Very reasonable and rational people. Now they are the victim.
One or two generations removed from the original theory, but yeah.
Apparently it is still very easy to get through Russian internet blocks using a VPN, so there is that. Also, I wonder, do the soldiers actually in Ukraine have smartphones? I mean, probably not, they would call home. Would they have service? If not, would there be any open wifi? I really don’t know, but those would be potential ways of the message getting to it’s directly intended target - if you are a Russian with internet access in Ukraine you aren’t operating under Russian censorship.
Also, stuff like this is not just to get at the enemy. Ukrainians seeing it are inspired, the rest of the world sees it, say “BADASS!” and spreads the message that Ukraine is strong and holding out. Propaganda (and this is propaganda, though I approve of it and think it is good) serves a lot of purposes
Plus, this is BADASS!
ETA: note that the evidence is no phones. Also:
“It’s not like a leaflet dropped from the sky”
Huh. It would be really great to start putting out cheap, already activated with a month of service smart phones in places where Russian soldiers would run across them
EATA: I love the idea of modernizing the movie trope where an insurgent runs up to a tank, tosses a grenade into the open hatch and it blows up. Instead the insurgent runs up, throws a phone into the open hatch there is a long pause…and then a white flag comes out of the hatch. I wish I were talented at making visual stuff.
I have the feeling we will be hearing “Russian ship, Go Fuck Yourself” in many settings for quite some time. Shit like this is how legends start.
I shiver when I look at that photo, partly because I imagine it’s about 55 degrees (F) in that room.
I had not seen that - wow. That is so dumb on so many levels. Do they really not have military communications equipment? I cannot se this working out well for Russia if soldiers on the field have ways of just communicating back home
I mean, not, you know :“like”, but “Thank you, @Barradeno, for sharing this terrifying, but important news”
As a general principle, I’d have expected any professional army going into combat to have all personal phones removed and stored at base before leaving. Surely they represent a real/potential intel risk if combatants are captured by the enemy? There’s a lot more than ‘name, rank, and serial number’ available to an enemy with the right organisation and capabilities. Where you’ve been and when? Who you’ve been in contact with? Who your friends and family are? Probably contact details (and an ability to track?) for colleagues in the same unit? I guess the logistics may be too overwhelming for much advantage to be gained, though.
Man, considering their money is probably going to tank tomorrow, not sure if it is worth pulling it out. 
Exactly, and not just phones falling into enemy hands. War is horrible, scary and dangerous. You do not want your own troops to be able to communicate anything bad back home because the saps support.
Plus all the potential for messages or posts that compromise security and give away location. Heck, the carrier would be able to track the locations of roaming phones.
There are so many issues with it that I kinda question if it can possibly be true
They do, but they’re probably used to using personal cell phones as a work-around when their own radios dont work. You see the same thing in US training events (we’ll fix the radios when we get back).
So, a very interesting sort of an article showed up on various Russian state media sites, before being unceremoniously deleted. But the internet remembers, of course, and it can be found in Internet Archive.
It’s pretty obviously the propaganda piece written in advance to celebrate the fait accompli, praising Putin for solving the Ukrainian question and uniting Ukrainians back into Russia where they belong. Only things didn’t work out exactly as planned, and now either someone pushed the wrong button, or (IMO more likely) it was queued to be posted automatically, and nobody remembered to cancel that once Ukraine and its government didn’t fall over at the first push.
