I made a site to track Russian Military Radio Communications | Hacker News Reader

I made a site to track Russian Military Radio Communications

russianwarchatter.info

97 pointsbrianross9332 comments

The Russians have been broadcasting their movements and operations over open radio. Anyone with a HAM radio can listen to it, even online. I'm recording the most significant conversations broadcast over specific frequencies.

I hope this is useful for journalists or other people cataloging the war.

I made the site last night and I plan to improve it a bunch more too. Thanks for any feedback.

I’m surprised they don’t encrypt their transmissions? Surely even Russia has radios with automatic functions, etc., widely distributed among their forces.

This is likely an ancillary group that has not been extensively trained and didn’t prepare for having encrypted communications. They’re defaulting back to open air transmissions, and everywhere they go they’re getting ambush and completely destroyed because, surprise, they’re broadcasting every move.

Are you sure these aren’t spoofed by EW units to lure Ukrainian units into traps?

Yes we’ve been tracking this and it doesn’t seem likely. It hasn’t looped, or repeated, and it’s chaotic as all hell with the signal constantly getting jammed.

Sometimes people play patriotic songs over the frequency to troll them. I’ve never seen anything like this before.

Please consider uploading these audio datasets to the Internet Archive when the conflict ends.

That’s where they are hosted now unless you mean a different archive site.

Nope, that’s the one. I didn’t click through to see you were linking directly to the item links at the IA. Thank you!

Just talked to someone from Belingcat (I think) and they said to keep doing it and they found it very important.

Where is the link to access the website?

By the way be warned. The communications are intense. I still need help transcribing and translating it, and I'm working on the frontend right now.

I'm pretty sure I have recordings of war crimes uploaded.

What war crimes do you think you have recorded? What is said or heard in them?

Artillery strikes called in on civilian targets.

> I'm pretty sure I have recordings of war crimes uploaded.

1. Make sure you timestamp and archive this as accurately as possible and ideally with uncompressed audio quality.

2. Please consider delivering a copy of this to Amnesty International and another copy of this to your local Ukrainian Embassy mission.

Ukraine has already started a formal case in the International Court of Justice in the Hague. This material can be vital in corroborating other evidence of war crimes in that court case. The probability of sitting Putin in Den Haag for war crimes is low but the evidence should be gathered nonetheless.

Site seems down but here is one with the frequencies and the crypto key (one of the footers has it).

https://site.ua/skitalec/ya-pisu-etot-post-dlya-ponimaniya-t...

The is a list of code name mappings as well.

edit:

Main frequency: 25.639 MHz

Alternate : 161.562500 MHz

Site is back up now

thank you

If this tool becomes too publicized, is there a risk that they stop being so open over the public airwaves? I worry that this will turn into a World War II situation where a US Congressman publicized classified information about how US subs were evading Japanese anti-sub weapons. The Japanese quickly adjusted their tactics once this classified info was shared then began more successfully killing US troops.

I think it is worthwhile to share the tool with the right people who can put it to use but perhaps be careful about letting it become too well-known. I don't know...I think this situation is worth discussing here.

Cat is already out of the bag. Unless they have encryption equipment with them they’ll have no other option than to broadcast on open air waves. I just want to catalog what they’re already said on open airwaves to thousands of interested watching

> If this tool becomes too publicized, is there a risk that they stop being so open over the public airwaves?

The fact that Ukrainians are trolling them with patriotic songs on their frequencies means that they know their enemy knows and has access to them, so this tool being popularized isn't going to affect their threat model.

If they had a good alternative to this for any purpose but disinformation, they’d be using it.

Almost certainly they are aware of the risks, and the use of these channels is definitely not in accordance with standard operating procedure. That is, to be used only if there is really no alternative available.

Is this is a list of russian military frequencies supposedly from a captured soldier or false? https://imgur.com/a/UoNMHFE

FWIW i did find some russian military chatter on 4750khz as in the sheet list so it does suggest.

To decode live Morse code I often use: https://morsecode.world/international/decoder/audio-decoder-...

There are some numbers stations too but of course nobody will be decoding those.

I have found the military signal jamming attempts on the numbers stations an interesting sound/technique to be familiar with.

RF becomes so full of information when TSHTF

I can't help but think this is some sort of trick. I've never been in the military, but does ANY modern military use unencrypted comms while on the battlefront? It doesn't make a lot of sense, especially when you know where you are fighting, the enemy speaks your language and even were part of the same fighting force in living memory.

Seems like its taken down

It’s back up now.

It doesn't matter if they go encrypted it will be fairly straightforward to triangle and call down airstrikes

Better put a scrambler on your transmitter. They might permanently take you out.

who is transmitting? receiving doesn't need scrambling.

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