On Monday, following reports of the combat death of Russian General-major Vitaly Gerasimov near Kharkiv, Ukraine, Christo Grozev, the executive director of investigative journalism and intelligence group Bellingcat, reported that Russian forces relaying the news back to their superiors were forced to use an insecure phone line with a local sim card — that was promptly intercepted.
According to Grozev, Russian forces had no choice but to use the insecure line because Era — the highly secure cryptophone system implemented last year by the Russian Ministry of Defense which is supposedly guaranteed to work “in all conditions” — is down. And the reason the system is down is that Russian forces on the front destroyed all of the nearby 3G and 4G cell towers required for the system to establish a connection.
They seem to have put themselves in a vicious circle.
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Without reliable secure communications a commander has to go to the front to sort things out personally.
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Ukrainian forces kill him, perhaps after tracking him via an insecure phone.
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An officer has to resort to an insecure phone to report his death.
On top of that, if the Russians hadn’t hobbled themselves by destroying cell towers the Ukrainians would be able to track Russian movements by monitoring Era activity even if they couldn’t decrypt the content.
In another dream I thought that last page was the “shoot on sight if spotted” instruction page.
Russians nationalists are not the only irredentists. Watch you back, Putin! /s
For what’s it worth: The Public Prosecutor General at the Federal Court of Justice (Germany) started an investigation concerning possible war crimes in Ukraine. Y’know, in case of there being a case.
You know that the propaganda side of things for the russians are getting bad for them when even Fox News is willing to run the really ugly stories now
Excellent timing, I guess. Putin is not really in a position to open a second front.
Good article. Save yourself the angst and skip the comments section. Furrfu.
Kishida was simply restating the Japanese government position but repeating it now is a tit for tat gesture.
No Adidas tracksuits for Russians?
Aaaannnd…now the war is over
There was a splendid dig at Patel today from a Tory MP of all people, who pointed out that this was absolutely not the way that we treated refugees from Uganda back in the day… 
