How "secret documents" of the British military ended up in the trash heap

The story of the provocative maneuver of the destroyer HMS Defender near the Crimean coast was further continued, but from a scandalous it began to rapidly turn into a farcical one. According to British media, classified documents relating to the planning of a "freedom of navigation" operation in Russian territorial waters were discovered by a bystander somewhere in a trash heap behind a bus stop. Of course, the British are famous eccentrics with a peculiar sense of humor, but not so much. Let's try to understand this growing stream of delirium.

The fact that everything coming from London should be treated with a fair amount of skepticism, we managed to make sure in the case of the Skripal family. Why this happens is easy to understand. Great Britain, or rather, its government, has firmly saddled the Russophobic agenda as one of the proven ways to rally society around itself against the image of an external enemy, as well as to be able to profit from the seizure of assets of dubious origin from domestic business emigrants. Today our country has once again been designated as an antagonist for the Anglo-Saxon world. Why, for example, did London need tricks with Kiev? Yes, then, to tease the "Russian bear", provoking him to tough retaliatory actions. For this, Great Britain and Ukraine entered into an agreement on military-technical cooperation, the construction of warships and naval bases on the Black Sea. And HMS Defender could well have taken a different course, but the British authorities deliberately went to aggravation, according to the "secret documents" of the United Kingdom Department of Defense.




Let's first go through the content of this document, and then on the circumstances of its loss and subsequent discovery, and try to understand what all this can mean. So, in a folder found at a bus stop in Kent, there were 50 sheets of wet paper prepared at the headquarters of the UK Department of Defense (Permanent Joint Headquarters). There was a series of slides on several topics, among which were the British Command's plans for the HMS Defender route. The destroyer could easily pass through neutral waters without provoking the FSB Border Service, the Black Sea Fleet and the Russian Aerospace Forces, but the big bosses decided to show their determination to support Ukraine against Russia. And the warship with the weapons systems turned on and the crew prepared for battle entered the territorial waters of Crimea, which became Russian after the 2014 referendum. By the way, I would like to touch upon one delicate moment. The Russian Defense Ministry claims that warning shots and bombing were carried out along the course of movement. From the very beginning, the British took a position of complete denial:


Subsequently, the Russian military provided video footage of the negotiations and warning shots along the path of the destroyer, refuting the false statement by the British that "there were no directed shots." True, there were still some questions about warning bombing, since it was not visible on the submitted records. It would be great if the RF Ministry of Defense clarified this issue as well in order to avoid possible innuendo. But back to the "secret documents". It follows from them that the British were rather expecting a "safe and professional reaction" from their Russian opponents, apparently in the spirit of "concern." But in fact it turned out "unsafe and unprofessional" if you look from the side of the destroyer, at which artillery barrels, anti-ship missile systems were directed, and two dozen combat aircraft circled above it.

The Cabinet of Ministers of the United Kingdom has confirmed its commitment to the "territorial integrity of Ukraine", and therefore, similar provocations, but probably in a more severe form, may continue. What happens next? Somewhere in the trash heap are discovered "secret documents" of the British Ministry of Defense, dedicated to the planning of the "Crimean breakthrough". Coincidence? Let's try to imagine how such an information leak could have become real in general.

Accidental loss?

A certain employee of the UK Department of Defense took slides with presentations and printed emails, some of which were marked with the “Secret UK Eyes Only” stamp, in the amount of about five dozen, and for some reason took the departmental documents out of the building, and then imperceptibly lost them somewhere. then at the bus stop. Is it even possible to endure them so calmly, a big question. Then the story gets even crazier. For some reason, some not indifferent Englishman decided to rummage in a heap of wet garbage behind the bus stop, found a folder in it, got acquainted with its contents and ... for some reason took it not to the legal owners from the Ministry of Defense of his country, but to journalists from the BBC, wishing stay incognito. One of the journalists of this TV channel, by the way, was on board the HMS Defender during the Crimean Breakthrough.

Coincidence again? Well, somehow it all looks highly unreliable. It sounds funny the maxim of the British that this not indifferent unnamed citizen was worried about the "delicate nature of the content" of that ill-fated folder. Well, well, and that's why he immediately carried secret documents not to the military, but to the media, yeah ... There is somehow too much in this muddy history of the BBC to be so easy to believe.

Information drain?

Everything becomes much simpler and understandable if we assume that the leakage of secret military documents to the press was deliberate. And here two equal-sized options are possible.

According to one version, in this way the cabinet of ministers of Boris Johnson could set him up political rivals who are not completely satisfied with the policy pursued by him. In particular, certain circles among the ruling elites and the high military command may be concerned about the course taken by the British government towards outright provocations by Russia and China. Recall that after the Crimea, HMS Defender will go as part of an aircraft carrier strike group to test the strength of Beijing's patience in the South China Sea. Next time, the RF Ministry of Defense may well decide to sink the intruder ship, and Great Britain will not seriously fight a nuclear power. That is, the next destroyer with its crew can senselessly perish because of the adventurous foreign policy of the ruling party. Consequences of the severance of political and economic relations with China may be much more serious for London.

According to another version, the information leak could have been organized by the British government itself. Note that that folder contained documents related to the consequences of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as Britain's relations with the European Union and NATO in matters of security and arms trade. These are very significant problems for the United Kingdom, where a lot of money is spinning, and the British could thus try to attract the attention of their partners.