The Washington Post reported that a gun-obsessed young man recently leaked classified US government documents and initially shared them on social media.

The breach - which prompted the Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation - carries classified information about Ukraine's fight against Russian forces, as well as classified assessments of US allies.

In this context, two members of a group on the social networking platform "Discord" told the "Washington Post" that hundreds of pages of these documents were published there by a young man who told them that he worked at a US military base, and had taken the documents home with him.

The man, who called himself "OG", published documents in front of this group for months, according to the two members of the "Washington Post", on the condition of anonymity.

According to the newspaper, some of the documents were so sensitive that they were stamped "No Foreigners," meaning they were not shared with foreign nationals.

And the “Washington Post” added that the group, which includes about 24 people, including people from Russia and Ukraine, was formed based on “their mutual love of firearms, military equipment, and God,” and they also set up “via Discord an invitation-only club in 2020.”

According to the Washington Post, OG told members of the group that he had spent "part of his day in a secure facility where cell phones and other electronic devices are prohibited."

He also indicated that he "worked for hours writing secret documents to share with his buddies via Discord," according to the newspaper.

Dozens of images of the documents have been found on Twitter, Telegram, Discord and other sites in recent days, although some of them may have been circulating online for weeks, if not months, before they aroused media interest.

US officials have not publicly confirmed that the material in the images posted to social media and other sites is authentic, and their authenticity cannot be immediately independently verified.

However, the leaking of these documents caused problems for Washington, which revealed its fears about the feasibility of a Ukrainian counterattack against Russian forces. It was also reported that it had spied on two close allies, Israel and South Korea.

Many of the documents are no longer on the sites where they first appeared, and the US is reported to be working to remove them.

The repercussions of this leak could be significant, as it could potentially endanger American intelligence sources, while the enemies of the United States obtained valuable information.