On March 27, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) posted a scoop on Facebook and Twitter: independent daily Kommersant acquired a set of “notorious classified files” from the United Kingdom, which allied and partnered governments allegedly used to justify their mass expulsions of Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal on British soil.

Archived on March 27, 2018. (Source: Facebook / MIDRussia)

The “notorious classified files” consisted of six slides, which, despite the peril of declassifying allegedly secret material, we reproduce below.

Slides 1 and 2, archived on March 27, 2018. Note the dateline. (Source: Facebook / MIDRussia)

Slides 3 and 4, archived on March 27, 2018. (Source: Facebook / MIDRussia)

Slides 5 and 6, archived on March 27, 2018. (Source: Facebook / MIDRussia)

The MFA sourced its post to a Kommersant article (archived here), which did, indeed, present the six slides as a “document from a closed briefing in the British Embassy” in Moscow (PDF of slides here). Kommersant described the briefing as being given to “representatives of foreign embassies” in Moscow.

Translated from Russian: “They branded Russia with a review. Kommersant has come into the possession of a document from a closed briefing in the British Embassy.” Archived on March 27, 2018. (Source: Kommersant)

The MFA shared the Kommersant slides and a link to the article, with a subtle change in language: rather than describing the briefing in general as “closed” (in Russian, “закрыт”), it described the files in particular as “notorious” and “classified” (in Russian, “секретные,” secret, without the word “notorious”).

“Only 6 pictures were needed to take decision on one country’s responsibility for a gas attack. You can evaluate by yourself, whether those files are enough — the pictures are attached,” the MFA wrote on its Facebook page.

The fact of the “closed briefing,” to use Kommersant’s phrase, was confirmed by the Twitter feed of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). This tweeted the following post on March 22, 2018 — the date given in Slide 1.

Archived on March 27, 2018. (Source: Twitter / @foreignoffice)

The Embassy’s Facebook page (archived here) added a number of details, including that the briefing was presented to “over 80 representatives of the diplomatic corps.”

The British and Kommersant accounts thus agree that the briefing was given to the diplomatic community in Moscow by the British ambassador. Such a meeting, gathering various and unspecified diplomats of various nationalities in an Embassy, would likely be closed to the public and the press.

The MFA’s account of “classified” files, however, appears incorrect. For one thing, the slides themselves have no classification marking; if they had been secret (as the MFA’s Russian-language post stated), they would be marked as such, most likely with the word SECRET in block capitals.

Since the briefing was, by definition, to non-British nationals, apparently from a large number of countries, the classification would likely be SECRET RELEASABLE TO [insert country names here].

No such markings are visible on the slides.

A second weakness is that the English and Russian versions of the ambassador’s speech were posted online the same day, and hosted on the UK government’s official website, gov.uk. RELEASABLE TO INTERNET is not a recognized security classification.