A leaked U.S. intelligence document appears to have revealed that Egypt, one of the United States’ closest allies in the Middle East, had planned to secretly supply the Russian Federation with 40,000 rockets to aid its war effort in Ukraine.
The intel document, one of many in the leaked trove of classified intelligence files posted to online platforms like Discord, Telegram, and 4chan, revealed purported discussions between Egyptian President Abel Fattah El-Sisi and senior Egyptian military officials where they discussed plans to supply Russia with tens of thousands of artillery rounds and gunpowder, The Washington Post reports.
In the highly classified document, dated February 17th, the Egyptian president, who is a major recipient of U.S. foreign aid, orders the high-ranking officials to keep the weapons production and shipment a secret to “avoid problems with the West.”
Egypt’s move to secretly arm Russia, which apparently did not materialize in the past months according to U.S. security officials, would have come a little over a year into the Russo-Ukrainian war.
If President Sisi’s plan is confirmed to be true, it would almost surely precipitate a massive fissure in U.S.-Egyptian relations, which could see the United States canceling the $1 billion in military aid it provides Egypt with annually and imposing additional sanctions against Cairo.
“If it’s true that Sisi is covertly building rockets for Russia that could be used in Ukraine, we need to have a serious reckoning about the state of our relationship,” U.S. Senator Chris Murphy told the Washington Post, underscoring that Egypt is one of the U.S.’s oldest allies in the region.
An anonymous senior Egyptian official, speaking with the Egyptian state-backed TV channel Al-Qaher on Tuesday, April 11th following the Washington Post report published earlier in the day, denied that the country had secret plans to arm Russia. He called the report “information tampering that has no basis in truth” and insisted that “Egypt adopts a balanced policy with all countries to preserve peace and stability.”
Ambassador Ahmed Abu Zeid, who serves as the spokesman for Egypt’s Foreign Ministry, told the paper: “Egypt’s position from the beginning is based on noninvolvement in this crisis and committing to maintain equal distance with both sides, while affirming Egypt’s support to the UN charter and international law in the UN General Assembly resolutions.”
Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary for Russian President Vladimir Putin, has also sought to discredit the report, calling it “another lame duck” in “Western mass media,” according to a report from the Russian state-backed media outlet TASS.
