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Comment by yarpen_z | Hacker News Reader

Soldiers do not go into action with their phones. That's OPSEC 101.

That's why we see so many smartphone recordings made by civilians, but not by the military.

Russian soldiers staging for the attacks were posting to TikTok, and on the night of the invasion, traffic jams started showing up at 3am near the border.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgd7dd/google-maps-live-traf...

Seems clear the policy and the reality are not identical here.

The linked article says "many commenters ... assume the Russian soldiers left their phones on ... but Lewis said that almost certainly was not the case, and the traffic data Google was showing was ordinary people who couldn’t get on the road because of Russian military movement." Which doesn't rule it out, but clearly doesn't require it to be true.

At 3am?

"The traffic jam slowly extended to the border, where it then disappeared."

That still seems possible, if civilians have been fleeing in their cars? It sounded like drives that would have taken a day under normal conditions were taking several days in the current chaos. Which of course still doesn't mean Russian soldiers might have their phones on.

Why would a traffic's jam worth of people be fleeing from Russia into Ukraine alongside the invading forces?

Russian soldiers flirted with Ukrainian women on Tinder right before the invasion. Either they have no shame whatsoever, or they actually thought they would be welcomed as saviours, as so many soldiers been told before.

https://www.the-sun.com/news/4757640/russian-soldiers-tinder...

If this wasn't a dead giveaway, the Sun is a tabloid so unlikely to be true unless you have a more credible source:

    "RUSSIAN soldiers began bombarding Ukraine yesterday — with Tinder messages looking for love."

Aren’t all British papers tabloids?

They are either tabloids or broadsheets, the terms coming from the historical size of the physical newspaper.

Broadsheets are physically bigger, more text, typically more serious, aiming at a more sophisticated reader

Tabloids physically smaller, more salacious, aiming at the mass market

(Many broadsheets became smaller to save printing costs over time, but the categories still apply)

No, some are still broadsheets, such as the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph, and the Sunday Times.

It’s worth saying that the word “tabloid” is typically used to refer to the style of journalism (ie the focus on entertainment) rather than in its historical context of the type/size of paper.

In that context, if we take the question to mean "Aren’t all British papers horsehit?", then the answer is definitely yes.

The expert quoted says that it almost certainly wasn't due to soldiers leaving their phones on. He suspects it was ordinary people who were slowed by the movement.

That said, if they were posting on TikTok that's another story.

> Soldiers do not go into action with their phones

Yes they do, all the time. I don't think anyone left the wire without their phone while I was in Afghanistan.

Why? To take pictures? Were they in airplane mode?

And it's one thing to not expect the Taliban to DF your phones. The Ukrainian military, especially with prior control of the cell infrastructure, is another story.

If you need to coordinate with someone who isn't sitting by a radio, you need to call them (including the local govt, your own civilian personnel, etc.). You might not be issued a radio at all, so a phone is what you have.

Commercial telecommunications are an important part of any military worldwide, when they are available - so you use them until someone actually starts DFing you accurately, and then even after that, it's a risk to be managed and certainly not black & white.

In this case the Ukrainian military should be able to use the cell towers to DF every phone. I don't get why that would be a risk rather than a certainty.

Hey man, these Angry Birds aren't going to catapult themselves!

Weren't, e.g., the Abu Ghraib photos and video from cellphones? I honestly don't have any first-hand knowledge, but I would be surprised if the facts on the ground vs official policy regarding soldiers' phones wouldn't be different. That said, I'd also be surprised if cellular internet was functional in the middle of a war.

Maybe the modern version of a leaflet drop is to drop smartphones with a data plant to Russian troops and let them find out for themselves

Wasn't one of the ways we knew Russians crossed into Crimea by Russian soldiers posting on TikTok? Little Green Men.

So while yes, it is the smart thing to do it definitely isn't what happens in reality.

"Private!! DID I not tell you to put your phone in airplane mode?"

"Sir yes sir!"

YES I DID NOT?

Yes sir!

That assumes Russia has a functional army which apparently it doesn’t based on the stuff they have been posting for the last month everywhere.

Russian troops could simply be operating under the premise that none of their actions would be necessary if the West hadn't meddled and created the Ukrainian crisis in the first place. It's that simple.

Ukraians are sick of being taken advantage of by Kremlin so naturally they opened towards the west. It’s their choice as a sovereign nation. If they consider they get a better deal with the west then what do you expect the west to do, reject them for fear of Putin?

I wasn't trying to explain the actual political situation. I don't know what "deal" they took exactly. It's just really easy for any side, including the actual Russian individual taking orders, to delude themselves about the enemy and who is really to blame. For example, it doesn't take much for an American soldier to waltz into the Middle East and purport to be focused on building schools, and they even demand respect from much of the populace while doing it.

That being said, the underlying viewpoint behind the convenient justification is not that controversial on its own because the West was trying to win over Ukraine through various means. This is seen as something akin to nation-building even by some American academics.

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