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Ukraine war: Who leaked top secret US documents - and why?

What to make of the dozens of classified US Defence Department documents - maps, charts and photographs - now circulating on the internet?

Complete with timelines and dozens of impenetrable military acronyms, the documents, some of them marked "top secret", paint a detailed picture of the war in Ukraine.

They tell of the casualties suffered on both sides, the military vulnerabilities of each and, crucially, what their relative strengths are likely to be when Ukraine decides to launch its much-anticipated spring offensive.

How real are these printed pages, unfolded and photographed, possibly on someone's dining room table? And what do they tell us, or the Kremlin, that we did not already know?

First things first: this is the biggest leak of secret American information on the war in Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion 14 months ago. Some of the documents are as much as six weeks old, but the implications are huge.

Pentagon officials are quoted as saying the documents are real.

Information on at least one of them appears to have been crudely altered in a later version, but out of a dump of as many as 100 documents, that seems a relatively minor detail.

BBC News has reviewed more than 20 of the documents. They include detailed accounts of the training and equipment being provided to Ukraine as it puts together a dozen new brigades for an offensive that could begin within weeks.

It says when the brigades will be ready and lists all the tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery pieces that are being provided by Ukraine's Western allies.

But it notes that "equipment delivery times will impact training and readiness".

Two Ukrainian army brigades defending the city's southern flank gave the BBC access to their positions last week as fierce fighting continued in and around Bakhmut. The men have spent months facing both regular Russian army forces, and prisoners recruited by the Wagner private military group who have swarmed their trenches in droves. Troops say Russian casualties far outweigh theirs, but the enemy is deploying new techniques to try to seize the city and surrounding countryside.

Ukraine's forces are outgunned and outnumbered, but on a chalk hillside to the south, there is the anti-tank group from the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade. 3Storm - as they are known - are unyielding. They've dug trenches deep into the earth. Timber props supporting the roof shudder as Russian artillery lands in the near distance, and field mice scurry along duck boards. An antiquated field telephone sits in a wooden nook; these are conditions their grandfathers would recognise.

"They cannot get to us, we can see for a kilometre in all directions," says a bearded 26-year-old soldier who goes by the call sign "Dwarf", pointing out Russian positions. "We can hit the enemy with everything we have," he says.

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