A rocket is fired from a truck-mounted multiple rocket launcher near Svyatohirsk, eastern Ukraine, May 14, 2022. YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images
- Russia has proven vulnerable to deception in the Ukraine war.
- Ukraine has used decoys, cell phone data and a variety of other tricks to trap Russian troops.
- Problems with Russia’s command structure and equipment make it vulnerable to deception.
Deception has been at the heart of some of the most successful military campaigns in history, and it is an art in which Ukraine has excelled in its struggle to resist and oust Russian forces.
In many ways it had to be. At the start of the all-out invasion, Russia’s far larger army and equipment reserves appeared poised to suppress any resistance.
Therefore, to redress the imbalance, Ukraine had to rely on its improvisational skills, exploiting Russian mistakes and using deception and cunning to strike blows at the invaders.
As a report by the British think tank Royal United Services Institute found last year, the Russian armed forces are vulnerable to deception – not because their soldiers are stupid, but because their organization and structure have weaknesses.
It said the Russian military lacks tactical commanders with the experience to recognize dubious information or sense when a situation poses a hidden danger.
“The deception against the Russian armed forces was successful at all ranks and in all three branches of the military,” the report said.
Ukraine also suffers from leadership failures but is admired for its deft ability to adapt, innovate and quickly seize local advantage.
Meanwhile, Russia often sees itself as the cause of its own disasters.
A fleet of dilapidated British agricultural trucks deceives Russian snipers
A British agricultural vehicle before and after being converted into a Ukrainian military vehicle Car4Ukraine
Ivan Oleksii, a 25-year-old esports analyst, told Insider in December that he was buying old British agricultural trucks and converting them for military use in Ukraine.
He said the trucks had a crucial feature that allowed them to deceive Russian snipers: the driver’s seat was on the right side, unlike other European vehicles where it was on the left side.
Oleksii said his team often placed dummies on the left side to aid in the deception, saving the lives of Ukrainian troops driving the converted vehicles.
Russian troops use cell phones – making them easy targets
A Russian military radio is displayed during an open-air exhibition of destroyed Russian military hardware and tactical equipment June 15, 2023 in Kiev, Ukraine. Zinchenko/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
The Russian military had serious problems supplying troops with communications equipment during the war, resulting in some having to resort to their own phones to communicate.
This has allowed Ukraine to determine their positions using cell phone data and attack them with missile strikes.
In January, Ukraine killed 89 Russian soldiers who had gathered in the eastern Ukrainian town of Makiivka. This was one of the greatest losses of life during the conflict.
The Kremlin said Ukraine was able to determine the location of troops because some were using cellphones at the site.
Even senior commanders had to resort to cellphones to communicate on the battlefield in the early weeks of the conflict, with Ukraine successfully targeting a general and his staff in an attack in March 2022 after discovering his unsecured phone signal.
It is a problem that Russian troops still face. The Russian mercenary group Rusich recently posted on Telegram that there was a shortage of communications equipment on the Russian front line.
The wooden decoy was blown up by the Russians with a $35,000 drone – and was flocked to social media
Side by side stills from Russian drone footage (left) and Lt. Cmdr. Oleksandr Afanasyev (r.). Kremlin Prachka/Telegram / Oleksandr Afanasyev/Instagram / Insider
Earlier this year, First Lieutenant Oleksandr Afanasyev and his comrades spotted a Russian reconnaissance drone scouting their equipment stationed at a cluster of farm buildings near Lyman in the Donetsk region.
A Russian drone had previously damaged a tank there, and Afanasyev wanted to make sure something like that didn’t happen again. So he and the others installed a wooden version of the tank consisting of empty 155mm cartridge cases.
Shortly afterwards it was destroyed by a drone strike.
Russian social media unwittingly celebrated the attack by sharing the video and saying that a “tank” was destroyed using a Lancet drone, a weapon with an estimated cost of $35,000. The video was shared by Russia’s top propagandist Vladimir Solovyov.
But Afanasyev released a video of his own showing the reality – that, as Insider confirmed, they had just wasted a drone on a now-charred pile of wood.
The Russians also celebrated the destruction of a radar system – which again turned out to be a fake
Ukrainian soldiers in the field aren’t the only ones using decoys. Ukrainian steel company Metinvest says it makes convincing fake howitzers, mortars and radars – anything that could be a tempting target for Russia.
According to the company, Russian forces recently blew up what they said was a valuable Ukrainian P-18 Malakhit radar installation in the Donetsk region and celebrated the feat in propaganda videos. But Metinvest said in remarks that insiders could not independently verify that it was actually a replica made of plywood and metal.
The company says that over 250 of these decoys have been handed over to the Ukrainian military so far.
When a Russian journalist posted a picture of a Wagner Group base online and blew it to pieces
The Russian headquarters of the Wagner Group in St. Petersburg, November 4, 2022. Igor Russak/Portal
Sometimes it’s just that Ukraine takes advantage of a situation.
In Popasna, eastern Ukraine, a base belonging to the pro-Russian mercenary group Wagner was reduced to rubble by Ukrainian troops in April 2022.
As Wired reported, Ukrainian officials strongly suggested that the location was revealed by analyzing social media posts from a pro-Russian journalist. According to Wired, a now-deleted image even contained the exact address of the base.
Russia has been aware of the power of open-source intelligence for some time and in 2019 imposed a ban on its soldiers posting their locations on social media, Task & Purpose reported. But that’s not always enough.
Ukraine is not immune either. According to the Center for Information Resilience, in April 2022, Russian forces were able to identify and attack a munitions factory in Kiev using footage from a Ukrainian news channel.
Russian forces shoot at a Ukrainian flag, giving away their position
The Ukrainian military releases balloons with the national flag into the sky in Avdiivka, eastern Ukraine, on September 9, 2023
Recently, a Ukrainian flag attached to balloons was raised over the city of Avdiyivka to mark the 245th anniversary of its founding. As it headed toward the occupied city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, the Russian military opened fire on it, a Ukrainian official said.
The official, whose claims have not been independently verified, said this allowed Ukraine to ascertain Russia’s position. Ukraine’s 110th Brigade then “worked effectively to attack the Russian soldiers,” he said.
When Ukraine made a big noise about a counteroffensive in the south – and surprised everyone by moving east instead
Ukrainian soldier from the 25th Airborne Brigade patrols the street in the liberated city of Izium, Ukraine, September 14, 2022. Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
Perhaps the most striking recent example of military deception was Ukraine’s all-out counteroffensive last fall, which stunned onlookers by retaking a large swath of land around the eastern city of Kharkiv within weeks.
Analysts called it “the Kherson trick” because part of the success of the counteroffensive depended on convincing the world that Ukrainian troops would advance toward the southern city of Kherson instead.
According to Modern War Institute scholars Huw Dylan, David Gioe and Joe Littell, Ukraine began to signal loudly that it was advancing toward Kherson, to the point that several Western media outlets began confidently predicting the advance—and Russia with it the redistribution of his troops began southwards.
“In this case, the Kherson front was targeted and the Russian commanders took the bait,” the scholars wrote.
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