From smartphones stolen from Ukrainian civilians to bombs that damaged 3G and 4G infrastructures, preventing the Era system from working, to the general intercepted – and killed – by a phone call: reality or propaganda?
That the Russians had unsecured communications problems it had already been understood in the first days of the war, when the Kiev Defense had intercepted the news of the death of the Russian general Vitaly Gerasimov, reported to Moscow through unencrypted lines, and had made it public. It was thus revealed that the Era encrypted telephone system, made last year and that had to withstand all conditions, it wasn’t working: All secure communications have been lost, an FSB officer, the Russian secret services, had reported to his superior in Russia, using a simple SIM card. According to experts, the problems were due precisely to the heavy Russian bombing of Kharkiv – under siege since the first day of the war – which they had damaged the local 3G and 4G infrastructureand the fact that some repeaters had been replaced with interception devices: therefore there were not enough antennas to make the Russian system work.
Now the Washington Post confirms that, in Ukraine, Putin’s army relied on unprotected communication systems with surprising frequency – smartphones and walkie-talkies – which are making the units in the field more vulnerable, already victims of frequent ambushes by the resistance and thus easier to locate, but which also highlights command and control problems. The Russians have modern equipment at their disposal for secure transmissions but, in addition to having damaged Ukrainian communication infrastructures, soldiers often use normal cell phones, to the point that – revealed an anonymous European intelligence official – Muscovite commanders have on several occasions been forced to seize the personal telephone of their subordinates for fear that they might inadvertently reveal the location of their unit. A study by the British Rusi Institute is also quite severe in this sense.
They are also reported cases of Ukrainian civilians who reported the theft of their phones, claiming that Russian soldiers later used them to talk to each other or to family at home. Other reports told of two-way radios of Chinese origin, unreliable and unprotected: a presence attributed to corruption and deficiencies. On the one hand, this narrative certainly takes into account what has been seen on the field, but on the other used (and perhaps inflated) by propaganda to point out how Moscow would send its children into disarray. Together with scarce food and damaged vehicles, here are the unsuitable communication apparatuses. Anything can be, anything can happen, just remember that in any conflict, assessments can often change.
At the same time I notice that The United States and NATO allies are providing Kiev with tools capable of interrupting Russian broadcasts, inducing Putin’s men to resort to less secure communications that can be intercepted more easily. On the other hand, explains to the Post Kostas Tigkos, analyst of the Janes Group, it is one thing to build an excellent system, as the Russians did, another to use it in battle to conduct complex operations involving thousands of moving units.
There may be something true, however: there are numerous intercepted phone calls, even by radio amateurs, which have been published online, on YouTube or on social networks. Like last week, a 2-minute conversation listened to 2.1 million times, in which an alleged Russian officer claimed that 50% of the troops had frostbite, that there were no tents, that the situation was worse than Chechnya and that a Moscow plane had dropped a bomb on its own soldiers. In another case, military sources reported to the New York Times that one of the 7 Russian generals who died in battle would have been located and killed precisely because of an unsecured phone call.
Realt the advertisement? While confirming some details, the Pentagon itself defines these episodes as anecdotal, that is, the result of unconfirmed information from the field. Furthermore, many military analysts they invite us not to generalize about communication problems: some units may have had, some not. Also because among the war prey that ended up in Ukrainian hands there are sophisticated pieces. Some photos showed encrypted systems supplied to Spetsnaz commandos. In the Kiev area, for example, an abandoned military container was found which experts have acknowledged to be part of the Krasukha 4 module, used to cover Army movements: The system serves to confuse the radars, radar aircraft sensors and other similar platforms used by opponents. A few days later for another observer he expressed reservations that it was indeed such a valuable piece.
An empirical confirmation of the fact that we are on soft, muddy ground, similar to that which has given so much trouble to the Tsar’s generals. Yet the Russians are still there, hammering the opponent.
March 28, 2022 (change March 28, 2022 | 18:36)
© Time.News