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Pro-Ukrainian twitter user, @TruthsUnchained, tweeted:

#BREAKING

Russian battle plans captured, likely from one of the command vehicles captured.

Battle plans were approved on January 18th and called for a 15 day war to take over Ukraine

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The tweet has been retweeted over 130 times.

Is the claim that these are authentic plans from the Russian military true? Do the contents of the document match the claim?

Oddthinking
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Landak
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    I do not like the fact that you edited my post so much it bares hardly any resemblance to what I originally wrote -- please make it community wiki instead. – Landak Mar 05 '22 at 23:41

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I'm not really qualified for a full answer, but...

The stuff does look genuine, but it's not sufficient to make conclusions about the actual plans (without knowing more).

The table from the workbook shows daily changes in frequencies and callsigns for several units (of the Black Sea fleet). Such things are routinely prepared in advance. Of course, they are secret (marked on the cover). But I suspect the table extends forward and even backward on other pages (or in separate similar documents).

To determine whether it indicates a war plan, we'd need to know whether such daily changes are normal in peace time. I don't. And even if they are not, war plans are, of course, get prepared for many situations by all armies. We'd need a document (an order) that activates these plans.

I can't analyse the map in detail, but again, apart from looking real, it doesn't say much even if it shows a real war plan.

Besides, this is specifically a naval plan. It can't cover the whole land operation. Presumably, a full-scale war plan on Ukraine would involve naval blockade, but this stage would not need to cover the full length of the war (once the shoreline is captured).

Zeus
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  • Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers [in the help center](/help/how-to-answer). – Community Mar 03 '22 at 02:21
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    Are you serious? What 'citations' do you expect here? Classified orders from the General staff? I can read Russian (and military maps) enough to understand what's written there, and it's highly unlikely you can get anything better (beyond general considerations) until more documents surface. – Zeus Mar 03 '22 at 04:48
  • A very valid point--of course Russia has plans to invade Ukraine. Their generals would be incompetent if they didn't. Thus finding a copy of the plans doesn't prove anything. – Loren Pechtel Mar 03 '22 at 05:09
  • Hi @Zeus. Please start by [Reading the welcome to New Users](https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/faq-welcome-to-new-users). If we can't get better references than this, it should remain unanswered. We have no reason to trust a random Skeptics.SE new user, so we need references when you make claims like: "The stuff does look genuine", "Such things are routinely prepared in advance". There is a lot of propaganda around for this war, and we need to be very careful that we demand evidence for the claims. – Oddthinking Mar 03 '22 at 09:15
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    @Oddthinking: even for someone with reserve-officer training in a country that once had a conscript military, the statements in this answer are pretty trivially true. On the other hand, I'd grant you that most readers here don't even have that kind of background. Unfortunately, what this means is that this question is the equivalent of "is this college physics textbook page gibberish when I didn't even study any physics in high-school". – Fizz Mar 03 '22 at 12:57
  • About war plans being ready even in peace time : https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/7833/why-did-russia-start-its-aggression-against-ukraine-after-the-ukrainian-unrest-f/7844#7844 – Evargalo Mar 03 '22 at 13:39