pressure Moscow to negotiate.
Protests resume in France
Hundreds of thousands of protesters in France marched and went on strike for the 11th time in three months, even after Macron’s pension overhaul, which raised the legal age of retirement to 64 from 62, became law.
Though large, the number of protesters — about 570,000, according to French authorities, and about 2 million, according to unions — was lower than in previous rounds of protests, a sign that the movement was losing some steam, at least for now. The number of strikers in key sectors like transportation and education has also slowly declined.
The protests came a day after a cordial but fruitless meeting — the first since January — between Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne and the heads of the main labor unions. The union representatives left after less than an hour and complained that they were not being heard.
Next steps: Unions are also planning a new day of protests on the eve of a key ruling on the pension law by the body that reviews legislation to ensure that it conforms to the Constitution. That ruling is expected next week.
Strikes on Israel and Gaza
Lebanon yesterday rained rocket strikes on Israel, apparently in response to an Israeli police raid early on a mosque at a sensitive holy site in Jerusalem. Early Friday, Israeli fighter jets then struck parts of southern Lebanon and Gaza amid fears of a wider conflagration across multiple fronts. The flare-up in hostilities came as Jews celebrated Passover, and Muslims were midway through Ramadan.
The Israeli military attributed the rocket fire from Lebanon to branches of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, two militias based in Gaza with a presence in Lebanon. But instead of retaliating against the Lebanon-based branches, Israeli warplanes instead struck Gaza shortly after midnight. Armed groups in Gaza then fired more rockets into Israeli airspace, before Israel later struck southern Lebanon.
Military experts said the barrage from Lebanon was the heaviest in northern Israel since 2006, when Israel and Hezbollah, the armed group and political movement that dominates southern Lebanon, last fought a full-scale war. The Israeli military said it believed that the militias had acted with the knowledge of Hezbollah.
Consequences: The events prompted municipal councils in Israel to open public bomb shelters, in expectation of further rocket fire from either Gaza or Lebanon. No injuries were reported in Gaza during the first hour of the Israeli airstrikes.
THE LATEST NEWS
Around the World
Twenty-five years after the Good Friday Agreement, world leaders will travel to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to commemorate the signing of the accord. But for those in the country, the past is not always easy to leave behind.
The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran held talks in Beijing, the highest-level meeting between the regional rivals in seven years.
Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister, is being treated in a hospital for a lung infection related to leukemia.
A French cabinet minister’s (clothed) appearance on the cover of Playboy has prompted debate about her timing and choice of publication.
A man in Australia faces charges for kidnapping a platypus.
Other Big Stories
The U.S. government acknowledged that it should have started evacuations from Afghanistan earlier.
The Biden administration proposed a rule change that would forbid schools from banning transgender athletes from teams that are consistent with their gender identities.
The French aircraft company Airbus agreed to double production at its Chinese factory.
Representatives of the Chinese government roundly criticized U.S. lawmakers on social media for the congressional hearing on TikTok.
The oil giant ConocoPhillips is preparing to drill in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the largest expanse of wilderness in the U.S.
The Week in Culture
Johnny Depp’s first major film since winning a high-profile defamation trial last year will open the Cannes Film Festival in May. The actor plays King Louis XV of France.
Fifty years after his death, works by Pablo Picasso will be featured in art exhibitions in New York, Paris and Madrid.
“Vardy v. Rooney: The Wagatha Christie Trial,” a dramatization of the trial between the wives of two soccer stars, is returning to the West End in London.
Worldwide art and antiques sales reached an estimated $67.8 billion in 2022, lifting the market higher than its 2019 level.
In a TV interview, the actor Jeremy Renner described the snow plow accident that led to his breaking more than 30 bones.
A Morning Read
Sulaiman Addonia is a British-Eritrean-Ethiopian writer. His mother, even as she has long been one of his literary influences, cannot read or write and has never read any of his work beyond the snippets shared by relatives in translation.
“I want to explain to her why intimacy is central to my work, why my sole purpose as a writer is to surrender to my imagination and go wherever it takes me,” he writes in this essay. “But I don’t have the right vocabulary to say all this in the languages we speak to each other.”
SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC
The Premier League’s weirdest hire makes sense: Chelsea have decided to appoint a manager they formerly fired to manage their team on a temporary basis. Here’s why it could work out.
How F1 could change its sprint race format for Baku: By adding another qualifying session, F1 hopes to make its sprint races less risky for drivers — and more fun for fans.
From The Times: Many of the world’s best golfers teed off at Augusta National Golf Club. Among this year’s most interesting questions: How will Tiger Woods play? Will Rory McIlroy finally complete a career Grand Slam? Or will we get a repeat winner?
ARTS AND IDEAS
A glorious, barbarous board game
Twenty-eight years ago, Klaus Teuber created The Settlers of Catan, an enduringly popular board game that has spawned college intramural teams and international tournaments, been name-checked on “South Park” and “Parks and Recreation,” inspired a novel and sold some 40 million copies worldwide.
The 1995 game — in which players build settlements in a new land by collecting brick, lumber, wool, ore and grain — has attracted millions of fans with its mix of strategy, luck and persuasion. Many revisited their fond memories of Catan this week when Teuber’s death was announced, playing games of mourning or of celebration for his life and work.
PLAY, WATCH, EAT
What to Cook
Feed a crowd with this honey-roasted ham.
What to Watch
“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” is a propulsive thriller based on an environmental manifesto.
Travel
Spend 36 hours in Tokyo.
Now Time to Play
Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Like many aged chardonnays (four letters).
And here are today’s Wordle and the Spelling Bee.
You can find all our puzzles here.
That’s it for today’s briefing. Thanks for joining me, and happy Easter to those who are celebrating. — Natasha
P.S. Neima Jahromi is joining The Times Book Review as an editor.
“The Daily” is on China’s outreach to Africa.
You can reach Natasha and the team at [email protected].
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