A month and a half after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we have become so accustomed to the constant flow of videos and images coming from the front lines that it’s easy to forget that it’s not the norm to have a place in the war ring unless you’re fighting. him.
Soldiers share video from a cell phone of rocket attacks as they occur; residents post footage of military units occupying their cities in real time and broadcast live from bomb shelters; government officials tweeted a video of drones destroying tank columns and shooting down a plane.
It’s all expanded into thousands of Telegram channels, Twitter feeds and TikTok accounts around the world.
“People mostly act as military reporters, but there are tens of thousands,” said Samuel Bendet, a research analyst and expert on Russia at the Center for Naval Analysis in Arlington, Virginia. “This war is being waged on our smartphones in ways that there are probably no other conflicts so far.”
Not that there were no footage from the active battle shared on social media before. In Syria and Iraq, for example, ISIS and other rebel groups have used drones and cell phones extensively to trumpet victories on social media. But the difference in this war is that much of the cadre comes from the military.
“Most of the time, the professional military doesn’t let their phones take pictures in the middle of a shootout,” said Kyle Glenn, one of a group of Internet detectives who reviewed many videos and images from Ukraine. and its distribution to English-speaking audiences, mainly on Twitter.
Ukrainian servicemen boarded a military vehicle outside Kyiv. Conventional military usually does not allow soldiers to distribute footage from the front line that we saw during the war in Ukraine. (Vadim Girda / Associated Press)
“I’m quite surprised at how many shots there are of the actual battles.”
Glenn, 29, began tracking what is known as open source intelligence, or OSINT, when the war in eastern Ukraine broke out in 2014 on his own Twitter feed and one that began with two other OSINT enthusiasts called Conflict News. He continued to monitor the wars in Syria and Iraq.
Incredibly, Ukrainian troops shot down a Russian Ka-52 helicopter with an anti-tank missile “Stugna-P”. pic.twitter.com/qx0YfYlY1n
– @KyleJGlen
Kosher mind approach
Glenn, who is based in Swansea, Wales, and other OSINTers are working hard to sort wheat from chaff.
Verification of the origin and authenticity of personnel often requires a beehive approach, with some contributing specialized expertise and others simply stubbornly dissecting and cross-referencing sources. They often share insights about the Discord messaging platform before releasing content elsewhere.
“There are people who are, you know, just absolute wizards in finding the place where a video was shot. So I’m going to turn to these people… if I need help to confirm something, ”Glenn said. “A lot of OSINT are just a lot of collaboration.”
– @Arslon_Xudosi Extracting a Twitter thread among users geolocating footage of attacked Russian military vehicles in Nova Basan, originally published in the Telegram by a Ukrainian paramilitary group. (Arlson_Xudosi / Twitter)
Earlier this week, for example, a Russian channel on the Telegram news platform, where much of Ukraine’s military news was shared, published alleged Western-made missiles seized by Ukrainians from the Russian military.
“Another OSINT account realized that these were single-shot missiles that had been used and thrown away,” Glenn said.
He poses with “caught” already spent NLAW and AT4.
Congratulations, you shot a fiberglass tube. pic.twitter.com/qzeD6RHbQy
– @ OAlexanderDK
Weapons analysis
Some OSINT sites, such as Bellingcat, have been around for years, while others, such as Ukraine Weapons Tracker, have emerged to cover specific aspects of this war.
The analysis of weapons and military equipment used by Russians and Ukrainians has become a specialty of OSINT’s coverage. Accounts such as Ukraine Weapons Tracker and Oryx are closely monitoring the destroyed and seized equipment on both sides.
– @ oryxspioenkop
This type of publicly available information allows military analysts to help resolve debates over the use of chemical or banned weapons, for example, said Mark Kansian, a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“Outsiders who look at these pictures can make these judgments and not rely on governments to filter the judgments,” he said. “They sent me a bunch of pictures, you know, asking me if it was ‘Cassette Ammunition’ and that wouldn’t have been possible without the government’s involvement in the past.”
A cat walks on used disposable missile launchers in the southern port city of Mariupol. (Alexander Ermochenko / Reuters)
Much of the content of the battlefield in Ukraine comes from soldiers who publish in smaller groups in Telegram and WhatsApp video, which is re-published in aggregator channels.
“It simply came to our notice then. Each aggregator has his own biases, “said the US political science student behind the Twitter account OSINTtechnical, which has been monitoring the fighting in Ukraine since 2014 and has not used its real name publicly out of concern for its security.
“The best way I’ve found to deal with this is to act like no one can be trusted. Act like everything can be fake.”
Both he and Glenn say that although some fake and recycled videos from other conflicts were circulated at the start of the war, most videos coming out of Ukraine are reliable, even if they come from participants who are apparently party members.
“Ukrainians have been pretty good at backing up their claims with additional information that, as you know, makes it independently verifiable,” OSINTtechnical said.
Satellite image shows damage from Russian attacks in Chernihiv, Ukraine. The UN Satellite Center, or UNOSAT, is one of the organizations that uses satellite data from the commercial satellite company Maxar to track the war. (Maxar / UNOSAT / UNITAR)
Reaction when showing Ukrainian losses
However, when a video of captured Ukrainian soldiers from Mariupol appeared earlier this week, he spent several hours analyzing for treacherous indications that it had been falsified and seeking supporting allegations from other sources.
“I confirmed, you know, these soldiers wore Ukrainian camouflage. They wore bulletproof vests made in Ukraine… some of them had Ukrainian helmets made in the country that the Russians did not have access to. And everything was very consistent.
The first major surrender of Ukrainian forces in Mariupol, according to reports 267 Marines. pic.twitter.com/w5c5U3j4zG
– @ Osinttechnical
However, such efforts are not always rewarded: OSINTtechnical has been bombarded with answers claiming to be fake.
“[It was] “Almost to the level I’ve seen Russian trolls do,” he said.
Glenn received a similar reaction when he published photos from a video of Ukrainian soldiers executing captured Russian soldiers. This may be due in part to the general discrepancy in the volume and type of information coming from both sides, OSINTtechnical said.
“There are far fewer, you know, front-line footage of Russians coming out every day. While every time the Ukrainians destroy a tank, there will be 20 different pictures of it,” OSINTtechnical said.
OSINT experts often forward these front-line footage to other public sources to get the full picture, such as mapping software, commercial satellite imagery and even NASA’s fire surveillance data, which has proved useful in confirming missile strikes.
– @ bradyafr
This week, the New York Times used satellite imagery from Maxar, a space technology company that distributed images from Ukraine throughout the war, to counter Russian allegations of civilian deaths in the Kiev suburb of Bucha.
“This is really an unprecedented amount of information and makes the operation of Russian propagandists much more difficult,” said John Scott-Reylton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.
“Once upon a time, you know, they could just sneak in after an event and lie about it for a while, and there was no quick counter-story.”
Police are working on the process of identifying on Wednesday some of the civilians killed in Bucha on the outskirts of Kyiv while it was occupied by Russian forces. (Rodrigo Abd / Associated Press)
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