I think it would be fair to say that this mostly confirms what we already knew, but intelligence reports prepared for the Ecuadorian government detail numerous, hours-long meetings with Russians and other hackers at Ecuador's embassy in London where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange lived for most of the last decade.
According to CNN, which has seen the reports, the private intelligence firm contracted by the Ecuadorian government to monitor Assange concluded that there's "no doubt" he had connections to Russian intelligence.
Despite being confined to the embassy while seeking safe passage to Ecuador, Assange met with Russians and world-class hackers at critical moments, frequently for hours at a time. He also acquired powerful new computing and network hardware to facilitate data transfers just weeks before WikiLeaks received hacked materials from Russian operatives. [...]
The security logs noted that Assange personally managed some of the releases "directly from the embassy" where he lived for nearly seven years. After the election, the private security company prepared an assessment of Assange's allegiances. That report, which included open-source information, concluded there was "no doubt that there is evidence" that Assange had ties to Russian intelligence agencies.
The intelligence reports detail at least 75 visitors who met with Assange at the embassy in June of 2016 just weeks before WikiLeaks would publish the documents that were apparently hand-delivered to Assange at the embassy.
As for how Assange was able to keep doing this for so long while he was being closely watched -- the reports detail the behavior of Ecuador's previous administration and that of former Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño who allegedly threatened embassy staff and even Ecuador's ambassador to the United Kingdom.
Assange had help or at least protection from a government that evidently wanted to stick it to the United States or, at the very least, curry favor with Russia.
Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa claimed he was standing up for freedom of the press when he chose to harbor Assange, but anyone who still believes this had anything to do with freedom of the press is a sucker of the highest order. Julian Assange isn't a journalist and hackers from Russian military intelligence are not Deep Throat.