Canada to wait for U.S. leak investigation: expert

OTTAWA - A national security expert says Canada will likely wait for American security services to investigate and brief Ottawa on an apparent release of Pentagon documents onto social media sites appearing to detail U.S. and NATO operations in Ukraine.

Wesley Wark, a senior fellow with the Centre for International Governance Innovation, says Canadian officials will want to learn from Americans the seriousness of the leak and the specific information pertaining to Canada contained within the documents.

The documents posted online are labelled secret and contain what appear to be details on weapons and equipment shipments to Ukraine, but they also contain apparent inaccuracies that have some questioning their authenticity, or whether they were altered.

Wark says the package of leaks is diverse and without an obvious target, making the motivations of the leaker "mysterious."

He expects the Americans will be reluctant to share any counter-intelligence information with allies in the early stages of its investigation, but it would also be premature for Canada to launch any kind of investigation on its own without a fuller picture.

He says the intelligence leaks are bound to affect the U.S.-Ukraine relationship because it will at least temporarily cause some real tension in how the two countries share intelligence, which could impact Ukraine's broader war effort.