One of the slides included in the leaked classified Pentagon document dump appeared to confirm suspicions that NATO forces were on the ground in Ukraine during the war against Russia.

The Guardian reported that a slide “suggested that a small contingent of less than 100 special operations personnel from NATO members France, America, Britain, and Latvia were already active in Ukraine.”

The report noted that the “secret” document, dated 23 March, gave new insight into the West’s participation in the war effort. The document said the U.S. has 14 special forces in Ukraine as of last month.

John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, told Fox News that there is a “small U.S. military presence” in Ukraine to track military aid sent to help Kyiv. 

“There has been no change to the president’s mandate that there will not be American troops in Ukraine fighting in this war,” Kirby said.

He said he would not get into the specific numbers but admitted that “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.”

“So they’re attached to that embassy and to that defense attaché,” he said.

The U.K. has deployed 50 of its elite fighters. Latvia is believed to have sent 17 of these troops and France 15.

The U.K. Ministry of Defense said there was “a serious level of inaccuracy” in the claim its special forces were in the country, Euronews reported. France also denied that its forces were involved in the conflict. 

Bill Lynn, a former U.S. deputy secretary of defense who currently serves as CEO of an arms company, told CNBC that there will be serious ramifications from the document leak.

“It’s hard to trust us with your secrets if we can’t protect them,” he said. “It’s devastating to our allies to see that kind of information being promulgated.”

TRENDPOST: Western forces in Ukraine is old news to readers of The Trends Journal. (See “U.S. AT WAR WITH RUSSIA: NATO TROOPS ARE FIGHTING IN UKRAINE” 14 Feb 2023, “U.S. AT WAR WITH RUSSIA: TRAINING UKRAINE TROOPS IN AMERICA” 17 Jan 2023, and “U.S. AT WAR WITH RUSSIA: SENDING TROOPS TO UKRAINE, BUT CALL IT SOMETHING ELSE” 20 Dec 2022.)

The Intercept, citing “several current and former intelligence officials,” reported in October that President Joe Biden has decided to have these forces conduct clandestine operations inside the country, which is counter to what he had said at the beginning of the war that U.S. troops would not be positioned on the ground in Ukraine because their presence would mean WWIII.

The paper, citing three U.S. officials, reported that the U.S. withdrew 150 military instructors before Russia invaded in February and those individuals have either remained or have “gone in and out of the country since then, training and advising Ukrainian troops and providing an on-the-ground conduit for weapons and other aid.”