Soldiers sharing cell phone videos of rocket attacks as they occur. Residents post videos of military units occupying their cities in real time and live broadcasts from bomb shelters. government officials posted on Twitter videos of drones with damaged tanks and wrecked aircraft. It all boosted thousands of Telegram channels, Twitter feeds and TikTok accounts around the world. “People basically act as war reporters, but there are tens of thousands,” said Samuel Bendett, a researcher and specialist in Russia at the Center for Naval Analysis in Arlington, Va.. “This war is taking place on our smartphones in ways that have probably never been seen before.” It’s not that no videos of an active battle have been posted on social media again. 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 shots come from the military. “Most of the time, professional soldiers do not take their phones out for videotaping in the middle of a gun battle,” said Kyle Glen, one of a dedicated sleuth group on the Internet that sorted out bundles of videos and images coming out of Ukraine. and its dissemination to an English-speaking audience, mainly on Twitter. Ukrainian soldiers climb into a military vehicle outside Kyiv. Conventional armies generally do not allow soldiers to propagate the kind of front-line shots we have seen in the Ukraine war. (Vadim Ghirda / The Associated Press)
“I am very surprised by how many shots there are of the actual battles.” Glenn, 29, started following what is known as open source intelligence, or OSINT, when war broke out in eastern Ukraine in 2014 via his own Twitter feed, and one started with two other OSINT fans called Conflict News. He continued to pursue the wars in Syria and Iraq. Unbelievably, the Ukrainian troops shot down a Russian Ka-52 helicopter with a Stugna-P anti-tank missile. pic.twitter.com/qx0YfYlY1n – @ KyleJGlen

An approach with a mind

Glenn, based in Swansea, Wales, and the other OSINTers worked hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Verifying the origin and sincerity of the shots often requires a mind-blowing approach, with some contributing expertise and others simply insisting on analyzing and cross-referencing sources. Information about the Discord messaging platform is often shared before the content is released elsewhere. “There are people who are, you know, just absolute magicians in locating the point where a video was shot. So I’m going to go to these people … if I need help confirming something,” Glenn said. “Many OSINTs are just very collaborative.” pic.twitter.com/q6DUmRE98y – @ Arslon_Xudosi A screen from a Twitter thread among users locating geographical footage of Russian military vehicles being attacked in Nova Bashan originally posted on the Telegram by a Ukrainian paramilitary group. (Arlson_Xudosi / Twitter)
Earlier this week, for example, a Russian channel on the Telegram messaging platform, which shares most of the war news inside Ukraine, published alleged Western-made rocket launchers seized by Ukrainians from the Russian military. “Another OSINT account realized they were … single-shot rocket launchers that had been used and discarded,” Glenn said.
Posing with “captured” already exhausted NLAW and AT4. Congratulations, you recorded 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 appeared to track specific aspects of this war. The analysis of weapons and military equipment used by Russians and Ukrainians has become its own OSINT coverage subspecialty. Accounts such as Ukraine Weapons Tracker and Oryx scrutinize equipment that has been damaged and captured on both sides. https: // t. co / ls08qQC18r – @ oryxspioenkop
This kind of public intelligence allows military analysts to help sort out discussions about the use of chemical or prohibited weapons, for example, said Mark Cancian, retired colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Affairs. Washington “Foreigners who see these photos can make these crises and not rely on governments to filter crises,” he said. “They sent me a lot of photos, you know, that ask me, ‘This is a cluster munition’ … and that would not have been possible without the involvement of the government in the past.” A cat walks on used disposable rocket launchers in the southern port of Mariupol. (Alexander Ermochenko / Reuters)
Much of the content of the battlefield from Ukraine comes from soldiers posting videos to smaller groups on the Telegram and WhatsApp being reposted on concentration channels. “There are problems with this, obviously. Every aggregator has its own prejudices,” said the American political science student behind the Twitter account OSINTtechnical, who has been following the fighting in Ukraine since 2014 and does not use his real name publicly out of concern. for his safety. “The best way I can find out is to act as if no one is trustworthy. Behave like anything that can be fake.” Both he and Glenn say that although some fake and recycled videos from other conflicts were released at the beginning of the war, much of the video that came out of Ukraine was credible, even if it came from apparently partisan participants. “The Ukrainians were very good at backing up their claims with additional information, which you know makes them verifiable from an independent level,” OSINTtechnical said. A satellite image shows damage from Russian attacks in Chernihiv, Ukraine. The United Nations Satellite Center, or UNOSAT, is one of the organizations that uses satellite data from the commercial satellite company Maxar to monitor the war. (Maxar / UNOSAT / UNITAR)

Reaction to the occurrence of Ukrainian losses

However, when video surfaced earlier this week from Mariupol of captured Ukrainian soldiers, he spent several hours analyzing it, looking for signs that it had been destroyed and seeking support from other sources. “I verified, you know, these soldiers wore a Ukrainian camouflage pattern. They wore Ukrainian armor … some of them had Ukrainian home-made helmets that the Russians did not have access to. And everything was very consistent.” First major surrender of Ukrainian forces in Mariupol, according to information from 267 Marines. pic.twitter.com/w5c5U3j4zG – @ Osinttechnical
However, such an effort is not always rewarded: OSINTtechnical was bombarded with responses claiming to be false. “[It was] “Almost to a level I have seen Russians do trolls,” he said. “It is a bit impressive that we are starting to see this happening on the Ukrainian side as well.” Glenn had a similar reaction when he posted images from a video of Ukrainian soldiers executing captured Russian soldiers. This may be due in part to the general difference in the volume and type of information coming from both sides, OSINTtechnical said. “There are far fewer, you know, front-line shots of the Russians coming out on a daily basis. And whenever the Ukrainians destroy a tank, there will be 20 different pictures of it,” OSINTtechnical said. OSINT experts often cross-reference this first-line material with other public sources to obtain the full picture, such as mapping software, commercial satellite imagery and even NASA fire monitoring data, which have been shown to be useful in confirming rocket strikes. 3 / https://t.co/4WY4feToEE – @ bradyafr
This week, the New York Times used satellite imagery from Maxar, a space technology company that broadcasts images of Ukraine throughout the war, to refute Russian allegations of a civilian death toll in Kiev’s Bucha suburb. . “It’s really an unprecedented amount of information and it’s a lot more difficult for the. Operation of Russian propagandists,” said John Scott-Railton, a senior fellow at the University of Toronto Citizens’ Laboratory. “Once upon a time, you know, they could just fall for an event and lie about it for a while, and there was no quick counter-narrative.” Police in riot gear stormed a rally on Wednesday, removing hundreds of protesters by truck. (Rodrigo Abd / The Associated Press)

Drones a tool in ground and information warfare

Many of the war shots come from commercial drones, which are used not only to spread information about the war, but also for military reconnaissance. Taras Troiak is one of the people …