The British Ministry of Defense has been embarrassed by discovering confidential military information at a bus stop in Kent. According to the BBC, this involves 50 pages of information about a possible future British mission in Afghanistan and the suspected Russian response to the British naval vessel HMS Defender in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula that Russia has annexed.
An anonymous finder discovered the documents Tuesday morning. They lay soaked behind the bus stop. According to the BBC, these include emails and PowerPoint presentations from the office of a senior Ministry of Defense employee. That department confirms that an employee has reported the loss of sensitive defence documents but does not want to comment further on the find.
The documents include information about the mission of HMS Defender in the Black Sea. Unrest arose last week when Russia announced that it had fired warning shots at the ship. The British contradicted that and said that the Russians had only carried out target practice. The BBC writes that there have been high-level speculation about how the Russians would react if the ship came close to De Krim before the incident.
According to the documents found, the British took into account several scenarios. These ranged from a “safe and professional” Russian response to a “neither safe nor professional” response. Consideration would also have been given to rerouting HMS Defender and avoiding disputed waters. However, the defence would have feared that Moscow would present this as an example of British cowardice or proof that the British saw the peninsula’s waters as Russian territory.
The BBC also obtained sensitive data about Afghanistan. Western troops will leave the country in the coming months after fighting the Taliban there for 20 years. The documents discuss, among other things, the possibility that the United Kingdom will continue to be active in the country with special units after that withdrawal, with all the associated risks. A “complete withdrawal” would also still be possible.
