Report: New York Times Accidentally Publishes Identities of Russian Soldiers Critical of Putin

‘This metadata mistake is a regrettable but entirely avoidable cockup by the New York Times’ Russian conscripts of November / Getty Images

The New York Times published incorrectly identifying information regarding Russian soldiers who spoke out against President Vladimir Putin. This put the soldiers at risk for reprisal by Moscow.

The metadata of a September article in Vice News, which featured criticisms of Putin and the Ukraine war by Russian troops, included the phone numbers of soldiers and their families. Motherboard, reported. The information was retained in the article up until January when it was removed by the newspaper.

One soldier stated, “Putin is a fool,” While another is called the Russian president “gravely mistaken.” Many expressed concern about the killing of civilians.

Motherboard reported that the oversight by The Times could lead to soldiers being subject to government retaliation.

“This metadata error is a regrettable and entirely avoidable cockup on the part of the New York Times,” Motherboard spoke with Thomas Rid (professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University/SAIS) in an internet chat. “The Times says it spent almost two months on translating the recordings—well, it should have spent another 20 minutes on scrubbing the metadata.”

Motherboard found that the Times website did not just contain the numbers of the soldiers involved in these calls but also the names of their families back home. These numbers included the number which placed the call and the number that received it. There were also apparent notes from Times fact checkers about the identity of the caller.

“Exposing the phone number of the families of Russian troops is exposing those family members to risks,” Rid added.

The Times It was stated that it has “worked to remove identifying information from the story.”

“We later learned that some buried metadata was live on the site and took prompt steps to remove it,” Charlie Stadtlander, TimesThe director of external communication, stated.