Slashdot Mirror
Russian Troops Traced To Ukrainian Battlefields Through Social Media
New submitter wienerschnizzel writes: Vice News has released a report on how they were able to trace a member of the regular Russian army from his base near the Ukrainian border toward the battlefields in the contested territory in eastern Ukraine, then back to his home in Siberia using the pictures he uploaded on his social media profile.
The methodology used is based on a report by the Atlantic Council think tank released earlier this year, which asserts that information on the movement and operations of the regular Russian troops can be easily gathered from publicly available sources (such as the social media). The Russian government still denies any involvement of Russian troops in the fights in Ukraine.
The methodology used is based on a report by the Atlantic Council think tank released earlier this year, which asserts that information on the movement and operations of the regular Russian troops can be easily gathered from publicly available sources (such as the social media). The Russian government still denies any involvement of Russian troops in the fights in Ukraine.
Okay, opinions and feelings inside, the veteran in me demands to know: "WTF, have you idiots never heard of COMSEC/OPSEC?"
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Didn't you hear about it? Uncle Vlad knows what's best for you.
Putin will still keep insisting that the soldiers are on their vacation or have been honourably discharged shortly before.
It is seriously not news, not since the photos of a disabled T72B3 have been published. Russia actively helps separatists in the region and will continue doing so in the foreseeable future.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The sky is blue
The sun comes up in the morning
What goes up comes down
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
You shouldn't count your chickens before they're hatched
Vlad? No shit!
need to cite a new source
Haven't you noticed, that when one country invades another, that usually disparate groups with a degree of nationalism end up banding together at least temporarily to combat the invading agressor?
Beause it happened in Afghanistan and Iraq too, and that's even with our statements that we didn't want to permanently take territory either.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
He was just going for a vacation.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
The USA knows that Neo-fascists run Ukraine now and has been in favor of putting the far right into power. The USA has come full circle-- from defeating the far right in WW2 to helping put them in power. http://www.globalresearch.ca/t...
I know everyone is desperate to believe that Putin is this grand mastermind controlling the scenario, and it's certainly likely. However, it's also likely that the soldiers in question are volunteers. Now, they would have to have approved leave, of course, which questions whether or not the people approving it knew where they were going, but it's certainly possible they decided on their own volition to go and fight there, rather than being ordered to.
I could easily see a situation where a superior officer said something like "if you want to go fight in Crimea, we'll give you leave for as long as you need" and some taking that option. It's a sort of plausable deniability.
does not an army make
Absence of OPSEC is counter-weighted with several hundred paid internet workers who do nothing else but work day and night to sway internet opinion.
As such, if there will be a report that there were dozens of Russians captured and hundreds of Russians killed, for each and every of the report there will be dozens of comment explaining that such findings are incorrect and fake. And that graves of the Russians are fake. And that Ukrainians are fascists and Nazis, from the failed state. Just read some of the comments for this article.
Regular reader of any news will be flooded with contradicting information and will choose to believe what he wanted to believe.
Just because we can easily track individual troops on Social Media, doesn't mean we don't have other ways of knowing what's going on. Of course it's nice to get independent confirmation of troop movements from external sources, but if the Russians really thought there was an operational risk here, they'd fix it. It's not like it's a hard problem to fix, just make your troops leave their personal devices at home. Further, The Russians are NOT stupid and obviously recognize this problem and have taken steps to keep their troops off of social media with information that really matters.
My guess (and yes, I'm only guessing) the Russian's fully understand what information they are allowing out though social media and they have decided that it's not worth the effort to stop the information leak more than they already have. Plus, I'm sure we know a whole lot more about what's really going on than the Russians would like us to know, even without the social media angle. Further, I wouldn't put it past the Russians to be using social media to pass misinformation too. After all, this is just a revamped cold war.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I'm sure the US won't have a problem with Russian bases on Cuban soil. Or perhaps even Mexican soil.
What's that? It's been done? What was the US reaction? 50 years of petty isolationist aggression towards a state that didn't tow the line? Well, I'm sure that other South American countries were treated fairly, right?
What a fucking naked empire the US is. It's lost every moral position it once held. You think 300 million people are going to hold back 1 billion or more people who want it bad? Who are harder than you? Who want it more than you? Who will do it for less than you?
70 years on top is pretty good in terms of world history. OK - so you're no Great Britain, or Rome, or the Mongol Empire. But you had a good run, considering you had two seas to separate you from the wars of the twentieth century. You put a man on the moon. No one will forget that. All that history will applaud is whether you had the sanity to see the direction in which the world is moving. You can lose it the hard way like most empires do, or start adjusting like the Brits like had the sense to do.
The neo-Nazi Ukraine government has joined up with Islamic militants.
The Tatars of Ukraine are not particularly militant, and have good reasons to oppose Russia. Under Russian rule, more than 100k Tatars starved to death, and many more were deported to Siberia, where about half died.
Russia is on the right side of this conflict.
Partly. The people in Donbas speak Russian, and have closer economic and social ties to Russia than to Western Ukraine. It is reasonable to allow them to go their separate way. But that is not really Russia's objective, and they have sabotaged negotiations that could have led to that. Russia is more interesting in creating a festering drawn-out stalemate, dividing NATO, and spreading instability throughout Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe. So far they have been very successful.
You won't find many such comments here. Not that they don't exist - it's just that the Russian propaganda workers are focusing primarily on Russian-language media.
What is interesting is that it is possible to spot some war damage with Google Earth, for example craters in the Donetsk airport runway at 48 4'31.01"N 3744'30.31"E. Though the overall damage to airport is minimal, with only one small plane wreck visible. The main observation is that there is no activity - it is abandoned but the buildings seem to be intact.
The satellite photos aren't enough proof? Russian lies aren't meant to deceive, they are meant to humiliate.
Russia is a lot of different people with different objectives. How can you say what is Russia's objective and what isn't? Stop making stuff up.
You won't find many such comments here. Not that they don't exist - it's just that the Russian propaganda workers are focusing primarily on Russian-language media.
Here in Norway I can assure you we have plenty Putin shills commenting on news stories, I assume it's the same for most NATO countries. Putin got Russia in his back pocket, it's the public opinion in the west and all the sanctions they're looking to sway.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Nope, there's a lot of russian propaganda in german websites as well, they are even explicitly hiring people with foreign language skills. Slashdot is probably just too low profile to warrant such attention
Funny thing is, while you are completely right with what you write, these comments have indeed some truth in them.
There have been more than enough fake reports from Ukrainian government. For fuck's sake, they've once even claimed that they were attacked by Russian tactical nukes, which lead to facepalms even in their own parliament. I've been to Ukraine two months ago, their mass media really is crazy hysterical and lying. I thought that German mass media here is bad, but it is like BBC compared to Fox News.
And there are indeed neo-Nazis in Ukrainian national guard. I've seen them, too. Scary stuff. They are not a majority anymore, not since the draft has begun. But the volunteers in the beginning of the conflict were mostly the militant arm of Maidan - neo-Nazis.
It is also true that Ukraine is a failed state. Has been a failed state for 20 years.
Even so, it is not an excuse to send troops there to kill people and destabilise the situation even further.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Yes, it has been reported by Putin propagandists. How are things in St. Petersburg? Free Crimea!
You won't find many such comments here. Not that they don't exist - it's just that the Russian propaganda workers are focusing primarily on Russian-language media.
I think there are plenty of such comments here, however, they do not have karma and are ACs.
Russia-the-state has a lot fewer objectives than Russia-the-people. If Russia was an anarchic state without a military and foreign relations ministry, your words might have weighed more.
The Tatars of Ukraine are not particularly militant, and have good reasons to oppose Russia. Under Russian rule, more than 100k Tatars starved to death, and many more were deported to Siberia, where about half died.
Please get your facts right. It's was not under Russian rule that they were deported but under Soviet rule. And by an ethnic Georgian not a Russian.
Russia is whatever Putin says it is, unless he's over-ruled by multiple oligarchs.
Russian tanks? Russia knows where they are.
Russian artillery pieces? Russia knows where they are.
Russian anti-aircraft systems? Russia knows where they are.
Can you imagine a General, any General, not being in complete control of his heavy weapons? Do you think said General would allow those weapons systems to fall into the hands of someone he did not trust? And who does a General trust? Active service members.
Russia isn't the only one having issues with social media
ISIS had a little bit of kaboom come their way after an errant social-media posting as well.
Wonder if dude got a selfie of that?
The solution to cells in prisons is simple, deploy cell jamming technology on guard towers. The solution to cells in deployed platoons is throw the soldier disobeying solider into a prison where they have jamming technology on guard towers.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
According to the source I listen to, one set of the Islamists are Chechens, brought in to "protect" factories. There is another set coming from possibly Syria. These are not Tartars.
You should listen to more than one source. You might have then found out that Chechens and Dagestanis are among those fighting on the separatist side, too.
And yes, there are Chechens fighting on the Ukrainian side. Those are mostly Chechen nationalists from the 90s. They're Muslims (just as pro-separatist Chechens are), but they are not Islamists.
And then you have stuff like this, which is pure trolling (this particular picture is of separatists, but it happens on both sides).
Hitler and the gang found out that people really didn't believe small white lies. They would just chuckle and think you were kidding them. They found that in order to get people to follow in earnest, they needed to tell not just big lies, but whoppers --great big fat lies--. And Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has learned to tell great big fat lies. He lied about Chechens and the Moscow Theater. He rose to power over that incident. He lied about other events and became a public figure, then he lied some more. He lied about Russian oil oligarchs to get access to Russia's oilfields. He lied about killing a Russian KGB officer in London. He lied about killing a Russian Lawyer, tied to an American Businessman who got screwed over by Putin. He lied about killing the leader of the opposition who was going to expose Russian troops in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. He has lied consistently to the Russian people about the west and about Russias economy. He has stolen billions of Rubles and given pet jobs to his friends. He has lied about the enormous wealth he has stolen for himself and the Oligarchs. He has lied about Syria. The Russian oil industry has suffered, but the Russian Arms industry has thrived because he is selling to ISIS, to Syria, to Yemen (both sides), to Iran, to China. Its well known about his deals to India, but not so well known about his deals with Pakistan, or the Taliban. There were a lot of guns lost in Libya when Ghadaffi was accidentally shot 9 times from 8 different angles in the sewer, but there are oh so many more Kalashnikovs now than Gaddafi bought.
He seems to be one of those people who cannot distinguish a plausible lie from a wild fary-tale.
Not all of them. Have you seen Luckyo recently?
Russia has Social Media, we have Edward Snowden. God bless him.
By the way, the Russians don't give a f*ck who thinks they have troops operating in the Ukraine. It is not an OpSec failure but a point of pride. The more people think so, the prouder the Russians are of it. Plus they have deniability: " We deny that we have Russian troops in the Ukraine". There you have it: the official denial.
The Russian Government is subcontracting many of it's army to Uber, on an hour by hour basis. Whenever they're in the Ukraine, they're actually touting for business to move Ukrainians westwards.
Their advertising tactics are a bit more dramatic than the average "chugger" though.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"