Just days after the US came to know that some of its classified military emails were sent to Mali because of a typo, the Russian defence ministry also dispatched secret emails — bound for Washington— to the African nation, raising questions about why the same error was repeated by Russians.

Russian emails are supposed to be sent to the US military which has “.mil” in its domain. After the typing error, and missing “i” letter, the emails were sent to the African nation “Mali”.

According to the ministry officials, the emails did not contain information that could compromise operational security.

They noted that the mistake involved only a small number of emails being sent to Mali, whose email domain is “.ml”.

“We have opened an investigation after a small number of emails were mistakenly forwarded to an incorrect email domain,” a spokesman told PA news agency.

“We are confident they did not contain any information that could compromise operational security or technical data.”

The spokesman also added that all sensitive information used by the government department was “shared on systems designed to minimise the risk of misdirection”.

“The MoD constantly reviews its processes and is currently undertaking a programme of work to improve information management, data loss prevention, and the control of sensitive information,” the spokesman said.

Earlier this month, millions of emails containing sensitive information such as passwords and medical records were also sent to Mali because of the same minor typo.

The emails which were to be sent for the US military domain “.mil” were sent to a domain named “.ml” suffix.

The US defence institution Pentagon said it had taken steps to address the issue.

The issue was identified by a Dutch internet entrepreneur Johannes Zuurbier more than 10 years ago, according to Financial Times.

Since 2013, the entrepreneur has had a contract to manage Mali’s country domain and, has reportedly tens of thousands of emails in recent months.

Although none of the emails mentioned were classified, they included maps of US military facilities, financial records, and documents pertaining to official trips with diplomatic messages.