Early in their invasion of Ukraine, some Russian fighters approached the capital Kyiv, calling on mobile phones and uploading videos to TikTok, revealing their location to Ukrainian eavesdroppers.
The Ukrainians used the cellphone signals to fire missiles at their location — with devastating effect, Ukraine’s head of military intelligence said.
Now, almost a year later and despite a ban on personal cell phones, Russian soldiers in the war zone are still using them to call their wives, girlfriends, parents and each other, and are still subject to Ukrainian attacks. After an attack this week that killed dozens — possibly hundreds — of Russian soldiers, one of the deadliest since the invasion began, the Russian military itself acknowledged the problem and used it to explain the heavy casualties.
“It is already clear that the main reason for what happened was the massive use, in violation of the ban, of personal mobile phones in the range of enemy weapons,” the Russian defense ministry said in a statement. The mobile phone data allowed Ukraine, it said, to “determine the coordinates of the location of members of the military service to launch a missile strike”.
Both a Ukrainian official and a group of Russian pro-war bloggers say other factors contributed to the strike, and that the ministry tried to deflect blame from military leaders by blaming the military leaders. Russian commanders had clustered large numbers of troops rather than dispersing them, stationed them near munitions detonated during the attack, and failed to adequately conceal their movements, they said.
But the use of personal cellphones has plagued both Ukraine and especially Russia during the war, leaving troops vulnerable to a piece of technology that, however mundane and ubiquitous in everyday life, can pose an existential threat in modern war.
Ukrainian officials say Russian-backed forces have been using mobile phone data to attack Ukrainian soldiers since at least 2014, when pro-Kremlin separatists began fighting Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine.
The separatists introduced some of Moscow’s latest forms of electronic warfare, Ukrainian officials say, and Ukrainian soldiers began to believe they were being targeted because soldiers — often in groups — used their cell phones in close proximity. An artillery barrage on their position would soon follow the calls.
Nearly a decade later, both Ukraine and Russia have honed their skills in using cell phone and radio signals as an effective targeting tool. While some Russian and Ukrainian units follow strict rules and keep cell phones away from frontline positions, social media posts from the battlefield show that cell phones are common among soldiers on both sides, and efforts to keep them away keep at best uneven.
The magnitude of Ukraine’s ensuing losses is unclear, but they seem less severe than Russia’s.
DailyExpertNews interviews with Russian soldiers and recorded telephone conversations intercepted by Ukrainian law enforcement during the war and obtained by The Times show that Russian commanders repeatedly tried to keep telephones out of the battlefield.
Just before the invasion, Russian soldiers stationed in Belarus were told to give up their phones, two soldiers said in interviews. In intercepted calls, Russian soldiers can be heard saying commanders confiscated their phones in February.
But just as often, soldiers found ways around the rules. They stole phones from Ukrainians, including those they killed, and passed those available to call home, an analysis of call logs shows. In many intercepted calls, Russian soldiers can be heard complaining that they do not trust their leaders or feel abandoned by them, saying that they do not care about the rules.
Some Russian soldiers made comments that showed they knew Ukrainian intelligence might be listening – and that they should choose their words carefully to avoid revealing their location. But the soldiers didn’t seem to know that cell phone records alone could give them away, giving Ukrainians enough to pinpoint the location of a phone as far as an apartment building.
“Fighting phones on the frontline in the 21st century is as useless as fighting prostitution, for example,” a widely followed pro-war Russian blog posted on the Telegram app on Wednesday. “It was, it is and it will be.”
The anonymous blogger said the usage wasn’t necessarily frivolous — for instance, Russian troops had used their phones to post messages on Telegram to direct artillery fire.
Some Russian generals spoke through insecure telephones and radios early in the war, according to current and former U.S. military officials, allowing the Ukrainians to locate and kill at least one general and his staff through an intercepted call.
But the generals changed tactics after those attacks, analysts say, and senior commanders appear to be using more secure communications than regular troops, an analysis of call logs shows. For example, the commanders’ phone numbers and those of their relatives are conspicuously absent from call logs The Times obtained from the Kiev region in March, and Ukrainian officials say the commanders are using an encrypted network.
Ukrainian soldiers believe the Russians are after Ukrainian cellphones “handshaking” individual cellphone towers. Once either side establishes a pattern or pinpoints the concentration of forces on their phones by other means, such as drones, artillery strikes often follow.
In April, a group of civilians in the eastern village of Husarivka, then only five kilometers from the front, found a place in their small enclave where they could use a mobile phone. But not long after a dozen residents gathered there to call, artillery shells began to rain down.
The pattern repeated itself to the point where almost everyone in town kept their phones off or on airplane mode and didn’t congregate in any place for too long.
Despite the lingering threat, soldiers on both sides continue to hold onto their phones. The Ukrainians often have access to Starlink satellite internet near the frontline, meaning calls do not use cell towers and are usually safe.
But even without Starlink, the pull to be connected to home and family – especially in such a brutal conflict, where even the home front is the target of Russian missile strikes – is sometimes too strong for Ukrainian troops to resist.
The United States and its allies have viewed the disintegration of the discipline with some concern. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the locations of US troops and their allies were largely known to their enemies, who lacked the long-range weapons that have dominated the war in Ukraine.
There were only hints of the havoc personal technology could inadvertently wreak, as in 2018 when data from a fitness app revealed the locations and habits of US military bases and personnel, including those of US troops in Iraq and Syria.
“What we weren’t so concerned about 30 years ago is that every time you press a button, you’re broadcasting,” So said General David H. Berger, commander of the Marine Corps, in a speech to the Defense Writers Group last month.
He said commanders were well aware that young military personnel had grown up with mobile phones and their habits were deeply ingrained.
“They don’t think about pushing a button,” he said. “This is what they do all day. Now we have to completely undo 18 years of communicating all day and tell them that’s bad. That will kill you.”
John Ismay and Masha Froliak reporting contributed.
