July 26, 2025: Inside Russia, protests in person or online against the Ukraine War can get you arrested and imprisoned. These protestors have found an ally in the videos sent home by Russian soldiers in Ukraine. The soldiers cannot be intimidated because they are armed, in Ukraine and constantly facing death while fighting Ukrainians. This is a major problem for the government because these soldiers regularly send photos and videos back home. The most embarrassing, to the government, images get on the internet and can never be removed by any government. China has spent billions of dollars to create internet censorship systems. These are only partially successful. Enough Chinese hackers evade the censors and get videos to Russian, Chinese and international audiences. While Russian media is censored, the internet is not, at least not to any real extent. That means a growing library of authentic photos and videos about the war exists. Any startling new event is quickly documented by participants and posted online. This visibility for what Russian soldiers face in Ukraine will, more than anything else, force the Russian government to consider ending its war effort.

For decades the Russians have sought to censor to cope with embarrassing internet videos. Nothing seems to work. Even the government uses the internet to measure the extent of popular and soldier opposition to the war. Many civilians and soldiers still support the wars but that support is constantly eroded by the constant stream of videos. Families get images of their sons being killed or wounded in Ukraine. This is why Russia spends 20 percent of its annual budget on soldiers or their families. The money encourages men to join and remain in the army. Families are compensated for their losses.

The continued existence of these videos has forced the government to carefully consider decisions made about how the war is fought. Secrets are no longer secret when the government is forced to operate in full view of their citizens, soldiers and the world. The traditional use of propaganda to control public opinion is much diminished. Governments worldwide are seeking effective methods to harness and control this new video environment. For over a century governments have had to deal with new forms of media and unexpected problems and opportunities created. It started with the telegraph nearly two centuries ago. A hundred years later there was the telephone, followed in about fifty years by broadcast radio. Fifty years after that came TV and cinema. By the 1980s their came analog and then digital video tape and DVDs

By the end of the century the internet arrived and with it video streaming, smartphones and a growing avalanche of commercial and smartphone video content. For the military this was a major problem. Despite strenuous efforts, the troops could not be forced to leave their smartphones at home or back on the base camp or barracks. Officers tried, failed and learned to live with it. Soon, military advantages were discovered and exploited. Careless use of smartphones by troops, Islamic terrorists or criminals enabled these people to be tracked and attacked with smart bombs or an ambush.

Despite the obvious risks, all but the most disciplined troops continued misusing their phones. A growing number of officers began using phones for deception, encouraging the enemy to waste shells or missiles on a few active phones left somewhere that the troops weren’t.

Examples of how this worked abound. Three years ago a map of Russian cell phone users in Ukraine showed up online. It showed the concentration of Russian forces as already revealed via commercial satellite photos and news reports from Russia, Ukraine and world media. What was not explained was why the Russian troops were using their cellphones in Ukraine where they had to use Ukrainian SIM cards to do so. SIM cards work with only one cellphone service provider and, before the war, anyone visiting Ukraine or Russia needed to own or buy a SIM that would let their cellphone work in the foreign country they were visiting. In the Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and two eastern provinces Russia occupied in 2014, Russian cell phone service providers replaced Ukrainian ones. Russia considered these areas Russian and the occupation forces replaced Ukrainian cellphone service providers as quickly as they could and outlawed the possession of a Ukrainian SIM card.

The original Russian invasion plan included leaving the cellphone infrastructure of towers and central facilities intact because Russia would soon own them. That did not happen, or at least not long enough for the Russians to make any changes to Ukrainian cellphone operation. Soon Russian troops were told to find any Ukrainian SIM cards they could and turn them in so they could be distributed to officers and other essential personnel. The Russians did this out of desperation because the Ukrainians had much better battlefield communications, and part of that was because their cellphone network still functioned. This should have made Ukrainian forces vulnerable to Russian eavesdropping but that was not the case.

Between 2014 and 2022 Ukrainian and NATO signal experts studied the problem and came up with solutions, especially when it came to tracking and monitoring foreign troops in Ukraine using Ukrainian SIMs. Ukrainian troops have encrypted and reliable battlefield comms that don’t depend on cellphones. Ukrainian civilians still used them to report on any Russian activity they might encounter while Russian forces have to use cellphones for most military communications. Both Russians and Ukrainians use the encrypted Telegram cellphone app. This is text based, making it less effective for battlefield communications. It was used by Ukrainian and Russian journalists, especially popular bloggers, to report to the people back home what is going on.

The Russian military sponsored a lot of pro-Russian bloggers and allowed some to accompany combat troops and report from the combat zone. This worked for about two months but soon some Russian bloggers reported that the war effort was being mismanaged and getting a lot of Russian soldiers killed. While these Russian bloggers were still pro-Russian, they risked losing their online followers, especially those in the military or related to someone wounded or killed in Ukraine. These Telegram users could also report what they knew, witnessed or experienced but their reports spread more slowly. There were so many of these reports on the Russian language internet that the pro-Russia bloggers were forced to confirm them and demand changes in how the war was being fought. Russian forces were still not advancing while the Ukrainians were, on several fronts. There were also Ukrainian partisans showing up in Russian occupied areas.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin is still micromanaging operations and that means no use of initiative by Russian troops. This makes no sense unless you consider the possibility that he does not trust the military and insists on direct control. For the Ukrainians, that is a major asset and more Russians were complaining about it, on the internet.