Moscow might have nukes in Crimea, hacked EU cables warn

Hacked EU cables released this week warn that Russia may already have nuclear weapons in Crimea. The private diplomatic messages describe annexed area of Ukraine as a hot zone, and Donald Trump as a bully.

You can read them here in PDF.

The cables include extensive reports by European diplomats of Russias moves to undermine Ukraine, including a warning on Feb. 8 that Crimea, which Moscow annexed four years ago, had been turned into a hot zone where nuclear warheads might have already been deployed, reports the NYT. U.S. officials say the haven't seen evidence.

From the New York Times' original report:

The techniques that the hackers deployed over a three-year period resembled those long used by an elite unit of Chinas Peoples Liberation Army. The cables were copied from the secure network and posted to an open internet site that the hackers set up in the course of their attack, according to Area 1, the firm that discovered the breach.

Area 1 made more than 1,100 of the hacked European Union cables available to The New York Times. The White House National Security Council did not have an immediate comment on Tuesday.

(...)

Unlike WikiLeaks in 2010 or the Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee and other Democratic Party leaders in 2016, the cyberattack on the European Union made no effort to publish the stolen material. Instead, it was a matter of pure espionage, said one former senior intelligence official familiar with the issue who spoke on the condition of anonymity.