Ask HN: Since Russia needs cellular towers, why doesn’t Ukraine destroy them?

2 points·amichail··7 comments

Apparently, Russia needs Ukrainian cellular towers for encrypted communication.

The Twitter links I'm putting here don't seem to work for me at least, so here's some context from tweets made by @christogrozev on March 7 about an intercepted discussion between the Russians about the death of Gen. Maj. Vitaly Gerassimov.

The Russian Military of Defense introduced an encrypted communications platform named Era back in 2021. It's supposed to work everywhere, but apparently it has a dependency on 3G. Russians have destroyed many 3G cell towers in Kharkiv and deployed stingrays, which has inadvertently stopped Era from working for many of their forces.

Per the discussion in the intercepted call, the FSB officer assigned to the 41st Army informs his boss that they've lost all secure communication.

Do we know how "Era" works in theory?

Im interested in how can possibly 3g be secure for communication.

Is there a source for the claim they need cellular towers?

According to this OSINT Twitter thread, apparently their secure coms tech (named Era) depends on cellular networks: https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500970445889327118

Why they need cellular towers? Maybe to TikTok or Tweet?

According to this OSINT Twitter thread, apparently their secure coms tech (named Era) depends on cellular networks: https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500970445889327118

Ukraine needs them too right?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com