Downward angle icon. Downward angle icon. Russian military officers look at their smartphones while walking in front of the Kremlin in Moscow in April 2024. Photo by Contributor/Getty Images Russian soldiers rely heavily on their personal cellphones to conduct operations in Ukraine. Former U.S. military officers say the practice indicates a lack of secure communications and discipline. It also leaves Russian forces vulnerable to attack, a situation Ukraine has exploited before.
Russian soldiers appear to be making heavy use of personal cell phones in conducting military operations in Ukraine, using them for tasks such as coordinating attacks and navigating the battlefield.
Former U.S. military officers say the trend highlights a lack of secure military communications and discipline, making Russian soldiers vulnerable to Ukrainian attacks, which Kiev has used in the past to launch deadly attacks on Moscow positions.
The Russian government is aware of the problem and is actively working to crack down on the trend. The State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, recently proposed an amendment that would allow soldiers to be punished for using their personal cell phones while fighting in Ukraine.
“Wearing the gadget while serving in special operational zones will be considered a serious disciplinary violation,” Russian state media reported on Monday, adding, “This is according to amendments supported by the State Duma’s Defense Committee.”
The amendment has been widely criticized by Russian military bloggers, who argue that punishing soldiers for using mobile phones would undermine battlefield operations, logistics and command and control, given the widespread use of personal devices on the battlefield, according to conflict analysts at the Institute for War Studies think tank.
Russian military officers look at their smartphones while walking in front of the Kremlin in Moscow, April 2024. Photo by Contributor/Getty Images
“Russian military bloggers have argued that Russian soldiers rely heavily on personal devices to transmit target coordinates to Russian artillery and drone operators to request fire, as well as for moving around frontline areas and for coordination between units,” the analysts wrote in their assessment on Tuesday.
The dangers of personal mobile phones
Dan Rice, a former U.S. Army artillery officer and one-time special adviser to Ukrainian military leaders, said the reliance on cellphones speaks to a lack of adequate, secure military communications for Russian soldiers.
This has been a long-standing problem for Russia. “Realistically, the Russian military doesn’t enforce the ‘cell phone ban’ because they would face a huge backlash,” Rice, now president of the American University in Kyiv, told Business Insider. “So they allow the use of unsecured civilian cell phones, knowing that their use will result in Russian deaths and mission failures.”
Ideally, communications would be handled using a custom-designed, highly secure military system, says Mark Cancian, a defense expert and former Marine Corps colonel, but that would be expensive, and the fact that everyone already has a cell phone makes that an attractive option, even with the risks.
“This action says two things about the Russian military. One is that it is using civilian applications to adapt to battlefield conditions where military applications won’t work,” Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told BI.
Ukrainian soldiers prepare a BM-21 artillery cart for combat readiness in the Donetsk region in July 2024. Photo by Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu via Getty Images
“On the other hand, there are a lot of vulnerabilities that Ukraine is certainly exploiting,” he said.
For example, Ukraine can pinpoint the location of Russian soldiers through cellphone data, and the use of multiple cellphones over a wide area could reveal the activities of a large contingent, potentially opening up an offensive option for Kiev.
One such incident occurred in late 2022, when Ukraine launched a devastating precision strike against Russian forces massed at Makievka in the eastern Donbas region. Moscow subsequently blamed its own soldiers for the increased death toll, accusing Kiev of using Russian military mobile phone data to locate Russian troops, but there may have been other factors as well.
Another risk for Russia, Kancian explained, is that soldiers could send information unencrypted across channels, exposing it to interception by the Ukrainian military. Encryption apps are available, but soldiers sometimes get sloppy, he said.
Ukrainian military intelligence, HUR, regularly releases audio of allegedly intercepted calls of Russian soldiers. But Russia is not the only country using mobile phones: Kiev’s military also used mobile phones during the war. But as a great power, Moscow is supposed to be on a higher level.
A screenshot captured from a video shows Russian forces firing rockets at Ukrainian positions in the Donetsk region in March 2024. Russian Ministry of Defense/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
With both sides using enemy cellphones to assist in targeting, U.S. Army officers are warning U.S. soldiers about the dangers these personal devices pose on the battlefield.
“This generation of young people has built their lives around cell phones and the connections they provide, so it’s very difficult to get soldiers to give up their cell phones and internet devices,” Cancian said.
“U.S. forces will face the same challenges in the next conflict,” he added.
